VOICE OF THE CHURCHES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 63, 8 December 1930, Page 15

VOICE OF THE CHURCHES

SERMONS FROM WELLINGTON PULPITS

HOME RELIGION Regrettable Decay “Home Religion” was the subject of a sermon preached by the Rev. John Hubbard, M.A., 8.D., in the Kelburn Presbyterian Church on Sunday morning. His text was Luke, cb. xviii., verses lo to 17. , , When an infant was placed once in John Kcble’s arms, he said, I delight to look on a human being who bus nev ’ e - r wilfully offended God.’’ It was doubtless with a similar emotion welling up in Christ’s heart, remarked the preacher, that He took up little children, reverently laid his hands upon them, and blessed them. . , “Our Lord regarded children mainly in two ways,” lie continued. “He often looked upon them as teachers. I., 6 / teach us that unless we have the childlike heart of trust and of receptiveness we shall not receive the Kingdom ot Goa. Just as a child depends absolutely upon its parents, regarding them in the light of fulfilling all its needs, so we must depend with absolute trust upon the Great Heavenly Father who supplies all our Deeds. x “The beginning of the matter of following Jesus Christ is very easy. A great many people are harassed by creeds and ceremonials—they are wanting reasons and revelations, and stand aloof irom 'God and the church because they want absolute proof and certainty. Let me say that only comes when we, like tne child, commit ourselves unreservedly to the Master. It is only he that doeth the will that shall know of the doctrine. Our Lord regarded the child as teacher and example. If we had the child-like heart of trust we would experience the wondrful gift of God. “But Christ lookd upon children as scholars, pilgrims, undeveloped possibilities. It was all too possible to offend one of these little ones which believe in me.’ Our Lord regarded children as Walt Whitman when the latter said: “And there I see—these sparkling eyes. Those stores of mystic meaning. These young Ilves. . . Building and equipping like a fleet or ships, immortal ships. Soon to- sail out over the measureless seas On the soul’s voyage. Only a lot of boys and girls. Ah! pure, infinitely more!” Bulwark ot Society. “Jesus Christ regarded the Christian home founded on Christian marriage, as the great bulwark of society. Its highest and holiest privilege was to be a porch to the church —yea, an introduction to the Saviour. It is very regrettable that in these days there is a decay of home religion, which is making itself felt in the looseness of society and is apparent in the moral drift so obvious .in this Dominion. Parents are shirking that high responsibility of training their children in these things most necessary for the bidding up of a strong character and a virile nation. A recent visitor to this city deplored the breaking up of home life under the pressure of industrialism and the modern passiou for entertainment and prophesied moral deterioration and national decay if the ideal of the home as a place where right judgments are formed, difficulties faced in a friendly spirit, and religion seriously taught, was not restored. In the country we arc differing about . religious teaching in the schools and imparting none in the home where it is much more important. Parents’ Duty.

“It. is the holy privilege and untransferable duty of parents to teach their own children about God and His love to us in Jesus Christ and about loving and obeying the Lord Jesus. We arc poor parents and poor citizens and patriots if we fail to realise that duty of parentage. Children to-day . are suffering irreparable loss and the nation is suffering irreparable loss' because Christian parents are taking no pains to talk to their own children about matters of the most vital concern to their children’s lives and to the national character. It is the bounden duty of parents to teach their children to pray, and to pray with them; to teach their children to read and love the Bible, and, above all, in every Christian household there ought to be family worship. “Burns, in a touching poem, has given us a picture of a Scottish home where the family gather round as the father reads the sacred book and leads the household in prayer, and he says, in the course of that exalted poem: “From scenes like these old Scotia’s grandeur springs. That makes her loved at homo revered abroad.”

“Yes, from scenes like these we derive that something which purifies and brightens our hours of happiness, soothes our moments of care and sorrow, lifts us from the depth of sadness and despair, and weaves into our nature that which enables us to rise superior to the troubles of the present and face with equanimity the worst of the future has to bring. The accent in my humble judgment that most of all needs to be pronounced to-day throughout this whole country from border to border ,is an accent on the religion

of our homes. As goes the home so shall go everything in the social order. Hie citadel, both for church and for State, is 'the home? If we shall have the right kind of homes then shall everything in the social order be conserved and saved, but if our homes become superficial and neglected of the highest, the nation is doomed.”

CAUSE AND CREATOR Christian Science Services “God the only Cause and Creator,” was the subject of the lesson-sermon in First and Second Churches of Christ, Scientist, Wellington, yesterday. The Golden Text was from Acts xv, 18, “Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world.” Among the citations which comprised the lesson-sermon were the following from the Bible: “O Lord, how manifold are Thy works; in wisdom hast Thou made them all; the earth is full of Thy riches. Thou sendest forth Thy spirit, they are created: and Thou renewest the face of the earth.”—Psalms civ, 21-30. The lesson-sermon also included the following passages from the Christian Science Textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” by Mary Baker Eddy: “In the material world, thought has brought to light with great rapidity many useful wonders.. With like activity have thought’s swift pinions been rising towards the realm of the real, to the spiritual cause of those lower things which give impulse to inquiry. Belief in a material basis, from which may be deduced all rationality, is slowly yielding to the idea of a metaphysical basis, looking away from matter to mind as the cause of every effect.” page 268.