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OUR HOME SUNDAYS
By THE EDITORS
T
HE principal obstacle to a successful Sunday in most of our homes is that it has become entirely extemporaneous. Because we have for its observance no regular plan, it fails to rest us.
Some of us think we believe in the Puritan Sunday. But surely to accept the Sabbath of the Puritans wholesale is to accept it thoughtlessly. The trouble with the Puritan Sunday is that it is essentially an elderly people's day. It suits grownups because it is quiet. But it does not suit children. They wake up just as early as upon any other day. They feel just as much need of exercise as ever. Idleness is not rest but torture to them. Such a Sunday is to them a sort of weekly rainy day.
On the other hand, the automobile Sunday has its equal disadvantages. Granted that the joy of rapid motion is innocent and that it is no more sinful to use a car to travel 50 miles than one's legs to travel five, still it is not particularly restful to be crammed with food and excitement every seven days. The Puritan Sunday had no joy in it, but the automobile Sunday is too restless, noisy and selfish.
Also, while the family can all go in the car, yet the house is part of the family, and it does not seem quite wholesome that we should always all celebrate our weekly opportunities to be together by scrambling away from our own firesides.
Many considerations enter into the making of a perfect family Sunday.
In the first place, father should be remembered. He needs Sunday more than anybody else. Sunday is a weekly Father's Day in America. To-day he should go free. To-morrow he must climb down from the hereafter to the wherewithal.
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