REVISION OF PRAYER BOOK.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 237, 17 May 1928, Page 4

REVISION OF PRAYER BOOK.

“LET NON-ESSENTIALS GO" The Ideal and the Real. Preaching in St. Paul's Church, Putaruru, on Sunday evening, the Rev. E. Ward made forcible reference to the present divided state of Chi-istendom. Taking as his text Rev. chap. 21 verse 22 the speaker drew attention to the divine ideal of worship contained in the wonderful imagery of the Book of Revelation, under which ideal those who had entered the Holy City worshipped God with one heart and one voice. In contrast to that divine ideal he invited his hearers to contemplate the 500 divisions of Christendom at the present time, most of those divisions being arrayed in hostility, each to each, and presenting an appalling spectacle of disunion.

Much of that hostility, he stated, was over matters that judged by the apostolic standards of faith as disclosed in the New Testament were non-essential. He instanced the present turmoil in his own Communion over the revision of the Book of Common Prayer. I here the chief cause of dissension was the question of the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament. Where, he asked, in the primitive Church was there to be found any grounds for regarding that as of the essence of faith ?

What is needed is to get down to essentials -and let the non-essentials go. There is happily at the present time a movement in the Anglican Church towards a wider comprehensiveness and a greater toleration. One Of the ablest of the English bishops, Bishop Temple, son of a previous Archbishop of Canterbury, had published proposals of a remarkable breadth for admitting to the Church’s Communion of members of other n of the ministry of those not epsit Christian bodies, and for a recognicopally ordained. Though there were churches embracing many millions who set insuperable obstacles in the way of reunion there were yet signs that bid us hope.

He urged his heai-ers to keep before their minds the glorious ideal of united worship set before us in God’s revelation, the terrible disparity between that ideal and the condition of things actually existing on earth, and to strive by cultivating the spirit of love towards those from whom we are now separated, to bridge the gulf between the ideal and the deplorable reality.