EVANGELIST'S MESSAGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18292, 8 January 1923, Page 7

EVANGELIST'S MESSAGE.

PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD. LACK OF CHRISTIAN IDEALS. The appearance of Dr. French E. Oliver at the Town Hall last evening revealed a preacher of a very different typo from that of the American evangelist which New Zealand has known in the past. He is the very antithesis of the " Billy Sunday " type; he adopts no platform tricks not cheap rhetorical devices. His utterance is curiously deliberate and even, his voice so flat in pitch that it becomes almost a monotone, while his climaxes are a matter of rather than of utterance, being marked by a sudden explosive clap of the hands that sometimes proves rather disconcerting to attentive listeners. THe strength of the man is pre-eminently in his message. The audience, which completely filled the hall and lower gallery, listened most attentively, and at the close of the meeting a number of men and women made public confession of faith. The preacher, who was introduced by the Rev. A. A. Murray, took for his subject, " The World's Greatest Problems," illustrating it at every point in the light of the text from Galatians, "God forbid that I. should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." Dealing with the present general unrest throughout the world, and the loss of the old-time contentment and settled faith. Dr. French said that people were nowadays asking if Christianity had failed, if the Gospel had outlived its usefulness. To this charge he would definitely reply that Christianity had never been tried as the guiding principle in national life. The world was ruled now, as it had been a thousand years ago in the days of St. Paul, by political propaganda, from which no moral betterment had ever come to any nation, and when people imagined that it could change sinful human hearts they showed themselves to be in a state of dark ignorance. Nothing but the power of God could holve the world's difficulties , and until the nations sought pardon and regeneration at the foot Of the Cross the present unrest would continue. This was being fomented in many ways, by scepticism and atheism among those in high places, by carelessness and disregaid of God's eternal mandates on the part' of nations and peoples, by selfishness and Sabbath desecration.

" Wo are hearing too much of the shallowness and _ wickedness of the socalled Christian ' nations," declared the preacher, "but they are Christian only in respect of privilege, not in practice! The commandments enjoining the sacredness of life, of purity, of honesty, of truth, were being broken recklessly throughout the whole Christian world, ha continued, and prisons were, taking charge of criminals by the thousands. There was not one nation in the world to-day that had reached the standard expounded by Moses over a thousand years ago, let alone the Christian ideals set forth by Jesus Christ Himself. Human life was not held sacred, the appalling prevalence of divorce showed that the home life of the nation was decaying at the very root, and the class bitterness rife throughout the world showed that men gave no place to the great commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." At the foot of the Cross, and there alone, was to be found the solution of all these heart-breaking problems and worldmisery, continued the preacher, who entered into a. bitter condemnation of those forces of evil which were turning away thf> hearts of the people from God. ''You cannot solve the Labour problem by leaving it in the hands of those who are obsessed with the idea of predatory greed among the ruling classes," he said, " nor by turning it over to those dirty, blasphemous, godless men who cry ' Down with the Bible, down with God, down with the Church.' " A severe condemnation of the practice of showing at picture theatres films based on marital infidelity, was also voiced by Dr. French, who charged the moving pictures with being one of the greatest factors in the loss of respect for the sanctity of home life. The preaching of doctrines that denied to God a place in His own creation was also deplored, the speaker citing several cases in which noted atheists and sceptics had turned to the Cross of Christ in their dying moments as their only hope of salvation. . '■*-'■ '