REV. J. G. CHAPMAN

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 289, 1 May 1911, Page 4

REV. J. G. CHAPMAN

WELCOMED IX WELLINGTON. A very hearty welcome was accorded! to the Kev. J. (>. Chapman, the ncwlvappointed minister ot Wesley Church, in the Wesley Hall, on Thursday night. Mr. W. E. Redstone presided. The Rev. J. G. Chapman, who was received with loud applause, thanked th» members of the church for the hearty, manner in which they had welcomed him and his family. He urged the people to have faith in God, faith in themselves, and faith in the possibilities of their Church. He remembered the time when their church was filled with worshipper* every Sunday. Let them have faith that what lias been in te past will be again. "Don't talk your Church down," said Mr. Chapman, "talk i't up. A man who talked down his business would soon have no business to talk about. Wear the optimistic smile and sound the optimistic note, and soon others will catch the contagion of your optimism, and before long this Church will take its place among the foremosit of our city." Mr. Chapman said lie was not afraid of criticism, but let it be fair and to his face. Where there is criticism 'there is life. He -would sooner preach to a church full of critics than to a church full of apathetic and indifferent bearers. They might think sometimes that they were right and he was wrong, whereas it might be just as probable that ho was right and thev were wrong. While he occupied the pulpit he would stand for a manly, robust) reasonable type of Christianity. No preacher had ft right to expect anyone to believe anything that was contrary to his reason and to his moral sense. While there was much in Christianity that transfended human reason, there was no« thing that opposed human reason. He was not concerned so much about getting men into heaven when they die a* getting heaven into men while bhey are alive. Christianity affects not only the soul of a man, but the whole of hw conduct and life. A man who divorced business, polities, and civic responsibilities from his religion, had a residue of religion that was not worth paying postage on to send to the heathen. He was not concerned about squaring his teaching by the spirit level of the Church's orthodoxy. Conformity to the traditions of a past age had been, and still was, the bane of the Church. This must be an age of emancipation. Truth was never given to be made up into formularies and creeds for inen to subscribe to. Truth was given to help men to become true, and the supreme concern of man should be not to bo orthodox but to be true—to see the truth, to love the truth, and to be obedient to the (ruh, Mr. Chapman desired that their church should become a home where the weary toilers of the city might find rest, where men who were fighting a hard battle against the world forces might be heartened and cheered, where those who were in danger of losing themselves in the vortex Of unworldliness might catch visions of the spiritnal and eternal, and where the highest and divinest faculties of man might be ministered unto and strengthened—Dominion.