UNITED CHRISTMAS SERVICE

Evening Star, Issue 20059, 27 December 1928, Page 14

UNITED CHRISTMAS SERVICE

A Christum' service arranged -for hy the Council of Christian Congregations was licit! in Knox Church on Tuesday morning. Her. W. Walker, president/ of the council, presided, and he and Dr E. N. Mer.-ington shared in the devotional exercises. Rev. George Miller, secretary of the council, rend St. Luke’s account of the angels’ visitation to tho shepherds apt! their visit to the manger-cradle, of the Saviour-King. The, sermon was preached by the Rev. Albert Mead, M.A., of the Moray Place Congregational Church, and was based on tl words: “'Rehold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.” 'lbe shepherds, he said, represented our common humanity, and were the first to hear the good news. They were not expecting it, but. fulfilling their daily task. Spiritual visions came with startling swiftness and suddenness. Christianity did no' come into flic world as a, religion, with a fixed creed, a ceremonial system, or a church order, and yet it triumphed because it had a gospel. Buddhism was a religion, but had no gospel MahoinmedamMii was a religion, but had no gospel. Jesus came preaching good tidings of the Kingdom of God. He did not use conventional terms. He used simple words, and the common'people heard him gladly. His teaching was so new and fresh and vital that the people gained from Him a new experience of God. The deepest knowledge of God was always born out of experience. The first hearers of Christ’s Gospel began to feel that God was not an abstract theory but a. practical reality. So they came lo regard Christ as the Word of God, the articulate expression of God m His human personality. Jesus Christ was Himself the Gospel: the goodness was embodied in Him. There would have been -no Gospels T there had not been previously a. Gospel. The gospels wore the record of (ho impressions made upon the, earliest disciples by the lifo and teaching of the Master. They were seeking for intensity and‘fullness of life, and they found it by personal experience of the fellowship with Jesus Christ. And the church spread.in tho early days not because the first believers proclaimed a new religion, but because they heralded a Gospel. Much had been said about tiio world not needing a religion, but it needed a gospel, and no one bad hrpiigbt it sue)' good news as Jesus Christ, had done. The fine task of tho church was to repeat this good_ news from age to age. In doing this tho world must realise her essential unity and all her diversity. She could not hope to have uniformity of thought or of church order, hut she could bo united in her presentation of Christ as tho good nows of God to the world. A now revival was coming—not of the Moody and Sankey type nor of tho Wesley and Whitfield typo—but a revival heralded hy a new conception of the thought of'Jesus Christ and a new desire to live in fellowship with His Spirit. At the close of the service tiio Rev. W. Walker referred to the splendid service which had been rendered to tho city hy tho Rev. Tulloch Ynille during his eight years’ ministry at Knox Church, and assured him and Mrs Ynille and their family of the earnest hope and prayer of tho people that they might be divinely protected in all their travelling, spend a njost enjoyable holiday, and return in due time to resume their life and work among us. The collection taken during the service was devoted to the charitable work of, the Presbyterian Social Service Association. •