DISCUSSION ON SUNDAY OBSERVANCE. 



121 



Dr. Morton : If the (jhairman calls on me to say a word or two, 

 it would be simply to express the great interest that this discussion 

 has given to me. 1 am very well rewarded for coming. If you 

 usually have discussions of this sort 1 should like to be a member 

 of the Institute, but I doubt if you keep up to this level. Of the 

 many things that have been said, there was one 1 wanted, as it 

 were, to correct. Tw^o speakers spoke of the work of the Minister 

 or Clergyman on Sunday being work, and being a necessary 

 violation of the great principle of rest. In fact, our friend on the 

 right seemed to glory in the fact that Sunday was a day of work. 

 Now my experience is rather opposed to that. It is true that I 

 have to take service on Sunday, and that sometimes I have a sense 

 of physical exhaustion at the close of the day. But all through 

 my long work to this very day, Sunday has always seemed to me 

 a day of very great rest ; and it stands out in my memory as week 

 by week a new^ experience of the mysterious law that where you 

 lose yourself in God, and His works, there is a rest unspeakable; 

 and I think it is one of the great blessings of being a Minister 

 of the Gospel that you are not only allowed, but you are equipped 

 to lose yourself in Him, that your preaching and teaching are of 

 no value unless you have gone and He is there, and it is in that 

 sense that I feel, and have experienced, all through this curious 

 reality of the day of rest in what appears to be a day of work. 

 You, Mr. Chairman, say that if we do not take a day in the week 

 we shall come into your hands, and that you have to deal with 

 those unwise pi^eachers of the Gospel who neglect this law. Well, 

 for more than thirty years I never took a day in the week. I took 

 the six days of work and the Sunday for rest- — resting consisting 

 of perpetual preaching and teaching, but none the less perfect 

 rest ; and when I began after about thirty years to take Monday 

 as my day of rest and recreation, I did it from the advice of 

 people of the medical profession; but it is a perfect nuisance to 

 this day; and I feel wdth an old man that I was talking to last 

 night. He has been fifty years in one place as minister. He 

 said to me last night that he always felt when Sunday w^as over a 

 miserable regret it was gone, and he began to long for the next 

 Sunday; and that Sunday of his — in one place, remember, for 

 fifty years — has meant for him health and strength, and he shows 

 no sign to-day of any decline ; because he has rested his soul in the 

 Lord by preaching His Gospel, and by winning people to Him- 

 self. Therefore, I just take a little exception to what has been 

 said. The Minister of the Gospel of Christ, if he is true to his 

 function, will find that God quite know^s that he has to w^ork from 

 one point of view on the dav of rest ; but God also takes good 

 care that the work done for Him sh^ll be rest to his soul and to 

 his body. 



