ST. JOHN’S CHURCH

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 31, 31 October 1932, Page 10

ST. JOHN’S CHURCH

Seventy-ninth Anniversary Celebrated “CHRISTIANITY 0R...” The seventy-ninth anniversary of St. John’s Church was observed yesterday, when the Rev. J. R. Blanchard conducted special services which were attended by large congregations. Speaking at the evening service, Mr. Blanchard said:—“What the world needs to-day more than anything else is what Christianity alone can give. People are obsessed with a sense of life’s incompleteness. The worship of material ideals has failed to produce an adequate security. The pursuit of pleasure has not given an abiding satisfaction. The moral revolt, which has swept over the world as a flood, has led only to a muddled mess. As a result people are confused and are beginning to feel scared as to what may happen next. “The popular dismissal of religion as an outworn thing, which the world can very well do without, has shown, that it simply won’t workj and many who once regarded it as an emancipation are now seeing that it has been a betrayal. Human relationships are everywhere in a tangle. The sharp alternative before the world is Christianity or chaos. “The fact which needs to be driven home is that this is an intensely personal matter. Many people are quite prepared to see the world made Christian, but they are not so willing to be made Christians themselves. What is largely forgotten is that you cannot have a Christian world without Christian people. A gold chain cannot be made out of lead. A cup of tea cannot be brewed out of sand. A suit which any respectable person would wear cannot be made out of cobwebs. Neither can a Christian society be made out of people who are not themselves Christian. “People by the score have spoken glibly of discovering ‘the principles of Jesus?’ and applying them to social conditions. But only those who have settled personally with Christ’s challenge to them as individuals are really equipped with the capacity for knowing what His principles are and with the endurance to stick at the stern business of applying those principles to the human order. Humanity cannot have His principles without Him; and He cannot get into the human order with His principles save through personalities devoted to Him. “A Christian society cannot be fashioned by Christians working alone as discreet atoms,” said Mr. Blanchard. “They themselves need to be fashioned into a society, or, in other words, a Church. All of which means that you cannot have a Christian society without a Christian Church. In a time of national crisis who says ‘I can be just as good a soldier without joining the army'? Who, then, will say, 1 ean be just as good a Christian "without joining some body of Christians—some Church?’ Yet there are many people who take up that absurd position to-day. In General Sherman’s diary there is this significant entry: ‘I have been three years fighting stragglers and they are harder to conquer than the enemy.’ A similar thing could be said concerning the campaign of the Christian Church in the world for the Kingdom of God. It is not the enemy which gives her most difficulty, but the straggler—those people who know that the world needs the Church, but never come near her and do nothing to help her in her warfare for God. “What is needed to-day is for all men and women of goodwill to measure up personally to the challenge which Christ issues to them each one and, having done that, to give public recognition of the fact that the Church is an integral part of Christianity, by attending her and pulling their weight in her affairs. But if people are not prepared to give their support to the Christian cause in some such way as that, then they will not be able to hold themselves guiltless if the world is given over for a season to something other than Christianity.”