The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1893-06-03
SUNDAY OBSERVANCE
Sensible Words of a Leading Preache
In Chicago.

sensible Words of a Leading Preacher
In Chicago.
The Rev. James Miller of Marshfeld-
avenue Church, Chicago, recently
preached a sermon on the opening of the
Worlds Fair on Sunday, in which he
used the following sensible language:
How shall we reach the masses? The
church is not reaching them; the Sabbath
school is not reaching them; the Young
Mems Christian Association is not reach
ing them; the great evangelistic move
lmentS of our Gay is not reaching them.
The press reaches them; the parks reach
them; the theaters reach them; the
Worlds Fair, if it were opened Sundays,
would reach them. How shall we reach
| them? The churches are empty, the
parks and theaters are full. How shall
we reach them?
Readjust your machinery to the
changed conditions of human life. Let
the Christian pulpit and the Christian
church recognize that under the hard
conditions of modern life many wants
have to be supplied on Sunday as well as
| those pressing spiritual wants to which
the pulpit now ministers; that on Sunday
most men must go to the intellectual
market and the social market and the lit
erary market as well as to the religious
market or their pressing wants Will re-
main unsupplied. Let us broaden the
curriculum of Sunday observance so as to
embrace all that is broadening and ele-
Vatlng-music, poetry, literature, art,
science and song-all that can be in
dulged in without tainting and tarnish-
ing the moral beauty of the soul, all that
Will help to make it tairer, sWeeter and
stronger and intensity the trend Of its
movement upward into the hidden life of
Goa. Let US readjust our Sunday to the
! changed conditions of mans social and
| industrial environment and thereby re-
store to the church her old time mastery
over the conscience and moral life of so
clety without either beliItling society or
| stuItlfylng the conscience. Let the
church broaden her conception of man
and his wants by study of science. art,
psychology and history, and by larger
study Of the Bible in the light OF what
these teach, until by virtue of the pow er
OF her Intellectual transcendance the
world will recognize her as the preor-
| dalned leader and exponent of all move
ments behttlng the supreme sanctity OF
man IN his relation to the subordinate
sanctity of the Sabbath.
Let the church take the ground that her
Master occupied: that the sabbath is sub
ordinate to mans physical necessities, to
his intellectual necessities, to his social
and recreative necessities as well as his
moral and spiritual necessities. Instead
/ OF the church attempting to put legisla-
tive clamps upon the world and under
taking to squeeze it to the dimensions OF
medieval superstition, let the church
| broaden her horizon and stretch her Wis
| ion until she can get glimpses of the
working of mighty movements, intellect
| ual, social and commercial, which are
destined to give new meaning to human
! life and new and strange interest to that
sacred day which has come down to US
in unbroken continuity from the days OF
! Moses. Let the church learn that in such
a stupendOus international speciality as
I the Worlds Fair no ordinary narrow
minded puritanical Interpretation Of the
law of Sabbath observance can avail;
that the circumscribed radius of vision OF
the average pulpit wholly units it for
the stupehdous task of discussing i'm
partially from the platform of Christ the
real merits of the question of opening the
| Worlds Fair on Sunday.
| For the proof OF this statement | need
only refer you to the reported action of a
select number of Baptist clergymen OF
1 the highest standing in this city, and the
resolutions presented by a select COM
mittee to the Methodist clergy OF Chicago
for their adoption. The action OF both
| these committees of representative clergy
men from the two leading denominations
! of the land demonstrates that these men
! themselves, with all their splendid gifts,
are dominated by ideas which have their
! source in the dicta and dogmaS Of the
middle ages and which totally unfit them
to grapple with the real merits of the
! question now agitating the public mind.