Day of Opportunity

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 42, 19 February 1938, Page 3

Day of Opportunity

THE CHURCH’S MISSION IN THB WORLD METHODISTS’ OPTIMISM “In a world like this what is the attitude of the Church? Certainly she is not afraid. The Church has faced Caesar and the totalitarian State before. But the Caesars and the totalitarian States disappeared and, the Church lived on,” said the Rev. Percy Paris, president of the Methodist Church at the conclusion of his address to the Methodist Church Conference at Wellington.

“If to-day, as Nicolas Berdyaev says, we have reached ‘the end of our time,’ if the worst happens again, and tlie lights go out in Europe, the Church will not perish. She may be crucified, dead, and buried; but her spirit will rise in newness of life, and in new forms of life, and with her Gospel of Redeeming Love unchanged. “Why do we say these things? Because we ha've the testimony of history, and we have faith—faith which looks not at the appearances of time, but gazes steadfastly at the realities of eternity. Ours is the faith of those Christians of New Testament times who believed that Christ had founded the Church, and that the gates of hell could not prevail against it; who believed that it was God’s purpose that the kingdoms of this world become the kindgdom of out Lord and His Christ. I fancy I can still hear lingering about these walls those triumphant strains from Handel’s ‘Messiah,’ which were sung in this church at Christmastide. “The Oxford Conference closed its message to the churches with this sentence:—‘The Church can ‘be of good cheer; she hears her Lord saying, “I have overcome the world.” ’ “This is the Church’s day of opportunity. Berdyaev may be right when he says we have reached the end of our time. What does that matter? The Church is not limited to time merely; neither is the Christian. AVc have forever. If this is the end of one era, it is the beginning of a new age. “It was of times like ours that Jesus said, ‘When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift Aip your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.’ “This generation may see a great religious revival sweep the people of Russia, India and China into the kingdom of God. During the last ten years 900,000 people in India have sought baptism. There are 400,000 Protestant Christians in China to-day, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century there was not one.” Challenge to Church. Mr Paris said this year brought a great challenge to the Methodist Church throughout the world, owing to the celebration of the bi-centenary of Wesley’s conversion. Methodists must seek to recapture the experience and rapture of the warmed heart. * ‘Religion is social as well as personal, and is expressed in works as well as in faith. The Gospel when rightly understood and applied leads on to social reform. Our evangelism must be one of life and word. Dostoevsky says in one of his short stories. ‘A man who bows down to nothing can never hear the burden of himself.’

“If in this bi-centenary year we will do these things; if we will return to our first love and our first works, expressing both in modern terms and ways to meet the modern man and the needs and situation of to-day, God wtii use us as He used our fathers to bring His love, joy, and power to men and women, and to set up His Kingdom here on earth,” concluded Mr Paris.