CANON HOLLAND AT ST. PAUL'S.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1079, 18 March 1911, Page 9

CANON HOLLAND AT ST. PAUL'S.

A-FAREWELL MESSAGE. ... There •was-aiHmiuonse crowd at St. Paul's (Cathedral, London,' 011 Sunday afternoon, January 29, when Canon Seott Holland preached a farewell sermon from Romans xiii, "Let every 50111 be subjcct to the higher powers . . . . the powers that he are ordained of God." The Canon said there was proof enough that St. Paul's lofty conception of the divine character of human law never led him to the fallacy of nonresistance. Resist 110 did, with all his luight, whenever his'conscience demanded it of-him. Ho knew honds and imprisonment awaited him wherever he went. But none of his collisions' with blundering, and unjust authorities induced him to lower his ideals or blurred his vision. Ho had a high and splendid faith in the sanctity of human law and the eternal values of human government. Yet while Paul uplifted the ideal which the Roman Empire for him expressed, another Christian verdict was given in a different tone. John looked at it, and longed for its doom, waiting for the day when the angel would cry, "Babylon is fallen." These two verdicts we had to reiterate to-day. States had authority over ur, because and in so far as they ministered to divine righteousness. If they offended against righteousness, they falsified. their own claim. '

"That, beloved," .said tho. Canon, in closing, "is tlie social gospel, that we have tried to deliver licre year after year under this dome. Thank God, it will now bo delivered by a new voice, more fresh than mine. ' Looking; back over-twenty-seven years, I can see too clearly with how much more freedom that Gospel-would liavo appealed, and how much further it would have carried, if 1 had trusted less to my own effort and more to the divino power to let it win its own way ; if I had let God do. the work, instead of trying to enforce my own convictions. I can but throw myself now upon the ' infinite compassihn of God to' pardon all the opportunities I liave missed, and thank Him with joy for- any argument of His'own truth as may have passed from my lips, and for any hungry heart it may liavo filled."