WORK OF THE CHURCH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15626, 4 June 1914, Page 5

WORK OF THE CHURCH.

CONGREGATIONALIST'S VIEWS. A public welcome to the Rev. J. D. Jones, of Bournemouth (ex-chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales), who is on a visit to New Zealand, was tendered at a meeting held last night in the Mount Eden Congregational Church. The Rev. R. Mitchell, of tho Beresford Street Church, described the visitor as not only in the forefront of Congregational preachers, but also an able writer on . theological and other subjects. Mr. Jones expressed the pleasure it gavo him to come as a representative of British Congregationalists to greet their kinsfolk in New Zealand. It was his" purpose to try and strengthen the hands of people in tho Congregational churches in New Zealand, and to help them to realise that Congregationalism had a mission to people living in this prosperous and beautiful Dominion.

After welcomng the evidence of a growing unity among the Evangelical Frea Churches, the speaker went on to say that, • while he was for unity, lie did not favour a dull uniformity, and there were reasons why the Congregational Church should continue to maintain its own distinctive witness to the Christian faith. In these days of religious unsettlement and doubt, due in some measure to Biblical criticism —though not all Biblical criticism was extravagant and destructve~4,here was need for the restatement of Christian beliefs in terms of modern speech, and to meet tho needs of tho age. And, perhaps, no church was more peydiarly suited to this task than the Congregational Church, which had no formulated creed, though it had been in existence for three centuries. It did not necessarily follow that with the advent of the democracy came the millenium. " Vox populi" was not always, or necessarily, " Vox Dei." Was the voice of the people the voice of God in the French Revolution, which began with the deposing of God, and onded in a devil's, dance of lust and blood and slaughter, and the most absolute despotism of modern history ? Or was it tho voice, of God when the London crowd, in saying farewell tp.-vtho City Imperial Volunteers at the time of the South African 'War, shouted "Avenge Majuba 1" He, somehow, thought it was the voice of someone very different from God., Before " Vox populi " became " Vox Dei" they had to Christianise the people, and he urged Congregationaliste to rise to thei? privilege in teaching the democracy to think and act in terms of Christ and Hi's gospel.