GOD’S PROMISE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19824, 29 December 1938, Page 13

GOD’S PROMISE

PEACE OF THE WORLD WAITING TO BE FULFILLED ARCHBISHOP’S MESS AG E “The coming of Christ, the Prince of Peace, was not a promise of universal peace to the world,- but a promise of peace to men who glorified God and manifested goodwill to their brethren,” stated Archbishop Averill in a Christmas message, which he delivered at the morning service at All Saints’ Church, Ponsonby, on Sunday. This promise, he said, was as true to-day as ever and it was waiting to be fulfilled. All the ignorant and superficial talk about the failure of Christianity was quite beside the point, the archbishop said. When God’s way had been really tried and when men had really given Him a chance and accepted Jesus Christ as the way, the truth and the life, only then had they any right to pass judgment upon Christianity, which was something infinitely more than a few moral precepts. Real Meaning Forgotten “Whether history repeats itself or not, there does seem to be a strange recurrence of that pathetic statement by St. Luke that ‘there was no room for them in -the inn,’ ” Archbishop Averill continued. “The world is what it is to-day because Christmas is ignored or regarded as a festival of worldly joy and because its real meaning and purpose are forgotten. God forbid that we should ever allow Christmas to become an orgy of selfishness and see.t happiness for ourselves without seeking -to minister to the happiness of others. “We want the Christmas spirit, for, in its manifestation of goodwill, it affords just a glimpse of 'the spirit ■which is so much needed in the wider 'life of the world and which could heip so much to solve its problems,” the archbishop said. “We should not '■»? human if we were not conscious of the cloud of sorrow and suffering hanging over the lives of so many men, ivomui and children to-day by reason of the scourge of war in so many countries. Sympathy With Jews “We should not be human if we had no sympathy with the persecuted and outraged Jews —specially at a time when we are rejoicing in God’s grea: gift of the Redeemer through the human instrumentality of a Jewish maiden.” The archbishop added that it seemed so tragic to think that after all these centuries of the healing Christ waiting to heal the sickness of the world that men and nations stil persisted in their blindness and clung to their unc'hristion and false relationships just because 'they would not find room for God and His Christ in their thoughts and actions. They would not apply His remedies to the sicknesses of the world, which were becoming more deeply seated and obstinate.