SERMON IN DARKNESS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 2, 4 January 1939, Page 2

SERMON IN DARKNESS

LONDON VICAR’S REASON EFFECT OF REALISM THE SEPTEMBER CRISIS LONDON, Dec. 8. "A Dark World” was the title ol a sermon preached by the Rev. F. C. Baker, vicar of St. Stephen's Church, London, on Sunday evening. To make the occasion more realistic, he preached in a darkened church. Every light was extinguished. Behind the altar, lit up by a street light, a stained glass window illustrating the descent from the Cross, glowed brightly and provided the only illumination. "This is no stunt,” the vicar said in his sermon. “I feel that the darkness gives added weight to my subject. We have just come through a crisis. This crisis was a trumpet note for us in Britain and for all the world, warning us that we cannot go on without religion. To-day men seem to have slipped back to the idea of a God of vengeance.” The vicar condemned the Sunday cinema, the cheap novel, and the amusements in which young people ol to-day fritter away their time. He told his congregation how he looked into his darkened church one night io see the beautiful stained-glass window at the end of the church lit up by a street lamp. “That gave me the idea of preaching to you in the dark like this,” he said, “so that you might all realise the full significance of what the window portrays." The window is a replica of the original one reproducing Ruben’s picture in Antwerp Cathedral. This window, presented to the church in 1848. was destroyed, by a German bomb m July, 1917. The sermons in the dark will be continued for two Sundays, when the subjects will be “The Light of the World” and “The Dark Patch on the Human Soul." Mr. Baker is not blind to the difficulties of preaching in the dark. “I shall not be able to use notes for the light in the pulpit will be out, too," he said. “I shall have to guess how the time is going, not being able to see my watch. And, in addition, it is very hard to talk to people one cannot see It means that one has to hold the attention entirely by the force of what one says.”