CHURCHES NEED TO COMBINE OPERATIONS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 15, 3 November 1948, Page 5

CHURCHES NEED TO COMBINE OPERATIONS

Divided By Small & Trivial Things

Special to Beacon. Wellington, This Day. "Churches calling on the nations to unite while themselves not Christians enough to be abls to heal their own divisions are a scandalous spectacle," declared the Rt. Rev. Cecil J. Tocker of Invercargill, speaking rs Moderator to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church which opened in Wellington last night. He quoted the Moderator of the Church of Scotland as saying "More than ever before the supreme issue for the Churches throughout the world is to unite. We need c ombined operations. The things which divide us are small and trivial and indefensible and almost absurd, in view of the world situation. The tactics of the 19th Century have to be abandoned." . "At the beginning of a new ago with utterly changed and changing human outlook and customs," said Mr Tocker, "the Churches must make considerable organisational changes. Otherwise, when a net/ evangelical fervour arises and a new clarity of mind concerning the content of the Christian message, they will be sadly hindered in giving it to the. community. "However, in the present formative years when the structure of the age-to-be is being built, the Church has something to say to the world as well as something to learn from it. Our community's future will depend on the character of its people, even more than on their brilliance to discover and invent, or their skill to make and organise. "Hitler had these without quality of character, and so has Communism. We will deserve and have neither peace nor permanence unless we are better men and women, with hearts and purposes that can stand all tests. "You cannot have that," continued the Moderator, "in a people who forget God, and who are founded upon something less than His august will. Our brave new world will fall like a house of cards because of its own inherent defects, as did Nasi Germany and the Rome of long ago, unless it can be built upon the values that are revealed to us in Jesus Christ, Who still in 1948 is the Way, the Truth and the Life. "If this generation will not have Christianity it had better ask itself in time what it is going to put in its place? Jesus' parable of the man who built his house upon the sand is still valid. No Statesman, no Scientist, no Educationalist even, has a task more vital and needed than that entrusted to the Church. "Lest-my words seem only what is to be expected from this chair," concluded Mr Tocker, "may I quote one of the greatest and most thoughtful of our living poets, T. S. Eliot: 'Where there is no Temple there.shall be no homes, though you have shelters and institutions. Although men may bind the earth and water to their service and divide the stars into common and preferred ... if the Church is disowned, the age only advances progressively backwards.' "