PRESBYTERIAN ASSEMBLY

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 February 1940, Page 12

PRESBYTERIAN ASSEMBLY

DISTINGUISHED VISITORS.

[FEB PRESS ASSOCIATION.]

WELLINGTON, February 20.

Delegates from all over New Zealand and from overseas churches are attending the Centennial Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, which opened in Wellington tonight. Among the overseas delegates are the Rev. W. Miskelly (Presbyterian Church in Ireland), Rev. J. G. Inkster (Presbyterian Church of Canada), Very Rev. John Mackenzie (Presbyterian Church of Australia), Mr. E. M. Jarvis (Presbyterian Church of South Africa). Professor J. Baillie (Church of Scotland), Mr. P. T. Caffyn (Presbyterian Church of England), and representatives of the Presbyterian churches in the United States of America were to have attended, but were unable to do so because of the war.

The Assembly received greetings from the Presbyterian Church in the United States, the United Church of Canada, the National Bible Society of Scotland, the General Presbyterian Alliance (an alliance of the reformed churches throughout the world holding the Presbyterian system), the United Free Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland, the Presbyterian Church of Wales, the Federation of Protestant Churches in Switzerland, the Evangelical Church of Bohemian Brethren, and the Evangelical Church of Germany. MODERATOR’S ADDRESS. “One hundred years is not a long period in the great expanse of history, but after all the first century in any country’s life is important, because it gives colour and character to all that follows after. If we enjoy any measure of prosperity to-day it is because our fathers toiled and suffered and endured. If religion holds a pre-eminent place in oui’ life, the credit is due, not so much to any spiritual attainment of our own, but to the fact that our fathers trusted God, and served and worshipped him.” This statement was made by Rt. Rev. J. Lawson Robinson, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, in his address to the General Assembly. “This present generation is perhaps inclined to forget that the security they enjoy socially, politically and economically, is an inheritance from the past. As citizens of this Dominion we owe more than we can pay to the strength and industry and character of those who have gone before us.”

After briefly reviewing the early history of the church in New Zealand, the Moderator observed: “I think we gain something in experience as we look back on that early band of pioneers. We have seen their progress in Christian grace. We have witnessed the manifold temptations they sustained, the trials they endured, the afflictions that tried their spirits. What we are to-day as a church has grown out of what has been. We look back to those small beginnings and we take courage. However difficult may be the work of the Christian ministry to-day, however disappointing the results of our labours, we can at any rate derive inspiration from the fact that the God who prospered our fathers, and who gave them strength to endure- and overcome, is our God, too. “We are face to face with new problems of which our fathers never dreamed,” continued the Moderator. “It is clearly evident to-day that the peace of the world does not rest solely or chiefly on economic systems. There were many people who looked hopefully and longingly at the Russian experiment of organising life on a more or less communistic basis. Europe’s successive failures since 1918 to organise peace on a lasting foundation are not, as believers in the Marxist analysis of history assert, the result of economic conflict and the wars now in progress the death agonies of decadent capitalism. “If Russia’s alliance with National Socialism, and her lapse into predatory imperialism show anything at all, they show that to remove inequalities of wealth and class divisions from a society is not thereby to purge that society of error and evil. The chaos into which contemporary Europe has sunk is the result of a moral and spiritual collapse, of an abandonment by the human race of those principles which are the nexus of social and international organisation. ‘Before all else,’ says the Pope in his latest encyclical, ‘it is certain that the radical and ultimate cause of the evils we deplore in modern society is the denial and rejection of a universal form of morality as well for individual and social life as for international relations?

“It is significant,” concluded the Moderator, “that from many thoughtful sources, which cannot be accused of professional bias, has come the acknowledgement that in the message with which the churches are entrusted lies the one hope of mankind. The Christian gospel of the unity and brotherhood of the human race, and ks sa’vation in Jesus Christ, is being abundantly vindicated in the chaos and confusion into which the world has fallen through its negation of the Christian principle. We can declare that gospel, we can enunciate the principle, with even greater confidence than before.”

The General Assembly passed a Centennial resolution, dedicating the Church to its task.