DEFEATISM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 184, 5 August 1936, Page 18

DEFEATISM.

; DANGER STRESSED. / NEEDS OF PRESENT AGE. NEW BISHOP'S APPEAL That those who were Christians had need of all their courage, patience and staying power in the present difficult age was emphasised by the Bishop of Wellington, the Right Rev. H. St. Barbe Holland, in his first sermon in Wellington. at the evensong service at St. Paul's" Pro-Cathedral, on Sunday (savs the "Dominion"). The bis"hop took as his text Habakkuk i., 3: "For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it, bedause it will surely come, it will not tarry."

When their days were dark, the bishop said, many people who professed to be Christians were apt to become despondent and to say: "Let us toss the vision away: it cannot help us in this dusty, workaday world." There was a danger of them becoming defeatists and believing that they could do nothing more. What tliev had to do was to show loyalty, tenacity of purpose and courage —that was always God's message to those who wondered why the vision tarried. Waiting was always such a hard thing to do; the issue of the rum ration in the Cheat War had been for the purpose of tiding over the period of agonised waiting for the zero hour.

"God asks us to wait, whatever the agony," continued the Bishop, "but not to wait in idleness or dawdling about waiting for God or somebody else to help us to do something. Have you ever seen a wife or mother remain idle when tolvl by the doctor that nothing can be done for her loved one who is ill, but to wait? Does she wait in idleness? No. she does the hundred and one things which constitute proper nursing care and then perhaps turns to her household tasks. God's waiting means never giving in and always leaving the issue in His hands. All of us who have been given tlie vision of His will being done on earth as it is in heaven must apply that to our jobs as Christians. Only when His Church is on fire to achieve the vision caji we hope to make religion otherwise than a dull and futile thing."

Concluding his sermsn, the Bishop exhorted the congregation to take heart and, even though victory seemed nothing mere than defeat, to remember that by the force of their example they would sap the resources of evil in the world. Those who had seen the vision and who had definitely dedicated their lives to God must remain true to their faith and never lay down their arms till life was through.