SERMON BY BISHOP JULIUS.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13871, 24 October 1910, Page 8

SERMON BY BISHOP JULIUS.

In the course of a forceful sermon at Marshlnnd yesterday, Hishop Ju.ius fixike upon the responsibilities ot tue Church and of Churchmen. His hear.. ], c said had gone out very «.il!y last Frday evening when he went out into the streets <>t Christehutch wit,: a couple of hundred men and a lew women, walking through iro .jinet streets singing hymns. There was nothir." in it, but it ju=t meant th:u tho Church had wakened up, art! liari set out to search for tho™ whom it had lost Tho Church was sweeping up its house. Some church people saiJ : '•I don't like tho mission, it is such a di-turbance, such an upsft: 1 like tho near old service and the quiet old ways I have been accustomed to. , le«, they did and slept half their life out, and let all the souls around them go to t.ie bad and that was the way things got Iwastly dirty, ncceesitating a .sweeping up and routing out. There had been peoplo in our Lord's days who did not liko Him preaching m the streets and doing other things to which they ■wero unaccustomed; but Christ had come to find that which was lost, and could not find it otherwise. At the bottom of tho trouble with tho Church in New Zealand was the fact that they had been acquiescing in a condition of things that ought not to obtain. They had eaid, "Well, you know, a good fifty per cent, of all those confirmed, drift away; of tho children who attend the Sunday Schools, a certain number drift away;" and tho masses of the people never go inside a church." But they had to learn that they had no right to bo content with such a state, of affairs. Their brothers had come from England to help in the search. They, in Sew Zealand, knew that they woo at fault and that it was no good blaming tho poor, unhappy Devil about it— they, themselves, the bishops, the parsons and the people liad done it. Would tho people of Marshland help in tho search? There, was no mission in Marshland, but did they not think that they might help by praying for thoso in Christchurch, because if Christen urch became strong and vigorous that strength and vigour would soon be felt in Marshland.