Children on Sundays, Part I.
by Robert Bird,
Author of Jesus, the Carpenter of Nazareth, Paul of Tarsus, etc.
Volume 12, 1901, pgs. 930-936
(Continued from pg. 846.)
Is This Jesus' Day?
As the time of Moses recedes and Christianity advances, the rosy faces and the sunny heads of children crowd yet more upon our picture. We look to Jesus, and we see Him surrounded by His cloud of witnesses, not with radiant wings in the sky above Him, but the shadowy, moving, joyous forms of those little ones, the children of His kingdom, whose feet beat the dust of the path as they followed Him along the road. Men drove them away, but He bade them come and surround Him; He took them in His arms and blessed them. With hands held up to Him they cry with joy, "If this first day of the week be Jesus; day, then it must be a day of joy for us. Worship we shall try to comprehend, rest we cannot, for we cannot work, but joyful we can be, if for Jesus; sake you will allow us."
Now let me get a little closer to our subject. I have sought to trace the history of the Sunday question with an impartial hand, but not to draw conclusions for grown-up people. They must do that for themselves. My labours are not for the bearded grain, but for the flowers that grow between, and it seems to me as if the negative injunctions of the learned that have blown hither and thither for years across the field of controversy have entirely passed over the heads of the sweet wild flowers.
But we must part the stalks, and look down and enquire how fares it with these flowers of God. What is the trouble with the children, for which we seek a remedy? It is that we try to fit men's shoes upon their little feet, and put men's heads upon their little shoulders, and thrust men's consciences, worn and battered, into their fresh bodies. But it will not do! Time enough for that! Let them have sunshine now.
What are the Children's Rights?
Regarding Sunday both as a day falling under the Jewish fourth commandment, and also as the Lord's Day of the Christians, what are we to do with our children upon that day? What are their rights and our duties?
I find all are agreed on this, that Sunday is to be a day of rest, and joy, and worship. Men have considered for hundreds of years how it affects grown-up people, and there cannot be a doubt that so much attention has been devoted to getting people to rest and worship on that day (even going the length of invoking the civil court to force them to do so) that the third element of joy, which may be called the touch which would transform the whole, has been woefully lost sight of. And when we think of the restless nature of children, it becomes clear as noon-day that unless you have joy, your Sunday will be a religious failure and an unpleasant memory. For them it must not be a dull, wearisome, inactive, monotonous day of depressing restrictions, and of faces that do not willingly smile. It is not merely to be a pleasant day to them, or a happy day, which is one degree better, but a joyous day, which is better still. How we are to secure this, is not very difficult to say, for it consists largely in removing restrictions which, whatever good they may do to older people, are only harmful to children.
The law of rest is a law for the relief of toilers. With children below school age it has absolutely nothing to do. These sunbeams in our world cannot work, and therefore they cannot rest. That law passes over their heads. But with school children, it is obvious that as school lessons form the work of their week, their rest must be to have none of these on Sunday. And very great care should be taken that the rest from school lessons is not invaded and broken with religious tasks, in which the child finds only a change of work and no rest. A man may find rest in a change of work, but not children. Rest with them has only one simple meaning, "no work." It does not mean lying in bed, or sitting in a chair, or walking when they wish to run, and being silent when they wish to sing. The child wants no tasks, or lessons only so light as not to amount to work. To mark Sunday out as a day for learning scripture, until it becomes a drudgery, with the added anxiety of repeating it correctly, is to cast at least one cloud of unhappiness on the child's day of joy.
Surely we can learn how to get our children to worship with us on Sunday, without restricting their happiness or banishing their joy. How far a child can worship, or how far he only watches others worshipping, is a mystery of childhood that we cannot penetrate. Have we not all pictured in our heart the child
Whose early feet,
The paths of peace have trod,
Whose secret heart, with influence sweet,
Is upward drawn to God.
Let him early associate the Sabbath with a happy attendance with his parents at a happy church service, where he is not forbidden to smile, and not checked from beguiling the time in his own little way, while his parents are listening to what he cannot understand, and where, let me say, the pleasure of a sweetmeat is not a forbidden thing.
