FROM THE CHURCH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 56, 14 June 1950, Page 4

FROM THE CHURCH

Whakatane St. Johri*s Methodist LIBERATION OF RELIGION Speaking in St. John's Methodist Church last night on “The Liberating Power of Religion,” the Rev. Wm. C.iJenkin said of Psalm 18 arid Verse 19: “He brought me forth into a large place.” This was the Psalmist’s testimony to which God had done for him, or, as we may say to what religion meant to him.

There is no feeling in life more common than the sense of r.arowness and limitation. Thousands of people feel it continually. The function of religion is to bring into*life a sense of expansion, of liberation. A very vital function of the Religion of the Bible, and especially of the New Testament, is in the words of our text, to bring us forth into a large place. “I am come,” said Jesus, “that they might have life and have it to the full.” One of the ways by which Re- . ligion does this is by offering an escape from the sometimes sordid and often monotonous humdrum tasks of everyday. From the world of small monoton'ous things in which our souls are smothered Religion beckons into the realm of the great and the infinite, so that we feel about us the winds of heaven. Like Religion itself Sunday has too often been associated with nar- { rowness and restriction. But of the value of Sunday as an escape from the world of every day into another and higher world there is no doubt. Make it a mere holiday, full of noise and bustle, and you have closed the door against one of the basic needs of the spirit of man. Another way in which Religion brings enlargement to life is by broadening our interests and sympathies. It is human nature to be chiefly interested in ourselves and human nature is the same everywhere. But when Religion or Christ gets hold of a man, that maa begins to talk not in the language of the Rich Fool in the parable but in the language of our Lord’s Prayer, where the first personal honour singular does not occur once. It is “My Father,” it is “Our Father.” Finally, the Christian Religion brings us into this large place by opening up to us the world that lies beyond the gates of death. The Christian message is a message of expansion, of liberation, of enlargement. Christ gives us new outlooks, broad sympathies, immortal hopes, s