CURRENT NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 76, 29 March 1924, Page 18

CURRENT NOTES.

Dr. J. D. Jones is at present conducting a campaign in England to raise £500,000 for the Congregational Forward Movement Fund.

The mother of ths Bishop of London, Mrs. Winington Ingram, died recently at the great age of Uβ years. She was a daughter of the late Dr. Henry Tejiys, Bishop of Worcester, and niefie of the first Earl of Cottenham.

"What wo need to-day is a joyful church I" said D. L. Moody. "It is this carrying a sad countenance with so many wrinkles on our brows, that retards Christianity. When we have joy, we will have success."

Dr. Ozora Davis, of Chicago Theological Seminary, addressing a gathering of Congregational ministers, said: "lou must preach better sermons." He said that ministers too commonly chose topics for sermons by accident than by deliberation.

Professor James Stalker, D.D., in forwarding his resignation to the College Committee of the United Free Church of Scotland, stated he had been in the ministry 52 years and 22 in a professorship. Having reached the age of 75 years, he thought it time he should retire. He was appointed to the Chair of Church History in 11*02.

The thoroughness of the Salvation Army in all it undertakes may be judged by the fact that under the boys' migration schemo it is proposed to send 10,000 youths, between the ages of fourteen and eighteen years, to the various British colonies. One hundred and twenty of these lads are being trained at the Salvation Army Land and Industrial Colony, at Hadleigh, England. Already three parties of lads have been sent to Australia.

Towards the end of last year thirtyseven Maoris at Whangapa, Hokianga, were admitted to the Catholic Church after due preparation. Referring to this "The Month" points out that it ig absolutely neceseary that these converts ehould have a church, therefore the different tribes of Catholic Maoris in the North have undertaken to collect money for that purpose. By February they had raised £100, but Europeans interested in the work, if they desire, may send donations to the Rev Father Zangerie, Whangapo, Northland.

Mr. W. J. Bryan, at a conferlnce of Baptist Fundamentalists held in New York recently, said: "If we hay a come to the stage at which we must decide between geology and Christianity, I think it is better that wo know the Rock of Ages than the age of the rocks. When I first opposed evolution I was told by a minister that a thinking man could not agree with mc. I answered the minister and said that only tw» per cent of the population were college graduates, and that there were 98 per cent who still had souls."

"When right means privilege, many are ready to answer their right, but when right means responsibility the same people are just as ready to ignore or deny that right," said the Rev. A. Price Hughes, when preaching at Brunswick Methodist Church, Sheffield. He pointed out that it is impossible to advance the interests of one country by destroying the prosperity of another. To injure one, injured all. Even the commercial interests of the world, he said, depended finally upon the recognition of the kinship of humanity. Where brotherhood was denied, trade would languish and war flourish.

Dr. Orchard, preaching at Kings Weigh House Church on " The Rediscovery of Catholicism," said the Roman Church stood to-day in a position of power and respect greater than any it had occupied since the Reformation. It still displayed a capacity for making Eaintehip, and the most amazing self sacrifice. It continually overcame the resistance of the most unexpected persons, and although often greatly hated, and even feared, by sincere Christians, it equally often greatly impressed agnostics and world-being, who said if they joined any church, it would be tho Roman, which, he added, was perhaps the reason they did not join any.

A paragraph in "Zion's Herald" headed, "Let Those Men Go." reads as follows: "The great need to-day is for all the- free speech that is consistent with loyalty to our institutions. Yet in the realms of theology, where liberty in Christ ought most to prevail, there ie often in force a repressive policy, which keeps the best of apostles in the dungeon of disfavour, or ostracises them from scenes of greatest possible usefulness. The churches will do better preaching positive truth than chasing supposed heretics into corners, or stirring up needless controversy over nonessentials. It is the radicals—extremists of the ultra type on either side — who make the real trouble."

"Have yon ever thought of the parable of the wireless?" asked the Rev. Thomas Anderson, M.A., when preaching at Carden Place, United Free Church, Aberdeen; has it ever struck you that there are many real resemblances between the experience of listening-in, and the experience of tbe man who pets in touch with God? Later in his discourse, the speaker suggested that when men failed to catch God's messages, it might be because they had not been listening. If they were not hearing they should Bee what was preventing them. His sermon ended with the words: "God's great thoughts towards us should move us to have preater nr.i kinder thoughts to one another.' .