FUNCTIONS AND POWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 179, 19 October 1927, Page 9

FUNCTIONS AND POWER

CHURCH IN THE WORLD

FELLOWSHIP THE BASIS “When the Church ceased to be missionary it ceased to exist.” said Canon H. K. Archdall, in an address on “The Church and the World,” given in St. David’s Church last evening. The speaker said that all the strong things of the world, the intellect of the Greeks, the imperialism of Rome, and the ecclesiasticism of the Hebrews, had been wrought into the structure of the Church. A missionary organisation was required by the Church until Christ became incorporated in the whole of life. Group consciousness and group selfishness had been a great disease of recent experiments in civilisation. The same tragedy had occurred in church history, where pride and a spirit of antagonism had broken up the unity of the Church and had caused the growth of the division between “religious” and “secular.” Too often had religion tried to exert a forced control over various departments of human activity, with the result that the whole departments had broken away from religion altogether. %As an educationist, the speaker had been overwhelmed with the number of young men and women who had no general point of view and who did not want one. Fellowship had to become the basis of all social reform, or they were working from nowhere to nowhere. and the last end would be j worse than the first. j The speaker was accorded a vote of 1 thanks.