MORAL FIBRE.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19163, 21 November 1927, Page 8

MORAL FIBRE.

NEED OF THE AGE.

REV. MR PATERSON'S SERMON.

"To-day our intellectual power has outstripped our moral and spiritual capacity and that is what is wrong with tihe world," said the Rev. John Paterson (Wanganui), when preaching at St. Paul's Presbyterian Church last evening. The speaker added that we needed reinforcement of our moral and spiritual forces so that we might use wisely the tremendous benefits which modern science had conferred upon us. "Lei Christianity take possession of you, your mind, and your will, and then do as you like," added the speaker. It was a dangerous doctrine but then all great truths were dangerous. Some people put the emphasis on the second part of the command and completely ignored the first. Religion was not something imposed from without but was something wherein each might express himself in the most advantageous way. It was the gift of a new and free life which could not be cribbed and confined. If this, the greatest of all truths, were realised, Church government, and ritual sank into insignificance and sectarianism disappeared. It mattered not to what Church a man belonged if his Christianity gave expression to the best within him. With our rapid progress in natural affairs, our moral and spiritual progress had lagged behind. We needed to attain moral and spiritual maturity and to act from an individual sense of duty, _ rather than to do a thing from habit, custom, or because it was considered respectable.