METHODIST LEADER’S MESSAGE

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28159, 24 December 1956, Page 12

METHODIST LEADER’S MESSAGE

(New Zeaiana Press Association) DUNEDIN, December 23.

“Let the world remind itself that Christmas is a religious festival, holy in its origin and sacred in its significance. The message of Christmas, commemorating as it does the invasion of God into human affairs through Christ is pre-eminently spiritual, and therein lies its supremest value for ourselves and mankind,” says the Rev. Raymond Dudley, president of the New Zealand Methodist Conference, in his Christmas message.

Christmas today is more than tinsel and show. It is Christ calling a lost world to the things that belong to ‘its peace. In this holy appeal of Christmas lies our surest happiness and hope. “The world today is riven with strife and dissension. The darkness of international ill-will and misunderstanding spreads over land and sea. To such unhappy straits has human wisdom brought us. “But, as it was at that first Christmas, it is so today. God’s answer to a sad and disillusioned world is a star flaming in the skies, angels singing to shepherds in the fields, and a Holy Babe in a manger-cradle teaching us humility, love and truth such as the world has never seen and scarcely dared to practise. “As nations and as individuals in a tempestuous world, Christmas calls us to spiritual responsiveness. Always the heart of the eternal yearns to bring answering deliverance through our agonising prayers. Unfailingly, He offers anew the Christian hope of unquenchable light if our hearts fail not.”