SOCIETY AND SUNDAY
According to the latest views publicly expressed by both Christian and un-Christian clerics, it would appear that twentieth-century Society is not at one with Sunday. It no longer keeps the seventh day “holy.” It will not go to church. It declines to listen to dull sermons delivered by dull preachers. It openly expresses its general contempt for the collection-plate. It reads its ‘up-to-date’ books and magazines, and says: “The Sabbath is a Jewish institution. And though the spirit of the Jew pervades my whole composition and constitution, and though I borrow money of the Jew whenever I find it convenient, there is no reason why I should follow the Jew’s religious ritual. The New Testament lays no stress whatever upon the necessity of keeping the seventh day holy. On the contrary, it tells us that ‘the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.’”
This is true enough. It is a difficult point to get over. And despite the fact that the sovereign rulers of the realm most strictly set the example to all their subjects of attending Divine service at least once on Sunday, this example is just the very one among the various leading patterns of life offered by the King and Queen which Society blandly sets aside with a smile. For, notwithstanding the constant painstaking production of exquisitely printed Prayer-books, elegantly bound in ivory, silver, morocco leather, and silk velvet, Society is not often seen nowadays with these little emblems of piety in its be-ringed and be-bangled hands. It prefers a pack of cards. Its ears are more attuned to the hissing rush of the motor than to the solemn sound of sacred psalmody; and the dust of the high-road, compounded with the oil-stench of the newest and fastest automobile, offers a more grateful odour to its nostrils than the perfume of virginal lilies on the altar of worship. Autres temps, autres mœurs! People who believe in nothing have no need of prayer. A social “set” that grabs all it can for itself without a thank-you to either God or devil is not moved to praise. Self and the Hour! That is the motto and watchword of Society to-day, and after Self and the Hour, what then? Why, the Deluge, of course! And, as happened in olden time, and will happen again, general drowning, stiflement, and silence.
There is certainly much to regret and deplore in the lack of serious thought, the neglect of piety, and the scant reverence for sacred things which, taken together, make up a spirit of callous indifferentism in our modern life, such as is likely to rob the nation in future of its backbone and nerve. It is a spirit which is gradually transforming the social community from thinking, feeling, reasonable human beings into a mere set of gambolling kangaroos, whose chief interest would seem to be centred in jumping over each other’s backs, or sitting on their haunches, grinning foolishly and waving their short fore-paws at one another with antic gestures of animal delight. They never get any “forrader,” as it were. They do nothing particularly useful. They are amused, annoyed, excited, or angry (according to their different qualities of kangaroo nature) when one jumps a little higher than the other, or waves its paws a little more attractively; but their sentiments are as temporary as their passions. There is nothing to be got out of them any way, but the jumping and the paw-waving. At the same time it is extremely doubtful as to whether taking them to church on Sundays would do them good, or bring them back to the human condition. Things are too far gone—the metamorphosis is too nearly accomplished. One day is the same as another to the Society kangaroo. All days are suitable to his or her “hop, skip, and a jump.” But shall there be no “worship”? What should a kangaroo worship? No “rest”? Why should a kangaroo rest? “Listen to the Reverend Mr. Soulcure’s sermon, and learn how to be good!” Ya-ah! One can hear the animal scream as he or she turns a somersault at the mere suggestion and scuttles away!
Society’s neglect of Sunday observance in these early days of the new century is due to many things, chiefest among these being the incapacity of the clergy to inspire interest in their hearers or to fix the attention of the general public. It is unfortunate that this should be so, but so it is. The ministers of religion fail to seize the problems of the time. They forget, or wilfully ignore, the discoveries of the age. Yet in these could be found endless subject-matter for the divinest arguments. Religion and science, viewed broadly, do not clash so much as they combine. To the devout and deeply studious mind, the marvels of science are the truths of religion made manifest. But this is what the clergy seem to miss persistently out of all their teaching and preaching. Take, for example, the text: “In My Father’s house there are many mansions.” What a noble discourse could be made hereon of some of the most sublime facts of science!—of the powers of the air, of the currents of light, of the magnificent movements of the stars in their courses, of the plenitude and glory of innumerable solar systems, all upheld and guided by the same Intelligent Force which equally upholds and guides the destinies of man! Unhappily for the world in general, and for the churches in particular, preachers who select texts from Scripture in order to extract therefrom some instructive lesson that shall be salutary for their congregations, do not always remember the symbolic or allegorical manner in which such texts were originally spoken or written. To many of them the “literal” meaning is alone apparent, and they see in the “many mansions” merely a glorified Park Lane or Piccadilly, adorned with rows of elegantly commonplace dwelling-houses built of solid gold. Their conceptions of the “Father’s house” are sadly limited. They cannot shake off the material from the spiritual, or get away from themselves sufficiently to understand or enter into the dumb craving of all human nature for help, for sympathy, for love—for sureness in its conceptions of God—such sureness as shall not run counter to the proved results of reason. For reason is as much the gift of God as speech, and to kill one’s intellectual aspiration in order, as some bigots would advise, to serve God more completely is the rankest blasphemy. The wilful refusal to use a great gift merely insults the Giver.
