Church Work and Life

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 893, 10 February 1930, Page 14

Church Work and Life

Messages from the Pulpits

FROM BOY TO MAN

WRECKS WHICH CANNOT BE SALVAGED MODERATOR’S SERMON “The change from boyhood to j manhood and from girlhood to ! womanhood is attended often with grave peril. What a: tragedy it is that the relations of the boy who I has been a friend and confidant of father and mother should suffer a shipwreck which can never be salvaged in this world.” The words were spoken by the Iter, Professor "William Hewitson, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church o£ New Zealand, preaching on “The Relation of the Growing Son and His Mother” in the Mount Eden Presbyterian Church last, evening. The moderator took one of his texts from St. John., chapter ii., verse 4: “Jesus saith unto her, Woman,' what have I to do with thee? Mine j hour is not yet come.” “Jesus was asserting his independence when his mother was making suggestions concerning his future life,” Professor Hewitson explained. “A change had taken place in the life of our Lord. It takes place in the lives of all of us. “This change is characterised by a growing self-consciousness and a separation of our life from those around us; in discerning what the philosophers call the subjective and the objective. Up to then our life is rooted in other people, but as the years pass there is a growth of personality and life concentrates itself like a whirlpool, bringing other objects into its swing. Thus the development of personality is one great change. Another is the transition from a condition of dependence to one of independence in the several spheres. INSATIABLE CURIOSITY “When we begin our lives we are dependent wholly on those around us, and nothing is dependent so long as the young of the human race,” the preacher coutinued. But that state could not endure for ever, and the time came when we were able not only to be independent but also to have others dependent on us. Similarly in the sphere of the mind, 'n youth we depend on othfTs for our Knowledge, but God had given us an insatiable curiosity. The child was always asking questions. It was not satisfied with what its parents told it. It must see for itself. The wise teacher encouraged the child to look for itself, but that was a very difficult thing sometimes. Some people saw things in the newspapers, and that was the end of it for them. They would swallow anything.

“We should teach ourselves to look and see for ourselves, and not depend on others, but on our sight and intuition.

“The research student will not be disrespectful to the accumulation of knowledge by those who have gone before, but he will not be under their domination. He will look through the microscope himself.

“As with the physical and mental spheres, there is a transition in the moral sphere also,” the moderator said. When small the child depended on its parents and its minister as to what was right and what was wrong, it was told that this was a sound belief and that was a false one. “But as we move on we should not close our lives and be satisfied witli what is given. It is the very essence of Protestantism that we do not accept what the mother church say, 3 without thinking for ourselves.” PERILS OF THE CHANGE The moderator then went on to deal with the perils accompanying the change from childhood to manhood and womanhood, and said that sometimes the shipwrecks in relations between children and parents were reactions against the state of dependence. The boy became aggressive, i assertive and argumentative. A pert little miss was seen contradicting her mother, a youth his father. The danger was greater where the child had ability and strong personality. “When parents make a sacrifice to give their children an education and these children speak intolerantly of their parents, that is a tragedy. Though they know they are right, the knowledge of the sacrifice of their parents should compel them to keep the silence. “Sometimes this wreckage is due not to the children but to the parents who fail to realise the change which has taken place. They don’t see that a time comes when the child should stand on its own feet. “Often a boy when he has grown up is treated as a boy, and sometimes a boy is treated as a man when he is still in swaddling clothes. Both of these are tragic mistakes. “There is a time when a child must for its moral well-being, do a thing Jtithout being given a reason—just because its father or mother says so God doesn’t always give us a reason for what He does, as in the unknown country where we often have to go. LORD MACAULAY’S SACRIFICE “Some things will only grow in the darkness. Trust could not exist in tne light. “No age can be fixed when the change takes place, and parents need with" & it ,® uperhuman wisdom to deal P artic hlarly to the young ?™™ 1 ; h the , professor drew examples from the lives of Ruskin and Lord Macaulay. The former, when the foremost art critic in England, often bowed to the opinions of his mother on a subject in which he was supreme. Macaulay, when a young man in the ministry of a Government resigned with a big future ahead of him because a slavery Bill did not agree with his father’s opinions.” It was true that in that Macaulay hud reached the utmost fringe of human virtue.

MODERN MARTYRS

SOVIET PERSECUTION OF RUSSIAN CHURCH

“WHY IS BRITAIN SILENT?” “Reports from Russia have brought sorrow and discredit to the Church at large,” said Canon C. H. Grant Cowen in the course of a sermon on “Twentieth-Cen-tury Martyrdom—the Church in Russia,” in St. Matthew’s Church last evening. rjiHE canon said prayers for the persecuted members of the Church in Russia at the conclusion of which the congregation stood in sympathetic silence.

“In these days of Christianity and civilisation, when the Church has been allowed to live in the fullest possible freedom and to exercise her religious belief in a spirit of toleration, the revelations which have been made regarding the persecution of members of the Orthodox Church in Russia come as a great shock,” Canon Grant Cowen said.

After referring to reported cruelty of Soviet Government representatives at a meeting of protest in London, the speaker said that such happenings made him doubt the power of the 20th century civilisation. The resolutions passed at the meeting must be approved by every Christian congregation throughout the world. The Soviet authorities had forbidden any Church to hold meetings for children or young folk. • Bible-classes and religious instruction were forbidden, while the young people were being formed into bands called “the Red Pioneers,” and they had been encouraged to fight against religion and to urge a pitiless war on religion of any kind in the schools or in the home. The one desire of the Soviet seemed to be to destroy all existing forms of religious worship, Canon Grant Cowen declared. Under the Labour Government in England the British Empire had once again entered into relationship with Russia. At one time in her history England would not have remained aloof, but would have raised strong protest against the diabolical cruelty being exercised against the Christian Church. So far no official word of protest had come from the British Cabinet. The vicar said he hoped that all men and women who professed to be Christians would stand side by side with their persecuted and martyred brethren in Russia, and that Auckland, as well as every other city in the Empire, would hold meetings to urge the British Government to make strong representations to the Soviet to bring the persecutions to an end. He intended to bring the matter up at the next meeting of the Council of Christian Congregations in Auckland, so that a public meeting might he arranged on the lines indicated.