THE CHURCH AND THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 17935, 31 July 1920, Page 3

THE CHURCH AND THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE.

(Following is a summary of an address to the Wanganui Ministers’ Association by the President, Rev. Stanley Jenkin'): It has become a lamentable commonplace that this age is a materialistic one, that men worship the sun and the temporal, and set. little store by, the eternal and the Spiritual. .the Church stands for nothing :f not for Spiritual ideals. With its heavenward pointing finger it “lures tobrighter worlds and leads the way/ Not that the Church ignores the needs and claims of this life. Not that its doctrines of the Spiritual unfit its mem. hers for the practical duties of life. Buu its “affections” are “set on .things above,” and whatever tends to lower the pulse of Spiritual affection, whatever tends to materialise the Church i? incompatible with our true nature and mission. Ours is the commerce of souls Our traffic is in love and faith and gcod works. The materialism of the ago would discount the value of t-hese imperishable goods Two cannon walk together except they lie agreed. Incompatibility of spirit, of aim of method, makes even adaptation, still less union, impossible. 4 No account of prevailing conditions would be complete which did not include,seme preference to that increasing I - , ha so of modern life known as Socialism. I Here is a typo of bellicose Socialism with winch one can have but little sympathy. which (even if we offered it) would contemptuously reject the olive branch of peace. Truculent imagebreakers, trampiers upon our sanctities, they are in no mood for rapprochement with the. Christian Church. So long as . 'vo held out teh full teaching of Christ—His doctrine of duties, as well as- of rights, the claims of God no less than the needs of man. But all must sympathise with every rightful 41 attempt to remove social, economic. and industrial inequalities unde) which many lie through no fault of their own. . . Better far than the reliol of poverty, is the removal of the causes responsible for it. And the attitude of the Church towards such reform must ever be one of practical and working sympathy. The Church has too long been regarded as an enemy of the worker. We who belong to the Church know th.it that is not a true indictment. But, perhaps while at heart friendly aqd sympathetic with the toilers, we have done something less than we might have done to give expression to what we feel. Again there are those who feel that the chief danger of cur times lies in the great prevalence of pleasure-seeking; who ask is it not solemnly possible that wo may be in those “last times” spoken of so gravely by the Apostle, times m which, he said, men should be “ lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.” My business is not now with any of the forms which pleasure takes: some of these are undoubtedly inimical to righteousness. I am concerned with the general tendency to place the quest for pleasure in the forefront of life. And 1 if 1 be asked what the Church shall say in view of the excess and extravagance manifested in this direction, the answer is not far to seek. Clear and high, and compelling above the Babel-sounds of the thoughtless and God dishonouring, the voice must be heard as of old crying: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.” Few will be found in the churches so puritanical as to forbid reasonable indulgence in some form or other of innocent and harmless amusement or recreation. It. is the whole-souled persuit of it. that the Church must declare against. It is an all-absorhing interest, excluding as it does, the higher duties and the more serious claims of life that we must protest against. Our attitude must he one of direct opposition to the extravagant vanities of the day, while avoiding the impression that the Christian life is opposed to the enjoyments of youth. We must declare that our difference is not with pleasure, as such, but with the abuse of it; not with recreation but with that devotion to it that amounts almost to its deification. The Church may have its gymnasium, its kept in their subordinate place, and wisely controlled, may prove a benefit. But let it be understood that the Church does not exist for these things, and that if ever there should be a conflict between the fixtures of the Church and those of the club, the latter, as the less important, must give way every time. The Church is not a social club. Professor Wm. James, of Havard, quotes an American journal as saying that “The. Church never ceases to warn men of the sins and the danger of drifting into a state of unconcern to the best and highest things of this life and the next. The Church that is not fervently attacking this omniprcscent evil; the preacher who is content to prophesy “smooth things” is paving the way to perdition for thousands who never indulge a moment’s serious thought concerning God, life, redemption and the. hereafter. An indifferent Church need not marvel to behold an indifferent world. But let us be in life and teaching what in creeds and confessions we> profess to be; let us bo loyal to our Lord’s standard, truckling to no party, class or section; let our nands be free from all complicity with everything that in any sense is opposed to New Testament religion, and our “light shall rise upon the darkness, and our obscurity shall be as the noonday, and the Lord shall guide us continually.”