THE CHURCHES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 200, 22 August 1904, Page 2

THE CHURCHES.

• CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE LECTURES. The Anglican Bishop of Auckland, Dr. Neiigan, gave his fourth lecture in connection with the above on "Personality and .tonemeut," at the Church of the Holy epulchxe, on Sunday. August 21st. There were some 400 present. The subject of ;ne address was "The Mediator," and in the course of his remarks the Bishop said that the idea of a mediator is not one foreign to ordinary experience; indeed, every day the contrition for siu, the penitence of a parent, or person who hne not done the wrong, is being accepted as the starting point for the restoration of the wrong-doer. A rescuer constantly looks for a mediator. For example, the wrong--doer becomes tne-pcnit«B*r-aPd~t-efofore a person in whom forgiveness finds forgivability (to coin a word) through the recognition that'his wrong-doing has-hurt love to such an extent that that love, innocent, 'jJuf'S, experiences x fhe deepest" sorrow oi contrition that is humanly possible. In of her words, the starting point is the innocent suffering of another. Here, the ' lecturer pointed out. he was not arguing ou the morality or Immorality of the law of vicarious suffering; he was slnjpiy pointing out what was a plain matter of fact in ordinary human experience. Love and suffering were Indissoluble. Love suffered because it was love; love suffered for those It loved, and love every mediator. Proceeding to consider our Lord as the mediator, the lecturer went on to say that It was here that the human analogies were found inadequate; it was not possible to accurately and adequately express the Divine in terms of tbe human. The trouble, he said, about earthly analogies arose from the separatcness of the personalities. The thought of three separate personalities was forced to the front, and that thought got transferred to* the Atonement of our Lord, nnd thus confusion arose; whereas the fact was that In the Christian doctrine of Atonement there was no thpnght of separate personalities at all. Christianity did not teach the Atonement In terms of arithmetic, nor did it teach, that there were three separate personalities—God the Father, <iod the Son, and myself the guilty sinner; thnt God the Father was less merciful than God % the Son, and that in order to "get mc off ' some dreadful penalty. Cod the Son suffered excruciating agony instead of mc. Whatever else such theory might be, he asserted it was not Christianity. St. Paul, he weut on to say. had often had to meet that very difficultypeople then, as now, often confused things fundamentally different: often failed to see where human analogies were adequate and where they ceased to be so. St. Paul's method of meeting such difficulties was very simple—he went back to phrases geni erally current among the Christians as to what Jesus Christ had told them about Himself—he himelf had tested those statements and fouud them to be true, both In fact and experience. He found men everywhere admitting, to use an anachronism, that Jesus Christ was inferior to the Father as touching His manhood, but the otho side of the fact he found men were nr clear about, namely, that He was equal t the Father as touching His Godhead. Emphasising our Lord's Divinity, he asserts, in no uncertain words., that Jesus Christ was man, whole, complete, entire, representative, but He was also Gqd, "of the substance of His Father, begotten before all worlds"—God expressed and conditioned by the limits of humanity; hence St. Paul was able to press home the principle that the I mediator was not a separate personality, apart from God on the one hand, or apart from man on the other. That was the message he had for the' educated Roman, the business man at Corinth, the people of Thessalonica, Colossae. Ephesns. and the young bishops, Timothy and Titus. The lecturer here maintained that, except on the basis ftiat the mediator was not two, but One Christ, the Pauliue sermons aud epistles were unintelligible, and that the apostle merited the reproach of his contemporaries, that he was a setter-forth of strange gods, a man in very trntb who by much learning was driven mad. The Hishop adduced many phrases from both the Johannine and Pauline documents to substantiate his statements, and concluded by repeating that the Atonement found its completion and reality in man when he, by act of conscious personal will, identified his personality with that personality of Jesus Christ, in whose perfect, perfect penitence God had ever seen the man, in whose realised ideal God saw tbe. as yet. unrealised in man —the possibility of what a man might be and wa6 meant to be.

CITIZEN SUNDAY^ In accordance with the nsnal custom on what is known as Citizen Sunday, the members of the Ministers' Association exchanged pnlpits yesterday morning. At St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church the Rev. W. Day preached; at St. James's Presby terian the Rev. W. Gray Dixon: at St. Peter's Presbyterian, the Rev. Mr Warburton; at St. David's Presbyterian Church the Rev. C. H. Garland CTVesleyan): at Knox Presbyterian Church,' Parnell. Rev. J. Wiltins; 'at St. John's Wesleyan, the Rev. Joseph Clark; at Graftor road Wesleyan, the. Rev. G. B. Monro; at Alexandra street Primitive Methodist, the Rev. C. Griflln; at Franklin road' Primitive Methodist ChnrcL, the Rev. T. F. Robertson; at Bden Terrace P.M. Church. Rev. A. North; at Mount Eden Congregational, Rev. H. B. Gray; and at Bereslord street Congregational, th* -Rev. 3. B. Russell. Special sermons- dealing with the duties of citizenship mm pee-chedr at foe »or_t__ oexvices.