MISSION AT ST. PETER'S HAMILTON.

Waikato Times, Volume LVII, Issue 7006, 10 May 1906, Page 2

MISSION AT ST. PETER'S HAMILTON.

The mission services were continued yesterday at the reguhr hours. Preaching at the midday service, Bishop Neligan gave to the Second Commandment, a modern interpretation as a precept to guard the imagination. The only true safeguard against the books, the papers and the intercourse that leave a nasty taste in the mouth was a worthy conception of God. Faith in God, if lived out in action, might in a sense claim the promise giveu to the apostles that they should take up deadly things and not be hurt, but this needed to be safeguarded by the law of individual responsibility and by the thought of the effect of o.iu's action upon others.

At the afternoon intercession service, Rev. H. R. Jecks preached on " The 'l'ruw Vine. "

Iu the evening the Disli <p spoke on "Conviction of Sin," basing his instruction on the parable of the prodigil son. He said that every man and worn n who would serve God must at some stagu of their life '■e convicted of sin, for this was a necessary s!tp to conversion. Sin was defiued a3 the habit of opposition to God's will, as missing the true purpose of life, and as falling short of the glory of God. St. Paul had described two kinds of oonvictions of sin, the sorrow that worketh unto death, and the godly sorrow that worketh unto life. It was a possible spiritual experience for a man to be convicted of sin and yet to get deeper into it. When a man acknowledged the truth of all he heard in church, and yet said that he could not get out of his entanglements, that was the sorrow that worketh unto death. The other kind of conviction of sin was the work of the Holy Ghost yielded to and responded to, and it would drive a man further ana further from sin. His might begin by means of the plain fact of natural religion that sin brings its own penalty. The next step would be a bitter sense of the horror of sin, and then must come the personal appropriation of it. liefore ene could say without blasphemy " I lay my sins on Jesus," one must lay them on oneself. Lastly, God the Holy Ghost led men to the conviction of sin by showing them the cross and passion of Jesus Christ. All their spiritual pride and smug complacency would be broken down by the sight of Him who thrice prayed, while the sweat of his agony was like drops of blood, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." Even with that picture before him, it was possible for man to resist—that was the tragedy. The Holy Ghost moved man's will but never mastered it, touched but never forced it. The godly sorrow that worketh unto life must come through a definite and voluntary act of the individual.

The congregation, which quite filled the church, heard the sermon with close and reverent attention and everyone present stayed to the-after meeting.