THE CHURCH

Southland Times, Issue 21662, 26 March 1932, Page 10

THE CHURCH

NEWS AND NOTES.

FROM PULPIT AND PEW.

The Rev. J. Carlisle will be the preacher at the Esk Street Baptist Church on the Lord’s Day.

Pastor L. P. Bryan will be the preacher at the North Baptist Church to-morrow. The evening subject will be “The Crowned Christ.” -

Dr Clifford James, on furlough from Medical Mission work in the Solomon Islands, will occupy the pulpit of the Central Methodist Church, Leet Street, on Sunday evening at 6.30. The morning preacher will be the Rev. O. S. Pearn.

One of the most remarkable Bible prophecies is to be the subject of an address in the Victoria Hall on Sunday Night. The speaker is Pastor Mitchell who believes that the prophecy predicting a New World Government is sure and certain and that we are nearing the time of its fulfilment.

The Rev. A. J. Seamer, the presidentelect of the Methodist Conference, with his famous Maori Choir arrived yesterday from the north. The party has had unprecedented success in their tour of Otago and reports crowded halls in every place visited. Their appearance at St. Peter’s Methodist Church, Esk street, to-night and at the church services to-morrow will afford opportunity of hearing the most talented party of natives that has yet been before the public.

“When the days are dark men need the light of the Bible; when the times are hard men need its comfort; when the outlook is discouraging men need its confidence; when despair is abroad men need its word of hope. Indispensable at all times, the Bible is still more indispensable in times like these to-day. To spread the Bible and get it read ami obeyed that would be tho end of hard times, of poverty, of unemployment, of injustice, of wrong, of war.” ■—Robert E. Speer. I feel very strongly, says Frederick Lynch, in “The Presbyterian Advance,”

that what the Church needs more than anything else is a teaching pulpit; teaching the great fundamental doctrines, and the proven facts and religious experience of the Christian Church. The “Congregational Year Book” shows that there are 311,625 members in the Congregational Churches in England and Wales, and 39,127 members in Scotland. In the world as a whole there are 2,386,177 members of Congregational churches.

The supreme issue to-day, said a preacher in Liverpool recently, was a moral issue, and people were asking if Christianity made men and women good. It was significant that the leading men —statesmen and others —were all coming to see that the world needs the moral element which religion alone could give it. He went on to say, touching on some of the possibilities of power that science was giving us, that the cinema was being used in some quarters to poison the minds of people. Pictures were being shown in China and in other lands abroad which represented the most sordid side of Western civilization.

“Our Father is a very experienced One. He knows very well that His children wake up -with a good appetite every morning, and He always provides breakfast for them; and He does not send His children supperless to bed at night. ‘Thy bread shall be given them, and thy water shall be sure.’ He sustained three millions of Israelites in the wilderness for 49 years. Let us see that we keep God before our eyes, that we walk in His ways, and seek to please and glorify Him. When the supplies do not come in, it is time to inquire what is wrong. Is there not something wrong somewhere?” From an address by the late J. Hudson Taylor, at an annual meeting of the China Inland Mission.

It is recorded that when Gladstone was Chancellor of the Exchequer he sent to the Treasury Office for documents on which to base his Budget proposals. The official who compiled the statistics made an error that seriously affected the entire presentation. The blunder was not observed until the Chancellor had elaborated his speech in the House of Commons. The fallacy was immediately exposed and Mr Gladstone was covered with confusion. Before the entire nation he was made to appear ridiculous. At once the official in the Treasury was sent for. Dismayed and agitated he came before his chief, expecting nothing less than instant dismissal. In abject humility he confessed his fault and sought to

stammer out an apology. Mr Gladstone quietly silenced him by saying: “I sent for you because I could imagine the torture of your feelings. You have been for many years dealing with the bewildering intricacies of the nation’s accounts, and you have done your work with such conscientious exactness that this is your first mistake. It was because of your splendid record that I did not trouble to verify your calculations. I have sent for you to compliment you on that record and to set you at ease.” What a shining example of vital Christianity and human greatness, and a noble illustration of that sweet reasonableness which is our only hope of economic and moral recovery.