'DOES GOD CARE?’

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6633, 12 June 1928, Page 7

' DOES GOD CARE?’

Address by Eminent English Divine Emmanuel Congregational Churcl was packed to the doors last evening when the eminent divine, Rev. Thomas Tates, D.D., of Bournemouth, England, and one-time president of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, was the preacher of the evening. For 21 years, Dr. Tates was minister of the Kensington Church, one of the largest and most influential in the city of London, while hc-is unquestionably one of the leaders of Congregationalism in the world to-day. Dr. Yates took as his text Job. L chap. 22; verse 3. "Is it any pleasure to the Almigthy that thou art righteous? Or is it gain to Him that thou makest they ways perfect?” He also took a verse from the first epistle of St. Peter "Let all your anxieties fall upon Him, for His interest is in you.” Bishop Gore, an eminent , divine at Home, said Dr. Yates, had dealt with this question in some of his works. He had stated that there was only one great religious difficulty—the difficulty of believing that God was love. Plain men had put this question bluntly in three words, "Does God Care?" This was a question which practically everyone had asked during the course of their life—it was one which went to the very root of religion itself.

His first text, that from Job, was the statement of an early agnostic and might well be echoed by many moderns of to-day. The second text was an answer and an affirmation by a man of the New Testament. Was it in mere man to hurt or anger God asked Eliphaz the Temanite. “Is not God in the height of tho heaven. Behold the height of the stars, how high they are,” said Eliphaz arguing the egoism of man in presuming to imagine that God would worry about ,tha trifling affairs of puny mortals. Yet would not this same Eliphaz, who spoke of the vastness of the universe and the height of the stars, stand aghast at the knowledge uncovered by modern science and the things that were th 6 merest commonplaces t# the small child of to-day. Tho whole question exercising the modern mind to-day was the reconciliation of tho vastness and power of God and his intimacy with pan’s trifling affairs. With the departure of Ptolemaic astronomy and tho reign of Copernicus, science had year by year uncovered tho vastness of the universe. Eliphaz, in his modern re-incarnation, would no doubt say “I told you so,”— he was that sort of man. To tho challenge of tho agnostic, there were offered two answers. The first was an argument. It invited man to set against all this material vastness of tho universe, his own personality and his own soul. It invited one to consider the result of man thinking out the solar system. What was this amazing power of, thought that could uncover all this? What was this microscopic spot of intelligence upon this infinitesimal piece of matter called the Earth? It was all explained in the words of Pascal who had said that the mind which could realise a universe was greater than a universe itself, for the spot of mind knew and the universe did not. It was in the creative mind that tho key to the creative activities of the universe lay. All that had led to our making, was a plan willed by God; but who could tell us what His ultimate purpose might be? Nevertheless, said the speaker, ho believed that God had not created man for nought and that man was as good as ho made himself. God would never let anything perish that was worth preserving. The whole key to the matter lay in five words: “Make your way to Christ.” There alone would God be found. There alone, would they learn patience and courage to fight their own moral battles standing upon their own feet.