ANGLICAN MISSION.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 86, 12 April 1911, Page 8

ANGLICAN MISSION.

BISHOP WALLIS'S TAEEWELL SEHMON. Bishop Wallis preached his farewell, sermon in Wellington at the mission service for men at St. Peter's, Willis-Street, at noon. He took as his text the words cf our Saviour : "My God, my Cod, why hast Thou forsaken me?" These were (eaid his Lordship) the bitterest of all Arords that had fallen from human lips. What must these' words huve meant to our Lord Jesub Christ? When Chri«t was brought face to i'ada with the sorrows of human life, He could still say : "Father, I know that Thou hearesl me always." "My first thought," said his Lordship, "is of thankfulness that the cry from the Cross -was recorded . . . . \ for making Rh servants brave enough to leave these words en record as they have been given to us." Surely by this Christ shovred His intense sympathy with our own suffering. His Lordship went on to refer to the added suffering entailed when there were alternations of hope and a great uncertainty. .Jesus Christ knew this feeling oi uncertainty. He • knew He was to be beti-ayed into the liands of the Gsntiles — there was something He was afraid of, and from which He shrank. That thought should help us ■.all. Even when in dubious moments of prayer, when the kneeler felt that God was indeed far away, it was comforting to think that even Christ once felt something like this. Touching on the mystery of our Lord's Atonement, the bishop reminded how He had been made the propitiation for all our sins. He knew the desolation of sin and suffering. Ought not that and "Chrisfs own. suffering help us to 'make 'us hate our' sins more than ever? And God was ever waiting to wash those sins away. When doubt came -they should think of how Jesus Christ, in His time of trial of faith, clasped God with both hands, as it were. No on© could be cast off from God who could cry "My God, my God ! Why hast Thou forsaken me?" If in such moments they could only realise as they prayed that Goo? was wiik them, then, would pass away from the 'soul the awful sense of desolation. The Ecv. J. W. Sykes, Upper Hutt, •conducted the concluding service at St. Peter's.