ST. ANDREW’S CHURCH

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21733, 16 March 1936, Page 18

ST. ANDREW’S CHURCH

EIGHTIETH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATED VISITING MINISTER’S SERMON Special services in celebration of the eightieth anniversary of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church were held yesterday. Large congregations filled the •church for the morning and evening services, at both of which the Rev. J. R, Blanchard, of St. John’s, Wellington, was the preacher. The choir gave special music, with Miss Nancy Lill as soloist and Mr R. E. Lake at the organ. „ . _ , . Forces combating the will of God in the world were discussed by Mr Blanchard in his sermon at the evening service. “We live in a world where other powers than that of God are in action,” he said. “Here His rule is challenged and there it is openly defied. The fact that we have to pray ‘Thy Kingdom come; .Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,’ implies that other rules will have to be displaced ere God’s rule will have come in its fulness; and other wills must be changed ere His will can have free course and be glorified. . “To put it bluntly, we live m a world where God is not having it all His own way; where, in fact, evil has, its say and sometimes gets its way. It is a world of conflict. Faced with this fact, where are we to put the emphasis in our thinking and in the conclusions we draw? We may say that at the heart of life something reigns that is callous and evil, and that goodness is just like a fleck of foam on the* surface of a cruel sea. Or we may say that at the heart of life, something reigns that is good, and evil is an intruder into a world that God is seeking to make beautiful. Both, of these views cannot be right. We have to make up our minds which of them is the key to life and act accordingly. It is obvious that our conduct will be determined by the choice we make. “The simplest and truest way of dealing with this problem is to take it to the place where Jesus was crucified. There this conflict between good and evil is staged in the sharpest possible way, and the issue defined in the clearest possible manner. There we have men giving vent to the most wolfish of instincts. But we also have Jesus, enduring and forgiving it all, rather than forsake the way of God’s goodness. “When we look further into this scene on Calvary we see this' contrast. On the one hand, there is a crowd of people so mastered by evil that when goodness in its perfection comes to them they are swept off their feet by passions which make them do a deed of superlative wickedness. On the other hand, there: is a solitary person who has so mastered evil that never once does He answer their evil with anything but what is good. “If the crucifiers hold the key. to life, then let us take it. Let us go out among our fellows preaching injustice and wrong, druelty and pain, as the final facts of life. And wherever we find anything that is good and true, let us nail it to a cross. But if the Crucified, the Lamb of God, holds the key to life, then let us take it. Let us go out among our fellows in the faith that the essential truth and the final word about life is with God. And wherever We find anything that is good and true, let us stand by it, even though our stand may have to be a cross.” ■