Sabbath Football.—Recently a paragraph appeared in the press, probably sent out as a “feeler,” intimating that the Football Association were ready to recognise play on the Sabbath. The International Selection Committee, it is true, by a majority decided against the proposal but a leading member of the Association said that the step to sanction play on the Lord’s Day would be taken soon. One is wondering where all this drive against the Sabbath is to end. It is gratifying to learn that the Lord’s Day Observance Society, London, has lodged a Protest with the Association against the recent agitation in favour of organised Sabbath Football. The Protest stated:—”The possibility of ‘Sunday’ Football Matches with the almost inevitable sequel of ‘Sunday’ Cup Ties, ‘Sunday’ Test Matches, and ‘Sunday’ Horse Races is a ghastly prospect from which we recoil. We, therefore, make our direct appeal to the Football Association to refuse to recognise ‘Sunday’ Football, and thus help in saving what remains of the quiet Christian ‘Sunday’ in our land.”
Paganism in Scotland.—Recently on scanning the correspondence page of one of the Scottish dailies our eye caught a heading to the above effect. Thinking that the letter dealt with some new phase of the devil’s work we read on but had not gone very far when we learned that Scotland’s paganism consisted in not keeping Christmas and the other so-called holy days. The writer may have been a Roman Catholic or an Anglo-Catholic, who are step-sisters in the same family. To them Scotland’s non-observance of these man-invented church festivals is a much more serious matter than her departure from the faith of her fathers. But what a narrow-minded view and circumscribed vision such a judgment indicates. Were the men responsible for the work done at the Glasgow Assembly in 1638, when these holy days were swept away, pagans? Were some of the holiest men that ever breathed the air of Scotland pagans because they shunned the observance of men-appointed church festivals.
The World Rebuking the Church.—A series of articles in one of the Scottish dailies have dealt with various aspects of church life and the church’s difficulties. They are written from the standpoint of the world, generally speaking, but as we have it on the highest authority that “the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light” (Luke xvi. 8) we may listen to what they have to say in connection with matters in their own sphere and which the church has unwisely introduced into its activities. “Is a badminton club, for instance,” asks the writer of the articles, “not just a cynical device for keeping young people about the place to make a fine show of congregational solidarity? In some cases, one fears, the answers must be in the affirmative. There are many great men in the church who in their hearts detest and fear the emphasis on the purely get-together activities of parish life.” The journalist is not so far a-stray as journalists usually are in religious matters when he suggested that the Sabbath services must seem almost an irrelevance after a crowded week of these social activities.
Letters of the late Mrs. Auld, Thurso.—Would those who received letters from the late Mrs. Auld, widow of the Rev. Alexander Auld, Castletown, kindly communicate with, or send the letters to, Dr. Alexander G. Auld, 25 Harley Street, London, W.1.?
The Castlecary Railway Disaster.—The country was shocked to learn of the terrible railway disaster on the L.N.E.R. line when 35 were killed and a great many injured. The sympathy of the country goes out to those so suddenly bereaved. A searching inquiry is to be made into the causes that led to the disaster and is proceeding at the time of the writing of this note. How little would those who were so suddenly hurled into eternity think that life’s journey was to end so soon, as they boarded their trains. It is a solemn call to us all to be ready.
Holy Humbug.—A leaderette writer in the Daily Express has evidently lost his temper and with it a sense of the fitness of things. Our readers will be surprised to learn that the cause of it is that Manchester City Council turned down Sabbath cinemas by a vote of 72 to 26—46 councillors did not vote. Most reasonable men will applaud the action of the Council, not so the Daily Express which heads its leaderette—”Holy Humbug.” And with the strange illogicality of his kind the writer says you can drive to Ashton-under-Lyne and get a cinema there, and if you want to see a wrestling match, or prize fights on Sabbath you can see these in Manchester. If Ashton-under-Lyne is faithfully helping the devil or if there are things done in Manchester that ought not to be permitted that does not say that the best way to remedy this condition of things is to lengthen the devil’s chain. One might point out to the Daily Express that there is a much worse thing than “holy humbug” and that is unholy humbug and some of our leading dailies have too much of this undesirable element in their editorial sanctums.