THE CHURCH

Southland Times, Issue 21604, 16 January 1932, Page 10

THE CHURCH

NEWS AND NOTES. FROM PULPIT AND PEW. The Rev. D. K. Fisher, late of Georgetown -and at one time in charge of StAndrew’s, will conduct the services at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church to-morrow. At North Invercargill Baptist Church to-morrow the preacher in the morning will bo Pastor L. P. Bryan, and in the evening the Rev. Nathan Wood, a native of Invercargill, at present minister of Linwood Baptist Church, Christchurch. The Rev. O. S. Pearn will conduct the combined services at St. Peter’s Methodist Church in the morning and Knox Presbyterian Church in the evening. The combined services have been most successful and visitors to the city are most cordially invited.

It is worth while remembering, in these trying times through which we are passing, that Charles lleade began one of his great novels with the following words, which are as true now as they were when ho wrote them: “Not a day passes over the earth but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak groat words, and suffer noble sorrows. Of these obscure heroes, philosophers and martyrs, the greater part will never be known till that hour when many that are great shall be small, and the small great.” According to The Church Times the religious newspaper, like all other newspapers, should be conducted by trained journalists, men who have learned their craft, and who bring to their task the skill and the instinct that can only be acquired by experience. “To make a readable newspaper is a job for the newspaper man.” This is undoubtedly true as a general rule, but one wonders if the writer ever heard of Hugh Miller and William Robertson Nicoll, and some others one could mention, who were not trainer! journalists, and were yet among the greatest editors of modern times. In the course of a sermon on “Stopping the Drift,” preached in Liverpool, the Rev. T. Tudor Rhys said: “One cause of the drift from religion is that the vast majority of our people have given up listening. I mean listening to the voice of God, to the deeper needs of our soul. Decline in religion is always accompanied by a decline in the practice of prayer. They say that 60 per cent, of the people of this country never attend any place of worship. If there is any’ God, and if we are really spiritual beings, what wonder is it that we have drifted on to the rocks?”

in At First Church on Sunday at the family diet at 11 a.m., the subject will be “The es praise of a new beginning.” At the even[>t tide diet at 6.30 p.m. the meditation will ■*’ be “Like unto driftwood.” A party of young people in England mostly under ie 30 years of age, discussing their own gener■d ation, concluded that what one generation ■° thought deadly sin, the other thought the R best life had to offer; what one generation s ‘ regarded ultimate truth the other regarded an illusion—a dream. “Is this the danger of every generation?” Are we like so much driftwood? Are Christians prone to this danger? What is the cause, and the remedy ?” The writer of an interesting article on a tour among the islands of the West Highlands of Scotland refers in appreciative terms to a church service in Portree, in the island of Skye. “On Sunday forenoon,” he writes, “We attended a service at the parish church. The pulpit of the ( * austere building was occupied by a venere able preacher, and, true to the tradition of > old Scottish divines, his sermon was an b intellectual treat. He spoke, I recollect, r - of the building of houses, the need of individual effort, and the potent influence of - home life. These familiar themes were n handled by the minister in a masterly way, d his thoughts being clothed in beautiful - language that rose to poetic heights in e the concluding passage of his discourse.” o