“DIVIDED FRONT” OF CHURCHES

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23482, 10 November 1941, Page 4

“DIVIDED FRONT” OF CHURCHES

ARCHBISHOP’S PLEA FOR UNITY

URGENT NEED SEEN IN WORLD TO DAY

The churches were facing with a divided front the world’s great need for some unifying force, some common medium of faith and morals, some power acknowledged as claiming a loyalty above that due to race or nation, said Archbishop West-Watson, preaching at evensong in the Cathedral last evening. It was the concluding service of the diamond jubilee celebrations of the Cathedral. “To-day all over the world rise our churches and cathedrals,” said the Archbishop. “They are splendid witnesses to faith and sacrifice, and in this time when doom and disaster lower heavily over the world many eyes are turning to them, as men s eyes turned towards the Jewish' faith and temole amid the wars and rumours of wars of our Lord's day. But to millions of others they seem just irrelevant to life and its problems. “The Christians who do not take these things to heart are like the people of whom our Lord spoke, who could discern the face of the sky< but could not discern the signs of the times. To many of the leaders of the Church they are causing grave disquietude, “It is not so much that people find fault with our forms of service, our financial systems, or our ecclesiastical systems. No system can lake form in human shape without sharing in the faults which mar every human being . . . The real danger is lest the churches should have become so set, so based on their past history, so immersed in the problem of their own survival, that they cannot meet the desperate need of the world as it is to-day. “For many years now, thank God, church leaders, and not least leaders in , our own Communion, have been seeking a way of reunion, a way of reconciling divisions which we had no hand in making,” said the Archbishop. “We do not want to share in the guilt of perpetuating them if they can be healed.” Steps Towards Reunion A deep desire for closer fellowship was first necessary, and the abandoning of that subtle pride which saw merit in separation. In recent years world conferences had shown an increasing desire for fellowship. “There have been actual extensions of fellowship,” he said, “and we welcome the plans being made for union between the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational churches in this country. But the problem is whether we shall have time before the forces of AntiChrist and materialism shatter both us and our system. The problem is whether we can join hands suffciently to save the world from a new Dark Ages, whether anything will break up our complficency.” It was a matter for thankfulness that a National Council of Churches had been formed in New Zealand, and that most of the churches were planning a national campaign for 1942. Their purpose was to try to bring home to the nation and people “the only new order which can meet our difficulties, an order according to the mind of Christ, and the only faith on which we can safely build our lives, faith in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. “So to-day as we look back over 60 years and forward into the darkening sky of the future, as we see the old certainties challenged, we ask of God that we may be helped ever more clearly to know in this day of our visitation the things which belong to our peace, to the peace of a divided Church, and the peace of a world at war with itself spiritually as well as materially, “Is it too much to hope that when our centenary comes we may have found by God's help such a way to reunion that we may kneel side by side with our fellow-Christians here at God’s board? Is it too much to h°P e that churches which have learnt to lose their lives in order to save them may have led the distracted nations back to their true brotherhood in the one family of God in Christ? May God inspire those who shall carry on his work with grace and wisdom to achieve what we older ones have failed to achieve, and to make His Church in all reality one house of prayer for all nations.”