Let it be clearly understood that I am speaking of the children, not of the working classes, but of the well-to-do; of people who know what to teach a child in religious matters, and are able and willing to do it; and who need not, unless they choose, send their children to a Sunday School to be taught by others those priceless things which shall form the springs, weak or strong, true or false, of their future life. I speak to those who have a garden or other place of recreation at home, and who don't need to resort to public parks for the sight of flowers and the song of birds. Happy is he who has a secluded garden (secluded not because of observation, but that it may not disturb the quiet of others), where his children may run and play, and be joyous to the height of their bent on the Sunday, with that heart-innocence of joy, which passes away from life as we grow older.
Three Leading Principles
Joy, rest, worship. To secure these, I would earnestly urge that our children are entitled to as much of their parents' company on Sunday as it is possible to give, and a heavy responsibility rests on those who hand them over to others, and devote their hours to what they believe to be duties in another direction, for in this they deprive their children on a holy day of that water for which they thirst and which none other hand can give them. Your talk need not be always of God and the Bible, for all creation is His handwork and shows forth His glory. The difficulty is to look abroad on this world and see a thing which has not some religion in it, or a good thought that is not bathed in God's sunshine. I should not recommend more than one church attendance for children, and am satisfied that if parents would converse with them freely about what is said in churches, it would be more useful and more fruitful of happiness than taking them to hear a second sermon. Having directed the child's feet in the way that leads to public worship, the understanding mind will come with later years.
In parts, the Bible is the most condensed and abstruse composition in the world, and very few men can read and understand much of it at a time. If we wish our children to be interested in or in any way to like the Bible, we must take the trouble to see that they understand what they hear. A little enquiry reveals amazing misconceptions in their minds. Therefore, let us not read the Bible to our children without explaining it, for if we cannot explain it, what good do you think it will do them?
Parental Companionship
Nothing is more delicate, nothing more sensitive, nothing more easily misunderstood and irreparably damaged, than religious conceptions in a child, and I implore all men not to delegate that sacred task, committed to them by heaven, to the hands of another, but to see to it themselves. Mothers do not need to be so implored, for their life is wrapped up in the child. Nor is this to be a task taken up and laid down on Sundays; it must be a thing taught and a life lived throughout the week, and so the little child will lead the man.
You cannot keep children idle on Sunday, and at the same time happy, and in order to guide their activity it is necessary to look a little closer at their recreations and employments. It is not right that the noise of children should disturb the quiet of that day to grown-up people, but beyond that limit I should not care to be the first to throw a stone at a child's forms of amusement and recreation. Of course, recreation must not absorb that part of the day which should be given to worship. But let them ramble and run, tend their flowers and their pets, play their quiet games, read their books, examine and arrange their curiosities and their specimens, their pictures and their toys. But, better than games and collections for satisfying their energy is the long interesting walk, where flowers and leaves, stones, birds and a hundred other things, delight their eyes, while the parent talks with them by the way, and they talk with him, feeling sure that whatever is not of evil is of good. Music and singing, painting, and reading any good book, are all restful and joyous employments for a part of the day, reminding them that, as Sunday stands higher than the rest of the week, so should all these pursuits be at their highest level on that day. At the same time, let it be known that all days are alike good, and to be spent in the service of God, whether at school or at church, but that on the Lord's day we are especially to turn our thoughts to God and remind ourselves of Jesus.
Can we look back upon our childhood's Sunday as a day of happiness? May the answer of our children be different. In joy we have the golden key. In my home, I have striven to make the Sunday the happy day, and I have been told it is the happiest day of the week, for the teaching which goes home to the hearts of children in happiness will remain there, a joy for ever. The simple Jewish custom of beginning their Sabbath with the bright Sabbath lamp shedding its light over the cheerful supper table, at which the family were told by their father to rejoice, as they remembered the escape from Egypt, has its lesson for us, of joy, for other reasons. The instruction to the Jewish parents has also its meaning.
"These words which I command thee this day shall be upon thine heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." Making of religion, not a sermon, but a conversational thing.
