N.Z. CONGREGATIONAL UNION.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 39, 15 February 1910, Page 6

N.Z. CONGREGATIONAL UNION.

The Council sat in committee from 3 P-m. until 6 pjn. yesterday afternoon, going ant© financial questions connected with the Union. LADY DEa-EGATES* OGNF_2-ENCE_ At 3 p.m. the lady delegates held a conference in Boresford Hall, at wihich. Airs. A. M. Lewis presided. Mrs. Carr, Of Raglan, and ill's. Butler, of Maungaturoto, and Airs. McKenzae, related experiences as ministers' "wives in the .bacldblc-cks. Later on afternoon tea was provided by some of tho ladies of the congregation. YOUNG PiEJOPLiE'S ____tfl_NG. At 7.30 in the evening, a young people's meeting was held in Beresf ord-street Church, which was very well attended. Mr. A. M. Lewis presided. The Rev. T. Perkins addressed the meeting on "The Christian as a Disciple." He claimed that Christian salvation was social salvation. Some people bad an idea that with ithe advancement of learning faith waa being undermined. He had been told since he came •to New Zealand that it was a great pity he had ever been to College. Evidently the idea was that what learning he had had shaken his faith, that dabbling in the sciences a_d philosophy was inimical to Christianity. That implied a mistaken conception of God; in fact, a narrow conception, that God was in one moment of time and not another. They narrowed God down to certain spheres, certain times. They seemed to forget that God was present at all times. Anxious people confused revelation with the Bible. The revelation was in the wxrrld long .before the Word was written. Every fact that conveyed 'knowledge to the human 'mind, carried with rt something of the revelation of God. Therefore, they need not fear to dabble in science or philosophy. They could not learn too much. The faith based on ignorance was no faith at all. It placed faith on the level of credulity, and then it ceased to be faith. The sphere of knowledge for the Christian was as wide as human thought. Christ was their supreme teacher of the highest thought of God, and God's thought of man the perfect expression of man's infinite possibilities. If a young man wanted to join the Congregational Church, he ■was asked a number of questions, including "Do you believe in the Trinity?" He asked did Christ in any one instance ask a young man if he believed in the Trinity, or if he believed in a specially peculiar divinity of the Savkmr? Christ just asked the young man if he desired to learn. Nowadsiys some young men felt they would be playing the hypocrites if they answered Yes! to some of these questions, so they remained outside the Church. That was because they did not understand, and no man could believe •what he did not understand. CHRISTIAN AS CHTJRCHMAN. Rev. G. Hervey spoke on "Tbe Christian as a Churchman." He said they might go to their homes and question concerning the divinity of Christ, but they must recognise -thai for Christ to have lived such a life on earth entering into the deepest depths, and yet come out unscathed. He was grandly human, supremely divine. It touched "rum-urity, 'but it also touched divinity. Mr. Hctvey mentioned that as the result of the mission of the Chinese to ascertain why the Western nations were so successful was the statement, "We ask knowledge of Jesus." A Japanese statesman speaking in London eight months ago said, "The 1900 years have entombed tho Christ. We don't want your volumes, we want to know what He was and what the principles wore that He taught." While the State should not control the Church, still the State should be eontro_ed by the people df the churches. Men and women bound together as O-rrstrans should make this land fair and beautiful by controlling politirs. Tiie future was for the young people, ami that was something for them to look forward to. He claimed -here was not the indifference to religion amongst the young, about 'which some talked so much. Ctt_RISTIAN AS MISSIONARY. Rev. D. Bright Asford spoke regarding •the Christian as Missionary. He explained that reaßy meant the Christian as a man with a mass-on. Their mission was to continue the work started by the Head oi their faith, to teach -hat the heart of the universe was love. The Church should be a society to save men from sorrow, suffering, and everything 1 that brongiht suffering into the world, to help to right human wrongs. The work before them was truly immense. Their so-___ed Christian lands needed Christian___g. In Merrie England, millions went year after year without a living wage, and some thousands starved to death each year. In this country the love of pleasure and fever of gambling ■were serious evils threatening the progress of the ->)__in-on. TO-DAY'S PRCICEEDINGS. A conference was held this moTning at the sitting of the Congregational Union of New Zealand upon some important questions. There was a good attendance of members. Mr A. M. Lewis presided. PRESENT-DAY CHIUSTIAN TT__CH_NG. The Her. W. A. Evans, of Wellington, delivered an address on "Emphatic Points in fteeeirt-day Christian Teaching." He said these points were determined for them, and not by them. Sociality was the ground of their personality. Life was a commonwealth of spiritual centres. No longer dare they demonstrate God as far removed from the world, dwelling in solitude. Belief in such a God had perished of inanition. iMeehanism had given way to a better conception of idealism. Religion hod now become reality. Religion was the product of activities of the world without and the world within. I-verything was not to be taken at its face value. Correction of first impression was sometimes essential. Experience must be explained in terms of vital activities. Instinct in animals was really the result of experience. Everything indicated the one purpose running through all the manifestation of a will that was self-conscious and selfdirected. It was instinct in animals, selfknowledge and self-control in men. In man, instinct was not so strong as in animals, as it had largely given way to intelligence. Mr Evans explained that he was not dealing with theories, but with life. The centre of experience was a living soul. It could only be defined in the terms of life's processes. There was nothing in the highest products that was not involved in the ground from' which it was produced. To explain the lowest, they must interpret it from its highest product. Just as seeing the oak, they could take the acorn, and explain it; but having only seen the acorn, they could not "think out an oak. Life was real in all its parts, and thus became tbe reproduction in a clarified form of the all-pervading-Will. Mian waa a being in which the finite and the infinite, the visible and the invisible, the natural and the- -spiritual,: contended for

mastery. Man was half-brute and halfGod, fighting his way upwards. He had to change the semblance of the brute to the semblance of the Deity. He was in the grip of a Higher than himself, and from that he found strength, which made him more than conqueror. The relationship between God and man was not so much a matter of demonstration as a matter of intuition.