A DIVIDED CHURCH

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 775, 23 September 1929, Page 10

A DIVIDED CHURCH

APPEAL FOR UNITY EACH SECTION ITS OWN MISSION “Is the Church divided?” asked the Rev. R. C. Roberts, of the Mount Eden Congregational Church, last evening, when he spoke upon the text, “There are diversities of operation, but it is the same good that worketh all in all.” Mr. Roberts answered his own question in the affirmative, .and said the Church must be one in the highest and -deepest sense. , “Let each section of the Church do its own peculiar work,” he said, “and exercise its own peculiar gift, and at the same time recognise others as desiring the same power and the same authority from the same common source. Each section is willing for union on condition that it be allowed to swallow up the other sections, just as Pharaoh’s lean %kine swallowed up the fat kine. If a church is doing good work, why not recognise that as a sane manifestation of God’s presence and the working of God’s Spirit? There is no one section that has a monopoly of all the gifts and all the secrets of God. “Let us not forget that our divisions within the Church are as nothing compared with the divisions in the outside world. Just think of the gulfs between individuals, families, classes and sections in society. The world is divided socially, intellectually, economically and racially, ( and there are groups everywhere, each one claiming to hold the secret. “To bring about a greater unity we must find and acknowledge and preserve the element of truth and worth in each division and cross-section of life. Let us find a larger and a richer unity which shall contain and do justice to the several differences, and above all select a field for Christian work and practice, and then only will the Church of God move onward like a mighty army.”