KNOX CHURCH HAS LARGE CONGREGATION FOR ANNIVERSARY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18451, 30 April 1928, Page 10

KNOX CHURCH HAS LARGE CONGREGATION FOR ANNIVERSARY.

PREACHER POINTS TO DEFECTS IN MODERN LIFE. The services in connection with the forty-eighth anniversary of Knox Church were conducted yesterday by the Minister, the Rev T. W. Armour. In the morning, addressing a crowded congregation, he spoke from the text “Isaac digged again the wells which they had digged in the days of Abraham, his father,” Gen. XXVI., 18. The wells in Palestine were all important for the health and prosperity of man and beast, and it was an act of practical wisdom as well as filial piety when Isaac digged again the wells that had been destroyed by the vandal Philistines. This offered a parable for to-day. We were concerned for our national prosperity and we builded high and wide. But what about the hidden sources of prosperity, what about character and the soul? It was writ large in history as well as in Scripture that righteousness exalteth a nation and they were the true and far-seeing patriots who cherished the Church of God. In social affairs betterment was mainly thought of in terms of the conditions of life: but what of the life itself? Our reformers should have courage to speak to men of their sins as well as of their wrongs, for what we needed was not only a world transformed for us but also men who would be transformers of the world. But especially in the individual life there could be choked wells so that the waters ceased to flow'. We should have secret and mysterious connections with the Eternal from which our souls would be filled and overflow. There were some whose Christian life refreshed us and sent us on our way rejoicing, and there were others in whom there were only stagnant waters filled w’ith the creeping crawling things. Men athirst in soul ought to look to the Church as an oasis but, alas, if they found only mirage of the desert! Among the wells that might be choked up was conversion. Our fathers thought much of it as a dynamic, spiritual experience but some seemed to think that our knowledge of comparative religion and psychology allowed us to discount it. Our Lord had said that unless we were converted we could not see the Kingdom of Heaven, and conversion meant turning about from the ways of self to the ways of Christ. One might require to be converted time and again like Peter, for the perseverance of the saints was a business of new beginnings. Men spoke of a w'ell of English undefiled and the Bible answ r ered to this description: but though it w’as the world’s supreme religious literature there were those who read books about the Bible and neglected to read the book itself. The Protestant doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture was that the Spirit witnessed to our spirits and if we gave the New Testament a chance it would bear witness that Christ was what He claimed to be. Another well was that of prayer. Many had neglected this. There was a kind of living that could not stand the challenge of prayer. Prayer was a channel to the. Eternal, allowing the soul to fill, and overflow and we neglected it at our peril. There coukl be no great Christian living without prayThese wells might be silted up by mere neglect. Use was the great preserver of the precious things of life. We must “ call upon ” our souls, and exercise ourselves unto godliness. There were also Philistine influences in the world that would work havoc and, however broadminded we wished to be, we must reckon on the fact that there were atmosphere and societies '•where such things as worship and prayer wilted and perished. The preacher remarked in closing that there were often springs of life where men saw only rubbish heaps. When they dredged the Avon and removed the mud and weeds springlets were seen in the gravelly bed. The last fact about men was not their carnality but their spirituality. r>own in the human heart, * Crushed by the tempter Feelings He buried That grace may restore.