A Message of Inspiration CARRY ON!

White Ribbon, Volume 23, Issue 9, 1 December 1951, Page 4

A Message of Inspiration CARRY ON!

(Abridged report of an address delivered by Dr. A. E. Prince, Minister of the Auckland baptist Tabernacle, to the W.C.T.U. District Convention, September 11, 1951).

You honour inc greatly by inviting me to speak to you on this occasion, and l am deeply grateful to you for your gracious invitation. I have come recently from a land afar, and 1 am happy to find here an earnest group of women who are united in one great effort tc save our young people from the liquor evil. I greet you in the name of our Saviour and Lord and bid you God-speed in your worthy undertaking. Thomas Carlyle described the Eighteenth Century in the brief caustic phrase, “Soul extinct, stomach well alive.” One wonders what lie would think of our Twentieth Century. Senator Fullbright, of the United States Senate, said recently, “Much of the evil of the world is beyond the reach of the law.” A devout Christian leader said some time ago: “We can advance farther on our knees than in any other way." Whatever else you may do, never lose sight of the fact that we cannot win without prayer.

Our prayer and our faith must be matched by works. A local option election was held some years ago in a county in the State of Kentucky, bordering the Ohio River. Seventeen men and women met on the bank of the river at the foot of one of the city streets to pray for victory in the election. The prayer service began before the polls opened and continued until after they had closed. The good and faithful souls abstained from food and prayed fervently all day, which was very comendable. but they .forgot to vote. The wets won by fifteen votes. We must put feet to our prayers if we want to win in any battle for righteousness. Someone has said: “The hope of the world lies in a passionate devotion to a great personality." The greatest Personality of all the ages was and is the Man of Galilee, and He won by way of the

Cross. We before us His matchless life. His atoning death, His victorious resurrection. His triumphant ascension, and by and through His Name all good streams of influence have coine through the centuries. His throne was a cross, His sceptre a reed, and His crown was made of thorns, but He has continued until this day to be the greatest force in the annals of the history of our race. "He walks on earth the Wonderful, and all good deeds are done for Him." We will serve in proportion to our passionate devotion to Him. By the sign of the Cross we shall conquer. When Charles 11 Spurgeon, that golden-tongucd preacher of London, had entered into the Father s House on high, Thomas Phillips analysed Spurgeon’s success in this statement: “Spurgeon had a God worth serving, a gospel worth preaching, a religion worth enjoying, and a church worth sustaining.” The two great words in that statement arc God and Church. He served God through the Church. Everything in the statement indicates with what holy zeal he served. Someone has said that there are four houses which have worked together to make us what we are —the home, the church, the school, the court house, and the greatest of these is the church. The Archbishop of Canterbury said some time ago, that "all mankind is divided into three parts—Communists, con\inced Christians, and amiable nonentities." I bis is an hour of incomparable challenge for ah advance on “very hand by the Church of God We have the same God, the same Gospel, the old-time religion, and the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us go on to greater things. I have searched my heart for some challenging word to leave with you today. We recall those strong words of Kipling, who said: “We must go on. Applaud us if we win, pity us if we fail, but we must go on.”. Yes, w e must go on. Not long ago, a woman said that life would be intolerable for her were it not for the fact that she used her spare time on each Sunday afternoon teaching some children in the slum district of the city. She toiled all the week through in a war plant, and found purpose in existence by constructive work on Sunday afternoon with the children. The work of the week day would perish, but she will live on in the lives of those children.

“Fading away like the stars of the morning. Losing their light in the glorious sun; Stealing away, let me thus end my journey, Only remembered by what I have done."

These are times that try men’s hearts. We must make the right decisions now or our decision is fatal. The hands of the clock have been turned back 500 years by the ghastly moral decline which has fallen like a global black-out throughout the world. If nothing else could be found to justify your efforts as members of the W.C.T.U., there is justification enough in the fact that the staggering sum of almost twenty-two million pounds

was spent in the Dominion of New Zealand last year for liquor—almost three times as much as for education, and much more than was spent to promote the work of all the Churches. The financial loss is the smallest loss of all, for there are moral values involved, and no one can adequately reveal the suffering of women and littkclnldren, the loss of manpower and skill, and all the other kindred evils which have come in the trail of this colossal octopus which today is draining the life-blood of oar civilisation. When that world-famed evangelist. I). L. Moody was dying, he asked for his Bible and read the fourth and fifth chapters of the Gospel of John, and then wrote on the margin of his Bible these words: “If God is your partner, make your plans large.” “If God is for us," said Paul, “who can be against us?" One is thrice-armed for the conflict when he knows that God is on his side. In your ceaseless efforts against this gigantic evil, you have God as your partner. You have a God worth serving, a Gospel worth proclaiming, a religion worth enjoying, and a cause worth sustaining. When pr. Fort Newton was asked, “What makes life worth while?” he replied, “A

faith fit to live by, a self fit to live with, and a work fit to live for.” One cannot have a sell fit to live with unless lie has a faith fit to live by, and a work fit to live for. To ourselves, we must he true, and then it will follow as night follows day that we cannot he untrue to the best interests of others.

All mankind stands indebted to you for your world-wide work. The stars of the heavens join you in your ceaseless fight against the forces of darkness. You will not and must not underestimate the enemy. We wrestle not agaitut flesh and blood, hut against principalities and powers, against mighty evils strategically located in high {daces. Your cause is right and God i' just. Though the victory he long delayed, the fight must go on. Though midnight darkness’ enshroud you, you must go on. On the dial of a clock in Europe is the inscription: “It is always morning somewhere in the world.” Thank God, the time is coming when time itself shall be no more, and it will he morning everywhere—the morning of that Day which shall never know a setting sun. May your faithful service, and the faithful service of all who love our Lord, be rewarded by the speedy coming of that better day.