ST. GEORGE’S DAY

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 178, 26 April 1938, Page 10

ST. GEORGE’S DAY

Service At St. Paul’s ProCathedral ADDRESS BY THE BISHOP A special St. George’s Day service, commemorating “England’s Day, was held at St. Paul’s Pro-Cathedral, Wellington, on Sunday night. It was attended by members of the combined English county societies, the Wellington branch of the Royal Society of St. George, and members of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George.

The preacher 'was the Bishop of Wellington, the Rt. Rev. H. St. Barbe Holland. The vicar of St. Paul’s, Canon D. J. Davies, conducted the service, The mayor of Wellington, Mr. T. C. A. Hislop, read the first lesson and Mr. Karl Atkinson the second.

Bishop Holland, in his address, said there was no merit in remembrance. It was a neutral thing. He wanted their memories that night to be much more than that—not to be neutral, but to be stimulating and helpful. Speaking of trusteeship the bishop asked what •it was his hearers had to hand on unimpaired. He was going to take for granted that it included the great monument in literature and art, great achievements in science and civilisation, and the tolerance and justice which the genius of British civilisation had produced. He was going to ask what it was that individually Englishmen had to hand on. It was that individual character which lay behind what England had given to the world. Tlie English Character. Bishop Holland said he supposed there was nothing more difficult to analyse than the English character. Foreigners had always found Englishmen a most interesting study. There was, for instance, the description of our national character penned by a Venetian ambassador in 1497: “The English are great lovers of themselves and of everything belonging to them. . . . Where they see a handsome foreigner they say he looks like an Englishman.” Those words, Bishop Holland said, might have been, written in the early years of this century. They suggested one of the characteristics o| the English race which had made for its strength—the characteristics of selfconfidence and self-reliance. Tho§c characteristics had often manifested themselves in an assumption of unwarranted superiority, but on the other hand they had created that stayingpower which had been the secret of all the good that God had enabled Englishmen to accomplish hi the world. They had been the secret of the will to achieve, of the determination never to be beaten. “You and I to-morrow will realise,” the Bishop continued, “that it was just that tenacity which was born in the sense that we all had in those black days in the Great War that it was impossible to conceive that we could ultimately be beaten —it was just that tenacity which gave us men who turned defeat into victory.” A Frem ji observer had once said: “England is a country of will.” Surely that was a priceless gift to hand on undiminished. It was that power of will that manifested itself in countless ways. The Englishman, he continued, was a most independent person, almost a thorough-going individualist, and from that came a sublime sense of freedom. The Englishman had always claimed freedom for himself. One writer had said: “In England every man claims the right to go to heaven in his own way.” It had led to tragic division in the Church of Christ. “While we demand freedom for ourselves, we accept, the other fellow’s demand for freedom for himself. We have given birth to something unique in the history of the world —that spirit of tolerance which finds its greatest strength in the English character. The time may come when it is going to cost us suffering and sacrifice to maintain that one great principle,” the preacher said. The Power of Will. The power of will wiis seen in the capacity for self-restraint. Englishmen might often be reckless and lighthearted, yet there was always the other side not far below the surface. It had been so during all the centuries which had been formative of the English character. England in Chaucer’s day was a mixture of the grave and gay, coarseness and piety. In Chaucer’s day there was the combination of the ideal and the practical that lay behind the instinctive kindness of the Englishman, the instinct to run uphill, the instinct which macle him detest cruelty. The Englishman simply could not understand States or nations that held treaties as scraps of paper. His outlook to life had made him see .that truth must be put into action. “I make bold to say that the chief influence which has produced the English character has been the faith that was brought to England by the great adventurers for Christ,” the bishop said. "The hand of God has been moulding the development of the English character. It is far from perfect. Most of us recognise how far short it is. “Are you prepared to let the greatest asset in the nation's life be wasted and disappear? This St. George’s Day celebration is a trumpet call to men under the banner to face up to tlie fact that the greatest asset in the nation’s life is in danger to-day. Christ is just waiting for men who will rise to give themselves to the bringing back of His life and power to the nation. We owe it to those who come after us that we hand on to them not only the example of the English character at its best, but also the great faith by which alone the character can be maintained.”