DARK DAYS AHEAD

Otago Witness, Issue 3396, 16 April 1919, Page 16

DARK DAYS AHEAD

THE TESTING OF CHRISTIANITY. On Sunday Dr Rutherford Waddell, of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of his ministry there, and preached to a orowdod congregation in the evening on the words '• fcjo we laboured in the work from tha rising of the morning till the stars appeared." In* the course ot a memorable address ho made striking reference to the troublous times which he believes face the Christian Church in the immediate future. . He paid a tribute to the sterling and splendid work done by members of his congregation during his ministry, but added: "Great and good as all this has been, something more will ba needed for the future. A new age is breaking . upon us. It demands new energy. We are moving into a time that will test the Church as it has never been tested before Dark days are ahead of us. We have ended one war, but another is upon us even more ominous than that which is over. We are all watching with wonder and awe the advance of Bolshevism. And behind and beyond this black cloud on the horizon is the whole Oriental world that is getting up upon its feet, the world of India, of China, of Japan. If these vast hordes of men and women are not Christianised they may prove to our new civilisa-fcion what tha Hun and the Vandal were to the old. And let no man think that this is a far-off menace. It is already hero upon us in these lands. ' Our nation will never be safe' —I am quoting from an Australian Labour paper—' for honest men and women until the Cross is on the ground. That emblem of tyranny spoils the atmosphere.' That is the sort of teaching that is filtering down among the masses of these lands. It is well the Church should know where its enemies are and what they mean. It must put all ite forces into the field if it is not to be overwhelmed. It mi>t make an end of its shirkers, its camp followers. They must either get out or g«;t in. There is no room for them elsewhere, and the Church must gird itself as never btfore for a fight to a finish.

"The war just ended has shown us what fighting is, and when you measure up the numbers, the sacrifice, the mn-nev, the endurance, the harfihrip, the b'ood, nn.l the death of those who fought the Hun against those who fight f'-r Christ, the oouvrasfc is ghastly. All that must be rodrssssd if Christianity is to leaven the world. And if Christianity does not leaven the world the end is not far off. Dean Church, a quarter of a century ago, wrote some words in one of his great books that are applicable today. Ho Raid then: ' There are grave reasons for looking forward to the future with sobmn awe, but awe-is neither despair nor dismay, and Christianity has had dark days before. That faith which has come out alivo frOm the darkness of the Tenth Century, the immeasurable corruption of the Fifteenth, the religious policy of the Sixteenth, and the philosophy, of the Eighteenth may face without shrinking even the subtler perils'of our own.' Only let us bear this in mind: that it .is not an abstraction, or a system, or'an idea, which has to face them. No, it is the plain you and me who believe. We sing: 'Truth crushed to earth shall rise again, The eternal years of God are hers;

But error, wounded, writhes in pain. And dies amid her worshippers." Yos, all right. But don'lf you forgetthis: That truth has failed, will fail again, if not backed by truthful men. Christianity is the truth of God, but it is not selfacting. It must act and operate through its believers; and its believers must \fs men and women who do not hold_ tepid opinions about it. but firm convictions. Opinions accomplish nothing. Convictions born of the Spirit transform worlds."