PARISH SUNDAY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4043, 4 May 1938, Page 12

PARISH SUNDAY

AT ST. JOHN’S ANGLICAN CHURCH. SERMON BY CANON AVERILL. There was a very large congregation at St. John’s Church last Sunday evening. The occasion was Parish Sunday and the special preacher was the Reverend Canon W. W. Averill, Vicar of All Saints’ Church, Ponsonby. The congregation was very representative of town and country parishioners. Canon Averill in his address dealt with the necessity for mental growth in our attitude to religion. Most people seemed to be in a state of “suspended animation.” They regarded God at a medieval tyrant; their conception of Him was coloured by stained glass representations. The old idea of God was hopelessly inadequate for the present generation and was at best a poor caricature. In the world to-day as they viewed its progress, the people ought to form more suitable ideas of God. They should think of Him as the great scientist or the great mathematician. This, too, might be in some ways a poor substitute, but it was more in keeping with modern knowledge. The preacher went on to apply this principle to the subject of prayer and worship. He depreciated the suggestion that prayer was either a set of petitions or an aternpt to alter God’s will to conform to that of their own. He claimed that only by their co-opera-tion with God could prayer be made effective. It was useless to ask God to cure a plague if the people had caused it themselves by living in unhealthy conditions. The preacher concluded by using as an illustration St. Paul’s diction,

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I thought as a child, I understood as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” After the service the congregation adjourned to the Parish Hall, where the Vicar (Rev. Martin Sullivan), took the opportunity, on his own behalf and on behalf of the parishioners to offer congratulations to Mr Averill upon his appointment as an Hon. Canon of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Auckland. Mr Averill suitably replied.