“But let us consider what is meant by the Sunday of our modern life as Christ would view it.  There is no disputing the fact that the age is material, mercantile, money-making.  For six eager, rushing days it is absorbed in the pursuit of money or fame or pleasure.  Then God strikes the note of his silence in among the clashing sounds of earth’s Babel and calls mankind to make a day unlike the other days.  It is his merciful thoughtfulness for the race which has created this special day for men.  Is it too much to ask that on this one day men think of something else besides politics, stocks, business, amusement?  Is God grudging the man the pleasure of life when here He gives the man six days for labor and then asks for only one day specially set apart for him?  The objection to very many things commonly mentioned by the pulpit as harmful to Sunday is not an objection necessarily based on the harmfulness of the things themselves, but upon the fact that these things are repetitions of the working day, and so are distracting to the observance of the Sunday as a day of rest and worship, undisturbed by the things that have already for six days crowded the thought of men.  Let me illustrate.

“Take for example the case of the Sunday paper, as it pours into Milton every Sunday morning on the special newspaper train.  Now, there may not be anything in the contents of the Sunday papers that is any worse than can be found in any weekday edition.  Granted, for the sake of the illustration, that the matter found in the Sunday paper is just like that in the Saturday issue—­politics, locals, fashion, personals, dramatic and sporting news, literary articles by well-known writers, a serial story, police record, crime, accident, fatality, etc., anywhere from twenty to forty pages—­an amount of reading matter that will take the average man a whole forenoon to read.  I say, granted all this vast quantity of material is harmless in itself to moral life, yet here is the reason why it seems to me Christ would, as I am doing now, advise this church and the people of Milton to avoid reading the Sunday paper, because it forces upon the thought of the community the very same things which have been crowding in upon it all the week, and in doing this necessarily distracts the man, and makes the elevation of his spiritual nature exceedingly doubtful or difficult.  I defy any preacher in this town to make much impression on the average man who has come to church saturated through and through with forty pages of Sunday newspaper; that is, supposing the man who has read that much is in a frame of mind to go to church.  But that is not the point.  It is not a question of press versus pulpit.  The press and the pulpit are units of our modern life which ought to work hand in hand.  And the mere matter of church attendance might not count, if it was a question with the average man whether he would go to church and hear a dull sermon or stay at home and read an interesting newspaper.  That