CHURCH BALLY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 263, 5 October 1936, Page 8

CHURCH BALLY

SERMON BY REV. J. HUBBARD

MEN AND THE CHURCH.

There was a large congregation at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, last evening, when Rev. J. Hubbard, 8.A., devoted his sermon to a discourse on the subject, “Why Men Do Not Go to Church,” as a feature of the “come to church” campaign which has been inaugurated by the church.

“It is lamentably true that the vast majority of people think of the Church only at the birth of a new baby or the death of a grandmother,”, said Mr Hubbard. “They go to church only when they are cornered. We have to face the fact to-day that it is no longer a social disgrace to be known as a practical atheist with regard to matters of religion, and certainly it is no longer a conventional duty to go to church or profess a religious creed. Many a man gulls himself that because he has not stood in the street and shouted ‘There is no God!’ he really believes in one; that because he does not actually oppose the Church he is really a member of it, although he takes not the slightest interest in its programme. The principle Christ enunciated when He said ‘He that is not with Me is against Me’ is applicable just here. RELIGION BY PROXY. “Church people often have the epithet ‘humbug’ hurled at them, but I am inclined to think myself that the non-churchgoer is not free from the quality called ‘cant.’ ‘My wife attends church for me,’ asserts the religion-by-proxy man. ‘I worship God under the blue dome of Heaven with Parson Greenfields,’ laughs another. ‘ln summer,’ he is reminded; ‘where do you worship Him in winter? In Hie thsa.'re or by the fireside, I suppose.’ .Ninetenths of the excuses made for not going to church are mere humbug. ‘I always faint in church,’ sighs the young lady who never faints in the theatre. ‘That choir simply gives me a headache,’ aserts the young man who gives his neighbours something worse than a headache with his strong wireless set. ‘Our minister cannot preach for toffee,’ says the parishioner who really cannot ‘listen for nuts.’ No, the hard seat and the stuffy atmosphere, the long sermon and the drawling prayer and the highly-paid parson, together with a multitude of other feeble excuses so often upon people’s lips and pens, are mere eyewash, calculated to hide the real reasons for non-church attendance. And what are the real reasons? First of all there is avast army of backsliders, people who used to attend church but have fallen out of the ranks. Such people have lost their hold on God; for it must be conceded that absence from church services is a sure sign of apostasy in religion. “Among those who have definitely dropped out there are many who are simply having their spite out on God, because He did not work a miracle for them at a moment’s notice when they had not given Him a thought for years before and had no intention of recognising His goodness when God did answer their prayer. Hundreds of people who pose as merely indifferent to the Church are definitely frightened of it. To many people, especially young people, life is a game. They want to go through life in a blaze. The Church is an institution which protests against this one-sided view of life. It witnesses to the fact that life has its serious side. Those people think that the words ‘dull’ and ‘serious’ are synonymous. They live so much in the realm of makebelieve that they revolt at any suggestion of reality. If they read it is fiction, if they see life it is on the screen or stage. Real life bores them; facts irritate them. Tell them that they will one day have to die and they will swear at you. Mention a probable judgment day and they will laugh at you. They don’t want to be reminded of such words as duty, commandment, obligation, sincerity, truthfulness, humility, much less of other phrases like ‘love to God,’ ‘Charity towards others,’ ‘Civic responsibility,’ ‘Personal care for the weak and suffering.’ These words are the stock-in-trade of the Church You cannot go to church without involving yourself in a personal relationship with such ideals. And that is what these people don’t like. The Church is associated in their minds with uncomfortable taboos. Further, the Gospel is a mirror, but such a mirror as reveals the things concerning yourself that you do not want to see. The Church, the Bible, the hymns, the prayers—they are all selfrevealing. If a man goes to church determined that he is not going to confess his' sins, not even to God, he will rarely come away without having confessed them to himself, although he hates doing it.

FACING REALITIES.

“And it is the realisation of this fact that keeps so many away from church,” the preacher added. “They will not face the serious facts of life and death. They will not look at themselves as God sees them. The picture is not pleasant. Why look at it? they say. There are others, however. Thousands of our young people to-day, never taken to church by their parents, have grown up as ignorant of God, religion and the Church as the Hottentots of Africa. It is not their fault. They are simply strangers to the Church. They know nothing of its provisions, its service, its fellowship. Their life is so crowded'with other interests which vie with each other for their leisure time that the Church simply doesn’t get a look in. I am convinced if only people could see the Church in the glory of its ideals and potentialities. they would rally to its standards to serve and support it. On this subject the general public need enlightenment. Where would our country be if every Christian Church were closed to-day? When you have duly discounted the unworthier or the unthinking elements, and the purely artistic considerations which have inspired part of the outcry, there remains something mightily impressive about the recent fight in London to save the city churches from destruction. The man in the street, and in the shop and in the office, doesn’t want to see them go. Every now and again—it happened at the outbreak of war and is renewed each Armisticetide—one is afforded a glimpse of the soul of the nation. Something occurs to make that soul, for a saving moment, at anyrate, articulate. There is a feeling that we must conserve something in the way of a society for the prevention of cruelty and immortal spirit. There is a falling back upon the great elemental instincts. Even Samuel Pepvs admits naively that the preacher must have precedence of iNell Gwynne in the hour of the nation s peril A few years ago, during the great financial crisis in the United States of America, a remarkable editorial article,

going straight to the root of the matter, appeared in the Wall Street Journal, which issues from the heart of New York’s great financial and business centre, and is read by people who never see religious grounds. ‘What America noeds more than railway extension and Western irrigation, and a low tariff and bigger wheat crop, and a merchant marine and a new navy, is a revival of piety—the piety of our fathers that counted it good business to stop for daily family prayers before breakfast, right in the middle of harvest; that stopped work half an hour earlier oil Thursday night, so as to get to prayer meeting. . . .Great wealth never made a nation substantial nor honourable.’ “There,” concluded Mr Hubbard, “is Wall Street sagacity .There is a tip straight from the Stock Exchange. The singing was led by Mr 1.1. Henderson, who also contributed a solo.