Churches Urged To Combine Operations

Chronicle (Levin), 3 November 1948, Page 5

Churches Urged To Combine Operations

WELLINGTON, Nov. 2. "Churches calling on the nations to unite while themselves not Christian enough to be able to heal their own divisions are a scandalous speetacle, " declared- the Right Reverend Cecil ,1. Tocker of Invercargill speaking as Moderator to the General Assenibly of the Presbvterian Church which opened in Wellington last night. He quoted the Moderator of the Church of yeotland as saying "More than ever before tlie supreme issue for the Churches throughout the world is to unite. We need eombined 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 age with utterly ehanged and changing human ontlooks and customs, said JMr. Tocker, the Churches must make considerable organisational changes. Otherwise, when a new evangelical fervour arises and a new clarity of mind concerning the content of the Christian message, they will be saflly hindered in givii)^ it to the community. However, inMhe present formative years when the strueture 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, ov 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 permanenee 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 augupt Will. Our brave new world will fall like a house of cards because of its own inherent defects, as did Nazi Germany and the Rome of lo'ng ago, unless it can be builded 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 pjace? Jesus' parahi e of the man who biiilded 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, " coneluded 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 tke stats into comnion and preferred . . . if the Ghurch iB disownedj the age only , advances progressivejy baekwards. ' "