NEW YEAR MESSAGE.

Waikato Times, Volume 110, Issue 18521, 29 December 1931, Page 6

NEW YEAR MESSAGE.

TO ANGLICAN CHURCH. APPEAL TO PARISHIONERS. BY ARCHBISHOP AYERILL. AUCKLAND, Tuesday. Archbiship Averill i» a New 4 ear message lu the Auckland Anglican diocese published in the church Gazette, says:—"Although the world outlook is not as cheerful as we hoped it might be, yel we must not give way to pessimism or cease to pray for the dawn of a new and brighter day. “We cannot but believe that the cloud will lift and that the better days will come, but is the world morally and spiritually lit- for a return of comparative prosperity? Is even tho religious world alive to its own serious shortcomings ? Mlgh we not profitably apply tho words of the prophet Malachi, especially chapter three, to modern life, and find at least one root-cause of the world’s troubles? ‘Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed Me. But ye say wherein have we robbed Thee? In titles and offerings.’ “ It is a return to God which the world needs and possibly the Church too. Is God the Supreme reality in our lives and in our worship? The world is trying to live without God, and is there not a danger of the Church losing Its grip upon the reality of God? It is only real sacrifice on tho part of the Church, of those who profess and call themselves Christians which can supply tire real antidote to the moral and spiritual drift.

Sitting Too Loosely

“Too many so-called Christians are sitting too loosely to their bounden duty to be witnesses for the living Christ in tlic world. The microbes of ease and comfort seem to he destroying the will and the duty to 1 endure Hardship as good soldiers of Jesus Christ.’ The boldness of Christians would do more to counteract the drift from God than all the regrets and lamentations. I would appeal earnestly to the laity for more consistency and moral courage in their witness for Christ on the Lord’s Day. It is the acknowledgment of God in public worship '■which is so urgently needed. “ I am much distressed, too, about the failure of so many parishes to pay tile stipends of their clergy. I wonder sometimes 1 if the laity really know what hardships they are inflicting upon a body of faithful men who often suffer in silence. In spite of the difficulties of the times is it quite fair to the clergy to deprive them (in some cases) for months of the small pittance which they are at least supposed to receive regularly.”