THE CHURCH'S TASK

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22046, 28 February 1935, Page 15

THE CHURCH'S TASK

Sir, —' "Matanga," after perpetuating tho ancient heresy that the New Testament invalidates the Old, now asserts that the issue at stake is not the right of entry, but the way of entry by the Church into the economic sphere. It is still true that where thero is a will there is a way. "Matanga's" antithesis between tho testaments is falsQ. In the New is to bo found the goodwill; in the Old is recorded the way. Their complementary relation is manifest when Christian goodwill, frequently disposed to do something, is nullified by ignorance of "the how to perform." It is the Church's task to integrate the human will with the divine way, in that unity of law and grace to bo found within the Book. "Matanga" must know that the Magnificat is far more revolutionary than "The Red Flag." The utterance of Jesus from the Horns of Hattin is a more terrible indictment of our civilisation than Marx over wrote. The epistle written by the brother of Jesus is a more violent denunciation of capitalist rapacity than even Lenin could deliver. But one would never gather this from the attitude of the Church. Hence men contract out of Christianity into other gospels, that have at least the merit of consistency. "Tho gravamen of tho charge against the Church," writes Dr. L. P. Jacks, "is not so much that there are certain abuses in its corporate life as that thero is a general acquiescence in all that is worldly and conventional. No one knows exactly what ideal of life the Church stands for, unless it is that of a kindly ami good-natured toleration of things as they are, with a mild desiro that they may grow better in time, so far as that is compatible with the maintenance of existing vested interests." If this charge is untrue, it is the Church's task to prove it so by forsaking its general amiability for a passionate insistence upon Christ's way of life. "Matanga" also knows that Christ's way of entry into the economic sphere was with a scourge of small cords: The Church's task is to follow her Master. "Jesus preached anarchy," says Middleton Murry, "but an anarchy such that after a brief and transitionary chaos a new and splendid and ineffable condition of life must emerge." Tho Church's task then docs not lie in dull dignity, tamed out of all recognition. Apparently H. G. Wells is right when he says, "The Galilean has been too great for our small hearts." By its wholesale defection from her ranks, the world is saying to the Church what the elder Pitt once said to Newcastle at a time of national crisis: "Fewer words, my lord, for your words have long lost weight with me." It is the word of Christ, however, that is the answer to the spiritual and material needs of humanity. If the world is not yet aware of this, tho responsibility can devolve upon no other institution than tho Church, whose task it is to show men His more excellent way. Kenneth H. Melvin.