the Sabbatb

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17750, 29 June 1929, Page 18 (Supplement)

the Sabbatb

WHAT KEEPS ME FROM OHURCH.

What keeps me from the House of God, Whose portals feet of Saints have trod, When Sunday comes and church bells call To worship Him Who’s Lord of all? When week-days come and whistles blow, 1 I’m up and out; aw r ay Igo To street car and the place of work. No wish to stay; no thought to shirk. When picnics call me, I’m right there, I’ve change to spend and clothes to wear; No way too long; no hour too late; My work can stop and sleep can wait. When Sunday comes and church bells can To worship Him Who’s Lord of all, What keeps me from the House of God Whose portals feet of Saints have trod? —Norman B. Barr.

THE NEED OF REVIVAL. Not In a church, but at the meeting of a civic club, a gentleman not a minister, but a professional promoter of civic welfare —made a powerful plea for revivals. No, he was not speaking about religious revivals —except incidentally, as illustrating his main thought-—but he argued earnestly for the need of revivals. He told of a certain small city in Michigan to which he or some of his associates had gone three times within eight years and are to go again this year at the invitation and expense of the Chamber of Commerce, for the express purpose of reviving the interest in the welfare of the city and securing more general co-operation n the development of its u f, lvl ° lifc ’ h . } l. argument was that while the Chamber of Commerce in any city maj go forward steadily, with much good work, changes in the citizens hip and in civic needs call for revivals from time to time, that new blood may be enlisted and new tasks underlakcn ' The Church may wisely apply the argument of this civic leader to Use and its own needs, and it may well be set down as unquestionable that the time will never come when the Church does not need periods of special revival effort. This assertion needs no modification, even when it Is generally believed, as some believe, that the day of the typical revival meeting” familiar to the passing generation and to several past generations, has about come to its close unless in exceptional communities. The two statements just made are not inconsistent. They only seem inconsistent to those who identify “re-

Ivival” with a particular type of evangelistic effort. To the average church I member in many parts of the country the announcement, "we are going to have a revival,” did not, and does not, convey any thought of a purpose to quicken the spiritual life of Christians, but, rather, the thought of a purpose to make special effort through consecutive public meetings to secure professions of faith and a church Ingathering. In such cases the evangelist Is not expected to be a “revivalist" in any real sense, but, rather (the expression is used with no thought of criticism) a kind of human combined “reaper and binder" to gather in the harvest which Is due to the faithful efforts of the minister and those of his members who have truly laboured to cultivate the soil and sow spiritual seed. Now such special efforts for ingathering are often wise, as it is often wise to bring in some special worker to lead in the enterprise—but this article relates to something quite different—to the need of revival among those who are already living a Christian life. We are very apt to “sag” in our Christian living. We are very apt to fall into ruts and omit the “weightier matters of the law." We are very apt to have our vision obscured and our moral sense blunted. We are very apt to over-emphasise certain phases of truth, and to lose sight of some others. Besides, as with cities, population changes. There are Christians who have moved into the neighbourhood and need quickening that they may sense their Christian obligations and opportunities, and go to work in a new portion of the universal vineyard—and often such persons are unmoved by the ordinary ministrations of a church but will be led to respond to some special appeal. For all of these reasons, and others, churches need revivals —not always of the same kind, but always through the instrumentality of some professional evangelist, but they need reviving just the same.

YOUTH’S OUTLOOK. “Moral and spiritual values,” says Mr Basil Mathews, “are being swept aside by a tidal wave of Materialism.” Mr Basil Mathews, M.A., who has mingled with youth in almost every corner of the globe, contributes to the Bulletin of the Federal Council of American Churches a searching article on “Currents in the Life of the World’s Youth.” He draws attention to the general triumphant onward sweep of materialistic secular civilisation, which, he says, has a principal instrument in the modern technical miracles of science. Before the war the moral standards on which the structure of Western civilisation rests

were without ultimate spiritual auth-[ ority, though inherited from specifl-j cally religious parents. The war! challenged and shattered many ofj those moral attitudes, and« the sub-j sequent exciting nervous reactions' and search for sensation and a “good j time” have undermined others. "We j have, therefore," says Mr Mathews,! “a swift moral dry-rot eating invisibly! but persistently into the supports of | family life and of civic and national j citizenship. The secular side of civi- i lisation is sweeping like a tidal wave j against moral and spiritual values.” | So far as organised Christianity is j concerned iA its relation to vital,; vigorous youth, the writer’s impres-; sion—which he would rejoice to see | arthoritalivoly denied and destroyed—is that they are living in different worlds and have very little real understanding of each other. During the last three years the writer’s work has taken him into some 10 capital or metropolitan cities in Europe and America. The list may be useful for precision’s sake—Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Helsingfors, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berne, London, Edinburgh, New York (with Cicago, Washington and Denver). I-lls conviction is that in those cities the one powerful influence in

the life of youth Is the expanding power of personal achievement and enjoyment offered by twentieth-cen-tury secular civilisaion. It is not so much that they have rejectetd Chrlsianity as that they have little, if any, conception of what it really means in Itself or may mean for them and for the world. A fresh alignment of life is called for. Should not the churches now address themselves to a close examination of their own presentation of Christianity to youth; their educational equipment; their grasp of their own faith; and set themselves to a fresh presentation of the eternal verities in terms that will carry conviotlon to and will, at least, reach the cars of the youth of the world to-day —terms that he can understand and must, then, either accept or rejeot for himself?