CROSS USED AS WHIP

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 603, 4 March 1929, Page 14

CROSS USED AS WHIP

SERMON BASED ON FILM SERVICE AT STRAND Before an audience which filled the Strand Theatre last evening- the Rev. <\ G. Scrimgeo'jr, Methodist City Missioned gave an address based on the now famous film, "The Ten Commandments.” How many good people like the mother of John and Danny McTavish hold up a cross to their children and friends, but use it like a whip?” said Mr. ScrimgeoU). - . "Some people regard their acceptance! of some particular « reed as a divine right to damn all who dare to differ from theirs; while the very life of the founder of Christianity was a protest against formality and a living example of humility and service. “When an ordinary person listens to the various creeds expounded by differing bodies for the salvation of a human soul, ho sometimes asks, ‘Who, then, can be a Christian?’ "In reply to this I invite you to read the Gospel of St. Matthew, chapter xiv., verse- 16.” A scene in a desert place, where Jesus had come to rest, but the c rowd had followed. Five thousand people drawn from every walk of life were there—the carpenter, the keeper of the vineyard, the shrewd traders, the husky fisherman—good and bad. The disciples wanted to >end them away, but the Man who had « hosen among His closest companions, the quick-tempered Peter, the unfaithful Judas, the doubtful Thomas, said: “They need not depart; give ye them to cat.” He would not send them away; instead He healed their ills and fed them. How different things would be to-day if the creeds of Christianity were as big as Christ’s. To the lowly .sinner, the indifferent hearer and the great multitude of toilers the Great Companion of them all says: “They need not depart.” And while the fundamentalist and the modernist fight His command, “Give ye them to eat,” falls on deaf ears. “I ask God,” concluded the speaker, “that it may never be so in my life. See to it that it is not so in yours.”