THE CHURCHES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXIII, Issue 8741, 15 December 1913, Page 2

THE CHURCHES.

BAR!NG SQUARE. V '.i ■ '■■.-■ There- was a large congregation at Baring Square yesterday morning, the .service being officially attended by Mr H. Davis (Mayor), and Councillors F. Z. D. Ferriman, G. H. Buchanan, J. T. M. Priest, P. L. Orr, and G. D. H. Hefford, and Mr A- McClure (Town Clerk.) Th© pulpit was occupied by the Rev. W. J. Elliott, who, after the reading of the lesson, delivered a short, but interesting address to the boys, and girls of the congregation, taking for his text: "The Lord is Good."

Mr Elliott delivered a powerful sermon, the title being. "The.Magna Charta of Christian Liberty," from Corinthians 1, v. 21, 22 and 23: "Therefore, let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; whether Paul or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or- things present, or things to .come; all are yours,; and ye are Christ's and Christ is God's."

Before proceeding with his discourse, the preacher extended a hearty welcome to His Worship the. Mayor and Councillors, and congratulated them on the conclusion they had come to in having decided to attend Divine service officially, at least once a year. Their action was not only a tribute to^. religion, but a tribute to the Christian Church. The preacher then spoke on broad lines. He laid stress upon the statement that all sin was the result of the abuse of something noble. The city of Corinth, had been one of the most cities in the world—a place j where purity had been prostituted and put to the most debased uses, yet mentally and commercially that city had occupied a high place. In addressing the Church, Paul had said: "Nevertheless, all things are yours." Ambition might be made to love and to bless, or to degrade and destroy. The sign of the'-Cross had even been used to wm ambition's most unhallowed desires. Ha referred in concrete terms to Napoleon, who had so far trespassed on Divine rights that he had been sent to St. Helena through his ambition. There were not, continued' the preacher, two sets of 'faculties—the one secular and the other sacred—all were sacred. Tliose who divided Nature into two parts, the (one sacred and the other secular, had j a poor idea of what piety was. Con[tinuing, the preacher said that conscience had also been degraded ' and abused; its abuse had piled faggots round Christians, lighted martyr fires, and tortured bodies on the wrack. So, sin was built-up on the most-noble objects. He referred to quarrels that arose among congregations, and said that though ministers might be good friends and,.even lawyers good friends, their adherents might be the bitterest enemies. The people of Corinth were in a quandary, and quarrelling about a part when they might have possessed the whole, so Paul Had remonstrated with them and told them: "Nevertheless; all things are yours." The same applied to the people of the present day; they were content to take a part when they might have the whole. The Kingdom of God was to-day divided into a multiplicity of sects and partiessects in the religious wor|d and parties in the political world—but all spiritual teachers were theirs. The Roman Catholic spiritual teacher was theirs, the Protestant theirs, the Calvanist theirs, and so- ■ On\;:'and whenever they found , truth' thap would help make. £hem better men and better women, they should take it, no matter .whether they gained it from Plato, Mahommet, ./Wesley, .Newman, or anyone else. If they found lit in the teachings of Thomas A' Kempis's work of the R.C. Church (a copy of which he, the preacher, always kept in-his study), they should take it;,whether they gained it from Socrates, Ingersoll, Blatchford, Tom Payne, or.any others; they should take it; Every man wro spoke a truth, which the world ought to hear, was theirs. The strong man was the man who owed most to his fellows, as Was borne witness to by Tennyson's, Shakespeare's, Browning's and other great men's passionate love of literature. Do not/Jet any man, said the minister, swagger his independence and say that he owed no man anything., If. they did that, it only proved that they knew nothing. All that was good in the world torday was, theirs—the ■ Christians' estate was world-wide and the whole heritage oj the ages belonged to them. Empires had shadowed their glory, navigators had explored, and intrepid men had gone to the North Pole and to the South Pole all for their benefit. He defied any man to name the place of starting of the Christian creed, for it was as wide as the universe and as broad as etei'nity. To-day, the Methodist Church had 5,000,000 more adherents than the Church of England. He included among the other churches the Unitarian Church, because the earth was the Lord's and all the .good 'thereof. Christ would have sat ' down with ' the members of that Church, and so would he. All things were theirs, whether the creation of Romanists or Protestants, Anglicans or Dissenters,, Calyinists or Armenians. Those were things that should lift people out of narrow beliefs. Some people were afraid of becoming Christians for fear their liberties , would bo curtailed and that they would not be able to enjoy a reasonable amount of the pleasures of I this world. The preacher stated that the only way to be a free man, with full liberty, was to,besome a Christian; and gave! grounds for his contention. Paul had had no sympathy with' the morbid, depressed, unhealthy ways of life; he had not looked upon ; the world as though it were the devil's woi'ld, but God's world. All the world was theirs, the only condition being that they owned Christ. That was the optimism of the Bible. "Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life," meant a fuller life hereafter. I The man .who went through life for business and pleasure only did not live, but merely existed. It was not imperative that man - should succeed in the world, but it was imperative that] man should live as a man. Existing was not living; a tree existed in the winter season, but in the summer time, when it was clothed with, verdure and had singing birds on every bough, the tree lived. It was not the position they occupied that counted; whether they occupied ,the honourable positions of mayor or councillors, Sunday school teachers or day teachers, or whether they walked in-a more humble sphere, it was not the form of work, but the spirit of the life they lived, that counted. One of Sankey's hymns said: "Oh, to bo nothing, nothing." He (the preacher) was not prepared to sing j that hymn. He believed in doing as much good, with Christ's help, a's he could. Another hymn said: "Oh. to bo over ,yonder, in that land of splendour." That was not religion; it was their duty to do all they could here to j help others. Mr Elliott concluded, by i

quoting a favourite extract from' Bailey's Festus:^ — * ." We live in deeds, not years; thoughts, not breaths; ,' :' In feelings, not in figures on a dial; We should co,unt time by heart-throbs. He lives most who thinks most, feels, the noblest, acts the best." The singing of an anthem by the choir was much appreciated.