It is by obstinately declining to watch the branching-out, as it were, of the great tree of Christianity in forms which are not narrow or limited, but spacious and far-reaching, that the clergy have in a great measure lost much that they should have retained. Society has slipped altogether from their hold. Society sees for itself that too many clerics are either blatant or timorous. Some of them bully; others crawl. Some are all softness to the wealthy; all harshness to the poor. Others, again, devote themselves to the poor entirely, and neglect the wealthy, who are quite as much, if not more, in need of a “soul cure” as the most forlorn Lazarus that ever lay in the dust of the road of life. None of them seem able to cope with the great dark wave of infidelity and atheism which has swept over the modern world stealthily, but overwhelmingly, sucking many a struggling soul down into the depths of suicidal despair. And Society, making up its mind that it is neither edified nor entertained by going to church on Sunday, stays away, and turns Sunday generally to other uses. It is not particular as to what these uses are, provided they prove amusing. The old-fashioned notion of a “day of rest” or a “good” Sunday can be set aside with the church and the clergyman; the one desirable object of existence is “not to be bored.” The spectre of “boredom” is always gliding in at every modern function, like the ghost of Banquo at Macbeth’s feast. To pacify and quash this terrible bogie is the chief aim and end of all the social kangaroos. The Sunday’s observance used to be the bogie’s great “innings”; but, with an advance in manners and morals, nous avons changé tout cela! And Society spends its Sundays now in a fashion which, if its great-grandmamma of the early Victorian era could only see its ways and doings, would so shock the dear, virtuous old lady that she would yearn to whip it and shut it up in a room for years on bread and water. And there is no doubt that such a wholesome régime would do it a power of good!
At the present interesting period of English history, Sunday appears to be devoutly recognized among the Upper Ten as the great “bridge” day. It is quite the fashion—the “swagger” thing—to play bridge all and every Sunday, when and whenever possible. During the London “season,” the Thames serves as a picturesque setting for many of these seventh-day revelries. Little gambling-parties are organized “up the river,” and houses are taken from Saturday to Monday by noted ladies of the half-world, desirous of “rooking” young men, in the sweet seclusion of their “country cots by the flowing stream”—an ambition fully realized in the results of the Sunday’s steady play at bridge from noon till midnight. At a certain military centre not far from London, too, the Sunday “gaming” might possibly call for comment. It is privately carried on, of course, but—tell it not in Gath!—there is an officer’s wife—there are so many officers’ wives!—but this one in particular, more than the others, moves me to the presumption of a parody on the Immortal Bard, thus:
An officer’s wife had play-cards in her lap—
And dealt and dealt. “What tricks!” quoth I!
“They’re tricks, you bet!” the smiling cheat replied—
“My husband is ‘on duty’ gone,
And ‘green’ young subalterns are all my game,
And till they’re drained of gold and silver, too,
I’ll do, I’ll do, I’ll do!”
And she does “do.” She has found out the way to make those “green young subalterns” pay her bills and ruin themselves. It is a thoroughly up-to-date manner of spending the Sunday.
Country-house “week-end” parties are generally all bridge-parties. They are all carefully selected, with an eye to the main chance. The “play” generally begins on Saturday evening, and goes on all through Sunday up to midnight. One woman, notorious for her insensate love of gambling, lately took lessons in “cheating” at bridge before joining her country-house friends. She came away heavier in purse by five hundred pounds, but of that five hundred, one hundred and fifty had been won from a foolish little girl of eighteen, known to be the daughter of a very wealthy, but strict father. When the poor child was made to understand the extent of her losses at bridge, she was afraid to go home. So she purchased some laudanum “for the toothache,” and tried to poison herself by swallowing it. Fortunately, she was rescued before it was too late, and her Spartan “dad,” with tears of joy in his eyes, paid the money she had lost at cards thankfully, as a kind of ransom to Death. But she was never again allowed to visit at that “swagger” house where she had been “rooked” so unmercifully. And when we remember how fond Society is of bragging of its little philanthropies, its “bazaars” and carefully-calculated “charities,” we may, perhaps, wonder whether, among the list of good and noble deeds it declares itself capable of, it would set its face against bridge, and make “gambling-parties” once for all unfashionable and in “bad form”? This would be true philanthropy, and would be more productive of good than any amount of regular church attendance. For there is no doubt that very general sympathy is accorded to people who find that going to church is rather an irksome business. It is not as if they were often taught anything wonderfully inspiring or helpful there. They seldom have even the satisfaction of hearing the service read properly. The majority of the clergy are innocent of all elocutionary art. They read the finest passages of Scripture in the sing-song tone of a clerk detailing the items of a bill. It is a soothing style, and quickly induces sleep; but that is its only recommendation.
