CHURCH-GOING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1237, 25 April 1914, Page 3

CHURCH-GOING.

STRAIGHT-TALKING BY REV. MR. WOODWARD. During the course of his address at the annual meeting of parishioners of All Saints’ Church on Thursday evening, the vicar said : “I would like to say something with regard to church-going. I suppose we have all realised that this is not a church-going age ; the greater majority of people ignore the duty of public worship. It is,” he continued, “by no means an uncommon experience to bear both men and women boast that they have not been to church for years, and some, that they have never entered a place of worship since childhood. This slackness in public worship—which, however we look at it, is a duty mankind owes to a Merc:... has been put down by many eminent modern thinkers to three great causes: (1) the spirit of liberty enjoyed by humanity in the world to day, (2) to the mulliplicitj of all kinds of labour, (3) to an inordinate love of pleasure. Yet it does not seem feasable, c.r in keeping with sound that liberty, the right of man to behave as he wills towards his Maker, should be sufficed cause lor abseutiug himself from public worship with his fellow creatures. Nor does the argument that our occupations are such that we have no time for Sunday religious duties, for we find that among the most constant churchgoers are our busiest men and women, and some ot the hardest-wotkers of a community. Neither can we think that Sunday pleasures, which take so many forms, a real solution to the problem of non-attendance at church. lam disposed to believe that there is something deeper, something more awful, of which these three suggestions are merely the outward results, and I venture to say it is a loss ot the individual consciousness of God’s Presence, Man has begun to build round his life a false idea that be is his own master, that there is nothing in the universe to which he owes allegiance. The thought that he owes his existence to a Creator who demands acknowledgment and adoration from His creatui* does not enter his mind. Instead of depending on One who is the source of all that goes to make up his existence, he begins to depend upon himself, which means a slavish pursuit after material things. Thus, by a curious perversion of mind, there is a daily inward shrivelling-up of his moral force, until the only consciousness left in him is a consciousness of self. Such a person becomes morally incapable of worshipping a Supreme Being, for he is unconscious of the Being of God. If this is true, it is not difficult to understand why so many people refuse to acknowledge God in public worship—they do so, for in reality they have no consciousness of God’s Presence, and therefoie it would be incongruous to worship that which to them does not exist. Our concern, then, .is not so much with a disapproval of Sunday desecration, but with the loss of the individual consciousness of God’s Presence. What we have to do is to teach men of God’s Presence in the world ; to make them feel that Presence, and to lead them to realise that there is one Omnipotent Power who sees, who knows, and who understands. The moment man becomes conscious of the Presence of God he changes his whole life, tor he has but one desire, and that is to become a son of God —one who is daily becoming fit to live in that Presence. This may be a dream, but it realised the Church would no longer be empty, there would be a great awakening, and what is more, the evidence of a belief in the Divine Imminence.”