RELIGION’S GREAT TEST

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1077, 15 September 1930, Page 5

RELIGION’S GREAT TEST

BROTHERLINESS IS REAL TRIAL “DON’T ARGUE RELIGION” “And great grace was upon them all,” was the text upon which the Rev. W. Gilmour, minister of the Balmoral Presbyterian Church, founded his address on ‘‘Religion’s Great Test” last evening. ‘‘The story of the early Christians tells us how men who have received the Holy Spirit will regard their property and how they dispose of it.” said Mr. Gilmour. ‘‘When a man says, ‘l’m going to do what I please with what belongs to me,’ one may infer that he and the Holy Spirit have not had any recent dealings with each other. A spiritual revival would play pranks with our conventional economics and that because it would make us different. The trouble in Russia today is that they put the cart before the horse. The early Christians were simply flooded with a spirit of generosity and they did the brotherly and generous things because they could not help themselves. The final test of our Christianity lies in the character of our personal relationship one with the other. Xot tongues, not prophecy, not holy-rolling is Christianity, says Paul, but people loving one another. “Most of our troubles in the Church,” said Mr. Gilmour, in closing, “have their origin in a shortage of spiritual vitality. Controversies are symptoms of low spiritual life, and unconscientiously who engage in them are lighting against the truth of God.” At the evening service the church was filled to listen to a sacred service of song by the choir.