ORDINATION SERVICE.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13610, 20 December 1909, Page 8

ORDINATION SERVICE.

—. ■ ♦ SERMON BY ARCHDEACON AVERILL.

The Rev. E. K. Mules, missionary at Otira, and the Rev. F. B. Redgrave, (deacons), were ordained priests of the Anglican Church by his Lordship Bishop Julius- at the Cathedral yesterday morning. Archdeacon Averill, who preached the sermon, took for his text Enhesians, chapter, i., verses 22 and 23. He said that the Church was the living Christ, actine, speaking, working, guiding, inspiring, absorbing, and blessing. Christ could not be separated from Hie Church, nor the Church from the present-living working Christ, any more than the body could be separated from the head. Every priestly act of the Church was the work of Christ. Men perhaps did not realise that the clergy were but the official mouthpieces and representatives of the whole priestly body, and if Christ was not living in them, and they were not reflecting Him, the Church was being weakened and Christ obscured. Men were anxious to see Christ, and were quite right: but they were quite wrong in supposing that they must see Him apart from His body. "Why was it men sometimes looked at the Church and did not find Christ? The answer which suggested itself to the speaker was that the Church was so anxious to be doing that she eometimes forgot the higher duty of being. The Church appeared too often in the eyes of men as a great worldly organisation struggling to support herself with very worldly means and sinking down to the use of methods which her Master and Head could never sanction. Instead of the Church being the real witness of Christ, the real teacher of truth, the real exponent of love and self-sacrifice, she was, alas, too often more in touch with the world—too often at_ the feet of the world thon struggling to bring thf world to the feet i of Christ. Men looked for Christ and j they saw in the clergy too often men of the world instead of men of God. It was as well to be honest with themsolvcs, although- it was not always pleasant, but the Church would never have real spiritual power until all her members realised that they must reflect the Christ in them. The Church would never be a real power until she did her Master's work in her Master's way.