Avoid Needless Restrictions
We find this injunction under the age of the law and the traditions, what then must it be under the Christian banner of love? Can we picture Jesus on His way through the village turning aside to chide children who are playing their games in the sunshine, or to command them to cease running their races, or laughing aloud, on the Jewish Sabbath? Can we picture Him stopping in His walk to find fault with a workman for tending his flowers, or his bees, and ordering him to spend the day in idleness, which is not always rest? Let us not forget the scorching words with which He condemned the hand washings and the pot washings of His time, the counterpart of which are not difficult to find in ours; and how He taught the people that from a good heart would spring good fruit, and that one law of God was better than a thousand rules.
In this, our Lord was not uttering an entirely new idea. We see glimmerings of the dawn in the words of Jeremiah. The fathers have eaten grapes, and the children's teeth are set at edge. "The days come when God will make a new covenant with Israel, not according to the covenant that He made with their fathers, when He brought them out of Egypt. This is the covenant that He will make. I will put My Law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people; and they shall teach no more, every man, his neighbour, and his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know Me, from the least unto the greatest."
"I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it." What does this knowledge of the will of God mean? Is it not that if we turn our faces towards Him, He will enlighten our conscience and give us that guide into all truth, that newness of heart of which Jesus spoke? I know of no other way by which God guides His people than by their conscience, nor do I think that it can ever fail, for the answer of a good conscience is toward God. Conscience, however, is like a balance. When it bows one way it is wrong; the other, and it is right; and a thing may be right and more right, wrong and more wrong.
We are enjoined in Scripture not to judge one another and accuse each other of sin; and yet there are people who seem to go about with their pockets full of little labels, with the hateful word "sin" stamped in black upon them, and they think they are somehow doing God service when they stick them upon their neighbours' backs, and in no question is this more common than in regard to Sabbath customs. Human nature has not greatly changed since that day when a Scribe found Jesus in the harvest field, and accused Him of Sabbath breaking.
Freedom and Conscience
There are many things connected with our children's Sunday that are matters of opinion only. There is all the breadth of the world between working children in a factory on a Sunday and allowing them to dig sand with wooden spades on the sea-shore, or gather berries on the hill. Our conscience, enlightened from on high, is our guide, and not our neighbour's opinion. Sin is a thing so deadly (it is the conscious breaking of a law of God) that it is hard to apply it to children in connection with Sunday observance. It may be right for them to go to church, and yet it may be no sin for them to stay away; only a little less right. It may be right for them to read the Bible on Sunday, and only less right, and by no means a sin, for them to read other books. It may be right for them to hear a Bible story on their walk, or in the garden, and not wrong, but only less right, to forecast and anticipate the pleasures of the summer holidays.
Children have their absolute rights. Let us realize that it would be wrong for the child's Sunday to be deprived either of its rest, its joy, or its worship; and be assured that the blame would light, not on the head of the child, but on the guardian. Let us also realize that the extent to which these three great principles are to divide the Sunday are matters of opinion between right, more right and less right. Wisdom tells us that if you flood the Sunday with the sunshine of joy, the child will be seen worshipping with joy, and finding in his recreations the sanctity of rest which he needs. The first day of the week is the Lord's Day, much more than the Jewish Sabbath, and the rigidness of the fourth commandment and its surroundings must not be allowed to outweigh the liberty of conscience in the sight of God, and the freedom from the rules and traditions of men with which Christ has made us free. We speak of man's lost Eden at the dawn of the human race. Have we not each an Eden lying behind us in the golden days of our childhood, from which, as men and women, we passed out into the world? Our children are there now--the children of His kingdom, whose angels do always behold the face of their Father which is in heaven. Of these golden days may their memory be, that the days most golden and best beloved were the one days in seven, called by His dear name, who watched the children playing in the market-place, and took them in His arms; most golden days, because of the unclouded joy of the child, out in the sunlit garden, who sees his father and mother walking with their invisible Companion under the shadow of the trees.
[A Parents' Review article in a following issue responded to this. "The Sunday Question"]
Proofread by LNL, Mar. 2009