SEEKING A HIGHER PLANE

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21087, 12 February 1934, Page 10

SEEKING A HIGHER PLANE

» —- DANGER OF COMPLACENCY KKV> A. K. WARREN'S SERMON j AT ST. MARY'S That good fortune in material things often led to mental self-com-placency and the forsaking of Chris: tian ideals, was emphasised by the Rev. A. K. Warren, the new vicar of Merivale, when preaching his first sermon at St. Mary's Church yesterday morning. The new vicar made a frank appeal to his parishioners to embrace their church more boldly and fully, and to realise that only by seeking God could full joy be found. Mr Warren received a warm welcome at St. Mary's. Such a large congregation attended the service that additional seating had to be secured by the church officers. Similarly, there were large attendances at other services during the day and at the evening service. The Spider's Fall The sermon preached was based on the fable of a spider, which, living high up in the rafters of a building, spun a single thread of web clown to a lower level, and there set up house. The spider became sleek and fat with good living, but when the desire came to him to climb again up the thread to a higher rafter, he found that as soon as he touched the thread it broke and the whole web tumbled down about ! him. j The fable was a parable of the life jof man. said Mr Warren. There was a thread binding man to the un- . seen above. All men and women desired to have some connexion with God. But how many fell down to a lower level? How many became so surrounded with material j interests that they forgot the heights above, and discovering the thread, ' asked its purpose, and sometimes forgot that purpose? ' Interference with Pleasure , "How many of you here are attending this church after a long absence? If there are any, then 1 welcome them. As a new vicar I can say these things, because I do not know you. I wonder, too, how many of you have let yourselves slip down to a lower level and allowed God to get far away from you, so that now you lookup and ask what the thread "is for. I wonder, too, how many there are of us, ready to be quite honest and admit that we have let God become crowded out of our lives. "How many of us are there who find God and church a bother, and an interference with other pleasures, so that we let the attractions of material things—the golf links or the garden, for instance —crowd God out. It is quite reasonable to say j that exercise and fresh air is essen- j tial, but I feel that many Christian men and women allow their lives to become webbed round by circum- | .stances, and forget God." ! A Modern Conception j To emphasise his point that it was j necessary to seek God, rather than expect God to be brought to one. Mr Warren quoted one of George Bernard Shaw's books, The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God, as indicating a modern conception of the church, as one of many conflicting ideals. The book seemed to show that a black girl, having been taught all about God by a missionary, after what Shaw suggested was the stereotyped fashion, was then sent out into the jungle, with her Bible, to learn more. The girl was made to meet persons who, advising her, gave her the impression of the church that was so current to-day. Was it any wonder that the girl failed to find God, the preacher asked. The point of the book was that the Bible had become a worn out guide. The picture it represented was believed by many outside the church to-day, but it was not a true picture. Shaw's book had been replied to effectively in another, A White Girl in Search of God, in which the girl, it seemed was armed with a niblick instead of a Bible. Many of Shaw's arguments were confuted. Failures in Middle Age "But the fact is that we cannot get on without God, and we cannot find God until we go out and seek him," said Mr Warren. There was not a single one of the most saintly of men who had learned everything about God. He knew that many men questioned the necessity for a religion, when they found themselves favourably placed in thenmaterial circumstances, and wondered whether they could not get on just as well without the church. But the answer to that was in the words of a Scottish speaker of distinction, who said that one of the most noticeable things in his observation was the vast number of men and women, otherwise fortunate in life, who had got to a point where existence was hollow and there was no real background for them. The lives of so many people failed 30 or 40 years before their time, becc'use they had broken the threads which bound them to a life above, and had fallen to a lower level of spiritual existence, the speaker concluded.