REV. JAMES FLANAGAN'S MISSION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 89, 3 April 1908, Page 3

REV. JAMES FLANAGAN'S MISSION.

SOME TELLING REMARKS. The last of this week's services in the Rev. Jauies Flanagan's mission wa.i held last night at the Theatre Royal. There was a larger attendance than at any previous week-night meeting. Before entering upon his sermon proper, the missioner explained what was meant by "sinning unto death," a brother having mentioned this since the previous I night's service. .Sin was lawlessness, I and it manifested itself in mauy forms, j There were the sins of hatred, of sciisiiI ality, and of spiritual unclcanness, hut at the root the disease was one. Man, I he said, might sin against his reason, but yet not against his conscience. He might sin against his conscience, yet not against his judgment. He illustrated the point. They had read, no doubt, of the days of the Inquisition, when the Catholic Church used to rack people in dark dungeons. They had heard and read of the burning of martyrs at the stake, when the clergy of those days made bonfires of some ot the best men of their time. Xow, he did not believe that those priests, in their racking and burning, were sinning against their consciences, for they were urinlv convinced that they were doing the "right thing for God; but they were sinning against human reason. When Napoleon gave hU soldiers the freedom 01 a conquered citv, and those men dipped their swords i.i the blood of the innocent citizens, he

was sinning against his conscience, and he regretted that right up to the la-t hour of his life. It was possible, saiJ the missioner, lor a man to be live on one side of his nature and dead on the other. A man could, so to speak, wring the neck of his conscience. The voice would get less and less until it became hushed and heard no more, lien listened to preaching and preaching until the preacher had almost to wring his soul to nuke an impression. If they would hut be true to the truth that was in them, discarding other outward things, they would "follow the gleam" and tread aright. Only the night before a young man, a prominent church worker in New Plymouth, had told the preacher of his '"sin unto death," for which theie was no forgiveness. Whilst he knew that his soul would go to Heaven, he knew also that he had so violated his body that he would be in his tomb be-

fore he reached the age of thirty. "Some of you young fellows"—and the missioner ftjed his earnest gaze on the young men at the back—"if you go on playing the gam e that you are playing, you'll be dead before you are forty.' They would not for any consideration allow others to know what they werj doing—the game they were playing- He had listened in Dunedin to the confes-

sion of a young man. It was a tale of horror, such as he had never before heard, revolting iu the extreme, and when he told but a fringe of it to the resident clergyman in whose study the interview took place, the latter said he would not hav c l>elicved there was a man in Dunedin who could have descended to such a hell as that. The tale had made the missioner feel, he said, that lie J wanted to go out in th e fresh air to : breathe the fresh air and to wash himI self, so as to free his ljody from the stain. Such a story he might have expected in some quarter, of London, but not in that young city oi Dunedin. Mr. Stephens sang a nacred song descriptive of the difficulty experienced by the Spirit in reaching the heart of man —and the end, death without hope. The Rev. Mr. Flanagan founded his principal effort on the words, "For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus ChnM," tin- text being found in 1. Corinthians, iii., 1!. The preacher connected with this the "Sermon on the Mount/' referring particularly to the two men who built their houses one upon a foundation of rock and the other upon *and. A man always looked for assuer e foundation for earthly things. No man would build a house on land that everyone knew would fall away. Of. ii be did, he would be regarded a* a lunatic. The foundation of all the churches—Roman, Anglican, or Dissenting—was one and th e same. The frills and ornaments of the religion differed, but the foundation was the sani".

What was the one sure foundation upon which a man could rest for -alvation? Jesus. It was not the Virgin, not tho Fathers, not the kirk, not the ordinance,

not theology, not dogma, not even experience, but Jesus. A man might have a fine "religious experience," and shout ■■Glory to God," and yet not pay twenty

shillings in the pound! Some New Plymouth people were building upon the foundation of "inconsistencies of Christian-." They cam* 1 to him and said, "Do von know So-and-So in the Primitive Methodist Church? Well, if he seK to glory I needn't Iwther myself. When a man wanted to cross a stream, did he build his bridge out of frail, rotten twig*? In buying apples, would they select the rotten ones from the basket? Not if the applewoman knew it. She would object to the buyer taking as sample- the "two or three rotten one> that got -lipi>eil in." And if there wvrc one or two humbugs in a congre-

g.ition. wa< it fair to conclude that all were rotten? What a poor, mi-crabb-.

tlimsy excuse for not lieing a Christian. There were those people who objected to churches, and Bibles, and Sunda'.'

schools, and so on. To them he would say, '"Emigrate: get out of the country. . . . There's plenty of room out there in Africa. But they'd eat you for breakfast." The people who had kept the race and the nation from going to rottenness and death were humble followers of Christ. He instanced the late Lord Kelvin and th e late Mr. Wad-tone. He referred in touching language to the deathbed scene of this great statesman, and referred to the moral majesty of the man. Returning to the "inconsistencies," he stigmatised these as the broken twigs, and asked if any man hoped from the rotten bits of other \ people's characters to make a raft upon which to sail to Heaven. Then they were told that even ministers of the gospel wer e laughing at the word "conversion." Well might the devil hold hi"h carnival. There was need for a resurrection of the old kind of preaching. It was too gentle. As the late Mr. Gladstone had once said, the great weakness in the preaching of to-day was the lack of emphasis on sin. Sin »a< not sin now, but merely a twist. People there were who considered there was a chance of mercy outside of Christ. Were that proved to him. he would never again prr.uli unless it were to cxi>o-,> the cruelty of Cod. If there were any other road to salvation but by tlw Cror-, where was huinanitr, the Bible, and Ccd? It would change earth into hell. Were there any other way

but through ClirKt, then the crndfixion became unnecessary cruelty. But. returning to the text, 'other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." Concluding, the missioner made an earnest appeal to his bearers to see to it that they got upon the Bock, the only safe foundation."