RELIGION.

Southland Times, Issue 21578, 16 December 1931, Page 3

RELIGION.

To the Editor. Sir, —An article given by Mr Sykes in last Saturday’s magazine has prompted me to respond having a desire to help the inspiration, although I cannot be with him in what he suggests or in the way to it. From what I can gather he sincerely wishes to be in the thing itself, something living and vital, instead of Churchism. I cannot be a Churchism Reformer or of a church which seeks to establish herself here in this present evil age. The church has failed lamentably and will never be again on earth, what the mind of God intended she should be. We, as representative of His Church, have also failed and obscured the original but I would seek to enlighten Mr Sykes with the fact that the Church (as a corporate body) does not teach or preach, or baptise (how could it?) but that individuals alone are used by the Lord himself to do any one or all of these things, hence I can point the way out as he seeks to point the way to those men who were so instrumental in God’s hands by the power of their professed faith in Him for effective service. It remains for us to put ourselves right. In the Scriptures the principle is that the priest himself had first to offer for his own sins find then for the errors of the people. (One must be first.) In our case we have to be true to our one baptism. Then again there is no salvation required without first a cause for it. A cause, truly there is and salvation there is; but realizing the need of it and getting into it is another matter. The Man who first put forth that exclamation, “Sirs what must I do that I may be saved?” was literally faced with either death or salvation. God showed him that he could escape the former and receive the latter by entrusting himself and incidentally his household to the Lord Jesus Christ. This he did and was saved and his house. Here lies the question of baptism and of a greater authority than (the Roman in his case) something to which he was introduced. Salvation belongs to a spiritual authority but it has to be literally true within us to effect our complete deliverance. Being saved is the happy result. This is teaching. However, as regards preaching I quite welcome any enthusiasm on that account and long to see with .Mr Sykes some specific results, positive instead of negative, in the preaching. To my mind, even in this day and in this country large numbers can be saved still as in the past, and in other times. Just recently I came across an outstanding publication in which children in Sunday Schools (to use the term) where at place converted together in one mass. The Spirit of God was literally poured out upon all flesh as recited in the Prophet God. The Spirit was seen also to work in one place and not in another for no apparent reason, also that He chose to move through a crowd who were being preached to, in a certain direction, and that the converted ones found themselves literally standing between the living and the dead. All the wonderful phenomena took place in great variety with marvellous effect, and this commenced'in the astounding way with a Church of England clergyman being converted by his own sermon in his own pulpit. Take the incidents of the last and second last earthquake in this country when men were found praying in the backyards, a thing apart from what we are usually, acquainted with. Surely a fitting occasion for God to say, “Come now and let us reason together, (saith the Lord) though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”—I am, etc., C. W. NEWLAND.