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Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 15 March 1926, Page 7

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LENTEN MISSION SERMON. The fourth .of the series of Lenten Mission services arranged" by the vicar and vestry of St. Mary’s Church, Hawera, was held in the Opera House last evening, the Rev. H. W. Monaghan preaching. « The preacher began by referring, to the last address on immortality. He said i,t did not follow that all men. would share the life which is eternal. Something existed in the world which threatened each human life with eternal death. This was what the churches called sin. He spoke of the objection the modern mind lias to this dbdtrine of .sin. Christian Science and most »f the new thought religions and ‘ ‘cheerio cults” which hail from America- all strive to ignore the Christian doctrine of sin. “Smile- and you will grow healthy. wealthy and good” was their message. “Don’t you see that this teaching contains in itself a pathetic proof that things are not all right with the modern world?” asked Mr. Monaghan. ’ “If you meet a man coming aoug High Street to-morrow morning muttering to himself ‘My tooth doesn’t ache, my tooth doesn’t ache,’ wouldn’t you think he wais on the way to Porirua or to the dentists? It is the same with all this false optimism in tli© world to-day. A man doesn’t keep, on telling himself that everything is a(l right unless he fears there Js something very wrong. Whom have you mast- use for: The Christian Scientist who say-s there is no cancer, or the real scientist who faces the. grim fact and gives l hi© life to- find a. cure? What have you most use for: The; ne.w optimism which -says everything is all flight, or the old Christian creed which faces the grim fact of ©in and makes you -say. ‘God is merciful to me, a sinner?’ ” The preacher then worked out at some length the parallelism between disease in the physical life and sin in the ‘spiritual. It would be a poor look-out for human life if cancer increased its hideous grip; it would b*. a still more terrible tiling if immorality took charge of men. Sin was selfishness, the burden ictf sin was the weariness of a- soul given over to- selfishness. . “God i:s love, and man was made for love, not selfishness. Sin is a betrayal of our own nature, -a. .betrayal of love, which is selfishness. There- is no hope of immio.rtali.ty for any soul of man Which,* in its Tiffe- on earth, does not learn to love. Until’, we understand this, it is impossible to understand the Christian doctrine of salvation, or why the Saviour of the world had to save us on a Cross.”