When not playing bridge, Society’s “Sunday observance” is motoring. Flashing and fizzling all over the place, it rushes here, there, and everywhere, creating infinite dust, smelling abominably, and looking uglier than the worst demons in Dante’s “Inferno.” Beauty certainly goes to the wall in a motor. The hideous masks, goggles, and caps which help to make up the woman motorist’s driving gear, are enough to scare the staunchest believer in the eternal attractiveness of the fair sex, while the general get-up of the men is on a par with that of the professional stoker or engine-driver. Nevertheless, no reasonable woman ought to mind other women looking ugly if they like; while men, of course, are always men, and “masters of the planet,” whether dirty or clean. And no one should really object to the “motor craze,” seeing that it takes so many useless people out of one’s immediate horizon and scatters them far and wide over the surface of the earth. Society uses Sunday as a special day for this “scattering,” and perhaps it is doing itself no very great harm. It is getting fresh air, which it needs; it is “going the pace,” which, in its fevered condition of living fast, so as to die more quickly, is natural to it; and it is seeing persons and places it never saw before in the way of country nooks and old-fashioned roadside inns, and rustic people, who stare at it with unfeigned amusement, and wonder “what the world’s a’-comin’ to!” Possibly it learns more in a motor drive through the heart of rural England than many sermons in church could teach it. The only thing one would venture to suggest is that in passing its Sundays in this fashion, Society should respect the Sundays of those who still elect to keep the seventh day as a day of rest. Fashionable motorists might avoid dashing recklessly through groups of country people who are peacefully wending their way to and from church. They might “slow down.” They might take thoughtful heed of the little children who play unguardedly about in many a village street. They might have some little consideration for the uncertain steps of feeble and old persons who are perchance blind or deaf, and who neither see the “motor” nor hear the warning blast of its discordant horn. In brief, it would not hurt Society to spend its Sundays with more thought for others than Itself. For the bulk and mass of the British people—the people who are Great Britain—still adhere to the sacred and blessed institution of a “day of rest,” even if it be not a day of sermons. To thousands upon thousands of toiling men and women, Sunday is still a veritable God’s day, and we may thank God for it! Nay, more; we should do our very best to keep it as “holy” as we can, if not by listening to sermons, at least by a pause in our worldly concerns, wherein we may put a stop on the wheels of work and consider within ourselves as to how and why we are working. Sunday is a day when we should ask Nature to speak to us and teach us such things as may only be mastered in silence and solitude—when the book of poems, the beautiful prose idyll, or the tender romance, may be our companion in summer under the trees, or in winter by a bright fire—and when we may stand, as it were, for a moment and take breath on the threshold of another week, bracing our energies to meet with whatever that week may hold in store for us, whether joy or sorrow. Few nations, however, view Sunday in this light. On the Continent it has long been a day of mere frivolous pleasure—and in America I know not what it is, never having experienced it. But the British Sunday, apart from all the mockery and innuendo heaped upon it by the wits and satirists of the present time and of bygone years, used to be a strong and spiritually saving force in the national existence. Dinner-parties, with a string band in attendance, and a Parisian singer of the “café chantant” to entertain the company afterwards, were once unknown in England on a Sunday. But such “Sabbath” entertainments are quite ordinary now. The private house copies the public restaurant—more’s the pity!
Nevertheless, though Society’s Sunday has degenerated into a day of gambling, guzzling, and motoring in Great Britain, it is well to remember that Society in itself is so limited as to be a mere bubble on the waters of life—froth and scum, as it were, that rises to the top, merely to be skimmed off and thrown aside in any serious national crisis. The People are the life and blood of the nation, and to them Sunday remains still a “day of rest,” though, perhaps, not so much as in old time a day of religion. And that it is not so much a day of religion is because so many preachers have failed in their mission. They have lost grip. There is no cause whatever for their so losing it, save such as lies within themselves. There has been no diminution in the outflow of truth from the sources of Divine instruction, but rather an increase. The wonders of the universe have been unfolded in every direction by the Creator to His creature. There is everything for the minister of God to say. Yet how little is said! “Feed my sheep!” was the command of the Master. But the sheep have cropped all the old ways of thought down to the bare ground, and their inefficient shepherds now know not where to lead them, though their Lord’s command is as imperative as ever. So the flock, being hungry, have broken down the fences of tradition, and are scampering away in disorder to fresh fields and pastures new. Society may be, and is, undoubtedly to blame for its lax manner of treating religion and religious observances; but, with all its faults, it is not so blameworthy as those teachers of the Christian faith, whose lack of attention to its needs and perplexities help to make it the heaven-scorning, God-denying, heart-sore, weary, and always dissatisfied thing it is. Society’s Sunday is merely a reflex of Society’s own immediate mood—the mood of killing time at all costs, even to the degradation of its own honour, for want of something better to do!