Pulpit Messages

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22915, 6 April 1949, Page 3

Pulpit Messages

Christianity and Life

(Contributed by Ministers’ Association.)

JESUS LOOKS AT YOU The following point was given emphasis by Pastor J, P. Henderson in an address at the Church of Christ, Roebuck road, on Sunday night.

“One of the great things accomplished by Jesus was to make men believe in the possibility of moral reclamation and renewal. _ Pie was the specialist in the conservation of hitherto wasted forces of humanity. He came at men from an entirely new angle. He did not so much see men as they then were but rather in the light of what they might become. Habitually He looked at people in terms of their possibilities. “Pie valued men not at all for what they possessed, not primarily for what they had done, not even for what they were, but_ in view of latent powers for good which could be translated into terms of reality through an all-consum-ing love for Him. Many people noting this attitude of Jesus, ascribe it to kindness. but that misses the mark. It was not primarily kindness but insight. “When Robert Browning in the square of San Lorenzo in Florence picked up a yellow pamphlet for a lira, and saw in its sordid tale the possibility of the Ring and the Book, he was exercising not kindness but insight into values actually there. So always it is the greatest minds that see the great possibilities in the most unlikely places. The Master exercised this insight supremely on men. The worth that He saw hidden in human nature He revealed that God saw too.

“What strength of life and character may be ours then, if casting ourselves upon God for the forgiveness of the past, we depend upon Him for the development of our unseen and better selves.”

CONFERENCE IN GISBORNE

The annual conference of the Associated Churches of Christ in New Zealand will be held in Gisborne next week over the Easter period. Conference sessions will extend from the Thursday evening, April fourteenth, until Monday.

Over 150 delegates and visitors will be coming from all over the Dominion. A similar number of young people will be gathering for united fellowship in camp.

The Thursday evening will take the form of a large public meeting and a civic welcome, at which the guest speaker will be the Very Rev. Dr. Cockburn, D.D.. M.A., who was the Director of Christian Reconstruction in Europe. All are welcome and urged to be present. All are invited again to another public meeting to be held in the Assembly Hall of the Intermediate School on Sunday evening at 6.45 p.m. MISSIONARY’S VISIT

For many years foreign missionaries have carried the Christian Gospel to the Chinese, dispelling the darkness and cruel superstition of heathenism. In this enlightened age today a Chinese missionary has arrived in New Zealand to advance the spread of the Gospel through the activities of the Pocket Testment League. He is Mr. Harry Liu an educated young Chinese who comes with the warmest commendation of Bishop Haughton, director of the China Inland Mission. Shanghai. He is one of the many missionaries supported by the famous Moody Church of Chicago. Mr. Liu will arrive in Gisborne by plane from Auckland on April 20 and will address a gathering of his countrymen that evening. The following evening, April 21, he will speak at a public meeting in the Salvation Army Citadel. He will tell of his work in association with Mr. J. S. Muir among the schools, universities, hospitals and the National Army of China.