CHURCH ATTENDANCE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1085, 17 April 1913, Page 3

CHURCH ATTENDANCE.

OUTSPOKEN UTTERANCES BY REV. G. Y. WOODWARD.

At the annual meeting of All Saints’ parishioners on Tuesday night, the vicar, Rev Mr Woodward, in bis annual report, dealt with the subject of church attendance. He said

“If you take all the seating accommodation in Foxton in all the churches, I suppose it would reach something about 800, and our population covering the church area would be about 3,000. Supposing we take a very good Sunday and, say, 800 people are at worship, what are the 2,200 doing ? That is the problem we should try and solve ; that is the disgrace which makes us bang our heads and refrain from any boasting. • We are responsible, and our responsibility lies in the fact that we know what is right and do it not. How many of our good church people are absolutely indifferent to the services of the church ? How seldom we are seen there; how careless we are about seeing that our children go ; bow any excuse is seized, so as to make it appear impossible to attend. We who belong to the Church of England should set a good example to those around us. If people saw us going every Sunday to church they would go, for example is-better than words. Now, when I tell you this, that the number of professing Anglicans is three times the number the church will hold, it shows only too plainly what a long way we have to go yet. Where, then, is the failure in those 2,200 ? It is not so much in the enticement of pleasure, in the desire for ease and rest on that day, but tp my mind it is in something more awful — the darkness and ignorance of spiritual things. In this 20th Century, people are ignorant of the glory and power and majesty of the living God. They are unacquainted with the Incarnation and Atonement; with the promise ot the Risen and Ascended Life in Christ; of the pleading love of the Holy Spirit. Could we rob God of public worship if we had that true knowledge of God? Is it not because we do not know Him —because we are still ignorant of His great glory—that we are really indifferent ?” He then dealt at length with those of their own Communion, and the history of the Church and teachings. In conclusion, he said : “What is needed to day are soldiers —not only to fight the dragon of ignorance in heathen and foreign lands —but in our own fair Dominion, and in the homes of our people, who, in spite of education and a high civilisation, are steeped in a darkness as thick as that in Melanesia or New Guinea.