PROGRESS OF RIGHT

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 383, 18 June 1928, Page 14

PROGRESS OF RIGHT

ANSWER TO PESSIMISM

Preaching at the Central Methodist Mission last evening from the subject, “The Everlasting Sign of God.” Mr. H. Spencer Ratcliffe deplored the fact that so many Christian people hindered the work of Christ by their pessimistic belief that Christianity is losing ground instead of gaining it. He contended that the “good old days” were never so visible as now—that the sign of God’s working on earth was never more visible than to-day. In support of this, he showed that there was a great increase in the works of good and mercy; that although mankind was by no means perfect, yet there was a greater practice of brotherhood than in any past generation. He particularly emphasised the “divine discontent" which at present exists in the minds of most young people concerning spiritual matters. “No longer," he said, “are we content to take the words of our leaders as gospel truth. Neither are we dumb. Wo want to know the why and the wherefore of such things. I am preaching doctrines which would cause my father much horror if he knew; yet who dares to say that this discontent, this searching after things, this refusal to act as brainless sheep led in a mob, is not a sign of Christian progress—one of the everlasting signs of which Isaiah wrote?" He told how men looked for God’s sign, and because of their folly they missed it. In great calamities and great deliverances they acknowledged Him, but in the coming of a breath of spring to a winter-stricken world they did not see the sign. The Jews looked for God’s sign in the opening of the heavens, and the unveiling of His glory and power, and when His sign was in their midst, in the form of a small baby, it was unrecognised. “Let us look for God in the humdrum things of life —the kitchen and the office," said the preacher. “Wherever good comes from evil, and right from wrong; wherever the fir tree takes the place of the thorn, and the myrtle tree supersedes the briar; wherever there is a beneficent change—there is the everlasting sign of the working of God."