HAPPY WORSHIP IS DISCUSSED AT ST PAUL’S.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18901, 28 October 1929, Page 16

HAPPY WORSHIP IS DISCUSSED AT ST PAUL’S.

REV J. BURNS TELLS OF WAY TO MAKE SERVICES BRIGHTER. Special services in connection with the sixty-fifth anniversary of St Paul s Presbyterian Church were held yesterday, as well as a reunion of past and present members and adherents. The special anniversary preacher was the Rev James Burns. The subject of the morning service was “The Happy W orshipper.” The text chosen for his sermon was the second verse of the twelfth chapter of Isiah: “Behold. God is my salvation: I will trust and not be afraid: for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; He also is become my salvation.” it was the most joyous expression of spiritual life in the Old Testament, said Mr Burns. Here was a man who had found the secret of happy life. Nothing dismayed him, because God was his strength. If that man were in the pulpit there was not one of them but would envy him and admit that his religion was the real thing. Religion meant that one knew the key to a victorious life, which, of course, was a happy one. “The difficulty to-day is to get hold of a happy Christian,” said Mr Burns. "Many people say that such a person has ceased to exist. Some people have the. impression that religion means repression—that it is a joy-killer—and this idea is shared by the younger people. It cannot be denied that gloom is a very frequent guest in places of worship, and there is some truth in the statement that some people do not come to worship because they find it too dull. If the worship is dull and the services uninteresting, then that is not true religion, but shows the lack of it.” If the church was filled with men and women who were possessed of the mood described in the text, then they would not find worship dull, added Mr Burns. That was the great problem of the church to-day—how to get happiness in worship. It was not by shortening the services or improving the music that the desired result would be obtained. It was just possible that the solution was contained in that man’s expression, " Behold, God is my salvation.” The word “ salvation ” was a happy one, its exact meaning being to escape from. Worship depended upon the amount of sunshine they brought in with them. Many people considered that the sermon had to do all the work, but that was not so. They must go into the house of God with joy in their heart. It was that which made a tremendous difference. They must believe that God meant well towards the world. Many children were not taught to be happy in God, but were taught to fear Ilim. That which worried the Lord was the harm that one did to oneself. If a person was happy in God, then all his troubles dwindled away. They were all trying to become happier men aqd women, and their only method was to be able to say, “ God is my salvation.”