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Vol, 5 — No. 26 Vic gReA, \ et m. (7 4 ~~ of fy LA fy \) aR , Sy > dim Bell Sundays in 1898 and in 1963 Sitting here on my verandah, watching the cars speeding up and down Percy Street, I could not keep from going back in memory to the Sundays of sixty years ago. Some people contend that the world is getting better, others are just as certain that it is getting worse. If church services are any criterion, we might readily favour the later assertion. Away back in 1898, that would be before the new Methodist Sun- day School was built or the church altered, the Rev. T. W. Jolliffe was pastor. There were then two church services each Sunday, one at eleven in the morning and one at seven in the evening as well as Sunday School in’ the afternoon at two-thirty. Both church services were well attended, the evening being possi- bly the better of the two. The Sunday School had an average at- tendance of over two hundred in- eluding a senior Bible Class of about fifty members. To-day we have one chureh service each Sunday with the Sunday School squeezed into a short fifty min- utes before the service, with an average of about one hundred. These figures are relative to the United Church. I have no very definite information regarding the other churches but T do not think I would be amiss in saying that the situation with them is very similar. If one mentions those old Sun- days, most people exclaim “What in the world did the people do to put in the time on Sundays, no television, no radio, no ears, it “1 REMEMBER must have been terrible!” No, it wasn’t terrible. In fact, people were more contented and, in spite of the wonderful advances in medicine and surgery, were in better health generally. In those earlier days, people took the Bible admonition literally and rested on Sunday and they needed the rest for men worked ten hours a day and usually six days a week. There were no unions or minimum wage laws either. Men were usually paid according to their worth. It might be a good thing if there: was a law now along the samc lines. I often hear people hemeaning the tremendous increase in heart diseases, nervous and mental dis- orders and high blood pressure in the last decade. Is it any wonder? The hectic life most people live is enough to drive any one off the deep end. Tell people to rest and they look at you as if they thought you were a little dippy yourself. Rest! they exclaim, we haven’t time to rest. Sunday, right after Junch, which they gulp down in a hurry, away they go to the cot- tage or a picnic where they play games for which they are not physically fit, then when the old ticker begins to knock, they are terribly shocked, ‘“‘Why, there was never any heart trouble’ in my family.” IT started out to write about Sundays (then and now) and have wandered all over as usual. Never- theless, I often wonder where this hectic life is going to bring the human race. Will it be physical bankruptcy or will some miracle bring people back {o a saner, léss hectic and more healthful way of life.