CHRISTIAN ORDER

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 249, 22 October 1942, Page 6

CHRISTIAN ORDER

I ADDRESS BY ARCHBISHOP. "RACIAL DISORIMINATION CONDEMNED," The outstanding event in AnG'lican Church life during the year has, according to the Primate (Archbishop West-Watson), been the campaign throughout the Dominion i'or Christian order, in which six of the seven dioeeses within the Province have participated actively with other churches. "We are not proposing a new, order," declared the Archbishop, as president of the Christchurch Dio- 1 cesan Synoa, in a sermon before I members in the Cathedral (reports ; the Press) . "Christian order is the I order which began with Pentecost, ' v.'hieh was enshrined in the earliest 1 Christian Church, which is mirrored j in the ' New Testament, and which, ! in spite of the most cruel persecu- ; tions and misunderstandings, in 1 some 300 years received the submis- j sion of the Roman Empire." But various factors, he explained, ! had contributed ,to the breaking up ' of the order. The discovery of the ! New World and the enlargement of j rnan's horizon had something to do with it. Perhaps the most outstand- j ing factor was the well-meaning de- \ sire of the Church for uower to make !

rncn good. "And it experimented , with power of the wrong sort," added the Archbishop, "power to compel." The Church had feared and suspected the discoveries of the natural sciences. Many honest minds had "oeen driven to form a secular camp. When movements for social amelioration and reconstruction made their appearance, the Church had found itself so entangled with the established order of society that it could not easily conceive of any other order being ordained of God. Consequentially, many modern mcn and women looked askance at the Church: they asked themselves whether it had not outlived any usefulness it might have possessed, and for the present many of them accepted a more or less neutral position. HOPEFUL SIGNS. To day the world seemed to be losing its soul. Yet many within the Church were not piepared to abandon the body to dissolution. Archbishop West-Watson, instanctd' the Oxford Conference of 1937, the 10 points of the Roman and non-Roman leaders, the Commission of the British churches, and the Delaware Conference in the United States, as witnesses to the rising strength to this conviction. The campaign for Christian order in New Zealand was still another witness. "If restraint is needed in adopting particular panaceas for social and economic troubles with which we are to a certain extent familiar, how xiiuch greater is the need for wisdom in international affairs?" he asked. "There seems to be much truth ln the suggestion that the present world convulsions are the pains incident to the death of the old nationalism and the birth of an order which will be in some sense international." In the light of Christian principles, Jie said, the old order of national exclusiveness and irresponsibility, and of racial discrimination, must stand condemned. NO SUPERIORITY. Within the last century the great

churches had becorne world churches, and had blazed a trail leading to an approach to international fellowship on equal terms. The mother churches had abandoned their superiority complex: they realised that much had to be learned from daughter churches. One of the reasons for the perseeution of the Church to-day was its , obstinate refusal to have its worldfellowship dissolved and subordinated to sectional interests. "One of the greatest contributions that the OI urch can make to an international order is by holding fast at all costs to its supranational character, and dcmcnstrating practically that there is no insuperable bar to common thinking and common action between men of all colours, all races, all nations." The Archbishop believed that the indirect results from the appeal for a Christian order were already of great importance. The fact that the campaign had aroused opposition was a hopeful sign. "If it had not, in the world as it is," he said, "we might have despaired." But the fact that it had not enlisted more suppovt from the men of goodwili o.itside thchurches led him to ask: "Does the Church not need a new vision of the importance and glory of its message?" "We have no monopoly of the prcphetic office, and we must remember that it is much easier to outline policies which we think to be Christian than to implement them, especially when the world is so far from Christian. But we may well urge that in facing the problems that have so far baflled the best human ingenuity man is not left to himself. None of these problems is outside the fatherly care of God, and until men seek help in prayer and ask for guidance the solution may be hidden from them." The questicn of reunion *had for many years been laid on the conscience of a divided Church. The present erisis of a world falling to pieces had, unfortunately, found C'hristians still divided in outward policy. Nevertheless, thanks to v/orld conferences and consultations to which, he believed, they had been guided in recent years, they were becoming increasingly aware of a vital unity in Christ, a unity which was more fundamental than surface differences. "The things which unite us," declared the Primate, "are greater than those which divide us." V They were yarning about tobacco in the smoke- room on an Auckland Club the other night. A well-known doctor startled everybody by declaring that some brands were about as dangerous as dynamite, and mentioned the case of a man who had consulted him some time before for bad throat trouble. "I asked him," said the doctor, "what brand of tobacco he used. He told me, adding that he'd smoked it for months. "Knoek it off," I warned him. "I know that brand." "What brand would you recommend, doctor?" he asked. "Why the genuine 'toasted'," I said, "it's not only the finest tobacco I know of, but the purest." He's all right again now — and swears by 'toasted.' There's nothing like it." There isn't. But there are only five brands of the real thing, remember — Pocket Edition, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cut Plug No. 10 (Bulls- 1 head), Riverhead Gold and Desert Oold, The two last are the cigarette tobaccos so popular with the roll-your-own brlgade. But don't get "stung" when you buy! Imitations are no good.— 139.