PRESENT DAY UNREST.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3031, 4 May 1926, Page 2

PRESENT DAY UNREST.

♦ “FEAR GOD THAT THY BROTHER. MAY LIVE WITH YOU.” The Rev. Frank McDonald, preached a forceful sermon at Sunday’s evening service at the Presbyterian Church, basing his text on Leviticus XXV, 36: “Fear God that thy brother may live with you.” He opened his remarks by drawing a lesson from nature and plant life in respect to blight and other diseases. The most important part in man’s life, lie said, is that which lies open to the heavenly influence, irreverence and forgetfulness of God is highly contagious and extremely deadly. When society ceases to function heavenwards it is the sure precursor of decadence and death and the nation that despises God is already dead. Christ said: change the centres of your thoughts; live for God and for His Kingdom and the things of earth are yours from the Father’s bounty. Piety and philanthropy, love lo God and man are as closely related as the roots and branches of a tree. “He who does not love his brother and says lie loves God, is a liar; and he who does not love God hut says he loves his brother, is a fool as well as a liar,” quoted the preacher. Referring to the clamant demand to-day for a reconstruction of our social order, the preacher said this demand had created at once the Bolshevik excesses which had cursed Russia, and the League of Nations, which latter if men learn to fear God, will prevent international strife. He held that no beneficent reconstruction of society was possible without religion and it was the duty \)f the church to take up seriously this work and in this connection the members of the church may be profitably employed by educating the masses in economic ideals in which Christian law shall he basic and fundamental. He deprecated the sorbid, selfish saving of our own souls, hut urged the soldiers’ splendid example, eager to fight for righteousness or die. The new evangelism, said the preacher, was not to save ourselves, hut to save our world and to make the religion, of Jesus Christ effective in the building of the New Jerusalem on this earth. A common brotherhood cannot obtain unless we function in those powers of life which open towards Gpd. • The task before the world is a stupendous one and, he said, it must he undertaken by the whole people. “You can’t pay your parson to do it,” he said, “while you sit on a bench and criticise. If you don’t do your part, the job can’t go on.” The same thing applied to the removal of - the drink evil. Because the nations of the world did not fear God our brothers could not live. It was Cain’s it 8 *" reverence that produced the Jirsfc murder and murders of all kinds since have had the same source. The homicidal madness of the Great War was caused by a nation,\ “holding not the fear of God before it.” When the nations learn to fear God “the war drum will throb no longer and the flag of peace will he unfurled in the Parliament of man, the federation of the world.” Property takes the place of God, and we rank flesh and blood as the cheapest commodities of our-mar-kets. We are not brother-loving because we are not God-fearing. We have pinned our faith to science, force and wealth.. Our world, he said, is trending with the fear x of war, it is seething with unrest, it is a vast powder magazine that may be lighted by the hell fires of hate at any moment, because men have no fear of God. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I find selfishness and irreligion basic in the ideals of all political parties. In far too much our gods to-day are belly gods and in far too little do we fear and tremble before the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, before whose dread judgment bar we shall be called to give an -account of the good we have omitted to do to our brother.” The preacher concluded by stating that if in deed and in truth we fear God, that, fear will quicken us to a wider sympathy, a truer understanding and a more, effective'service and the holy longing of the Psalmist will be realised as we behold how good and pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.