THE PROPOSED CENOTAPH.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 June 1922, Page 4

THE PROPOSED CENOTAPH.

ITS TRUE SIGNIFICANCE. ENUNCIATED FROM THE PULPIT. In the course of his sermon at the people’s monthly service held at the Whiteley Memorial Church, New Plymouth, last night, the preacher (Rev. W. J. Elliott) referred to the cenotaph which it is proposed to erect in New Plymouth as a war memorial. Mr. Elliott said: “The citizens of this town and district have in mind the erection of a cenotaph as a memorial to the brave boys who sacrificed their lives in the war. Many things unite to justify us in doing so. The time is opportune. Indeed, we have been too tardy, and if we fail to surmount all the difficulties in the way ere long, our tribute will be a very belated one. We are inseparably linked with the past, and a due sense of our indebtedness to it is essential to a right conception of the claims of the present. Probably one of the greatest preachers produced by the Anglican Church in England was the pure-souled Robertson, of Brighton. The title of one of his noble sermons is, ‘Christian Progress by Oblivion of the Past.’ But advancement by such oblivion, I submit, cannot be achieved. We cannot cut ourselves adrift from the past. Its blood is in our veins, and the future is mortgaged to the past. The makers of history have bequeathed us great and generous legacies, and we owe them more than we can repay. One sows and another reaps. To divide ourselves from them would pauperise our life and make us poor indeed. From the unhallowed past and all the evil of history we would be free, but from the past of holy thought, heroic endeavor, and high conception we would not be divided. There is a desire in the hearts of most people that when they shall pass from the world they may be remembered by those they leave behind. The desire has manifested itself as a national characteristic, and we catch glimpses of it in the Hebrew race. The passionate longing for offspring was often with a view to keep alive the ancestral name. “One great secret in the growth of character and goodness is the art of prolonging right ideas, and preserving them alive in the hearts of the people. If external help aids us in this we should not ignore them. Even religion, though it is essentially a state of spirit, must have signs in Providence, churches, sacraments and other external aids to faith. Hence, we find tKat even our Lord Jesus Christ instituted a memorial and kaid, ‘This do In remembrance of me.’ The great and noble should be gratefully remembered. The brave souls are the royal souls, and they cannot be relegated to oblivion. Their life is indestructible. The cenotaph will be an outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual appreciation we cherish. It will tell future generations that all the freedom and blessing they enjoy have not been achieved by themselves. It will tell us that for our sakes the country put forth its glory, and brave young men in the prime of life fell on the field of battle, on the hoary deep, and sank beneath the pressure of disease and wounds in the noisome hospitals.

“It will be a solid and subliipe monument instinct with a host pf never silent voices saying unto us, ‘while the noble army brave generals and soldiers discharge their duty in this way Britain will live and not die. She will triumph and remain the. victor on every contested battle-ground.’ The cenotaph will be a perpetual reminder that the whole army of vanished and vanishing Anzacs are still persuading us to the love of freedom and justice and noble faith. It will insist, in season and out of season, that because the boys laid down their lives for us, we ought to lay down our lives for the brotherhood. It is not enough to have the sign of their heroic qualities and work enshrined in the cenotaph; we must have their spirit, their heroism, their calibre of soul, their willingness to die. It is possible to make a fetish of a relic, to venerate the dead and half worship the living, and yet be void of their moral and spiritual content. What an absurdity to have the cenotaph, and yet little or none of the magnanimous abandon and moral courage symbolised by it! What are we doing in the mighty struggle of an evil time, in the beautiful and bloodless battle of faith? Are we valiant and loyal subjects of the King of kings? What are we doing to stem the tides of sin and sorrow that roll in menacing fulness around us? “Beware, lest you have the bones of the Anzacs but none of their soul. It is possible to pay great reverence to these undying heroes without their vitalising spirit being breathed into our breaats. The noblest memorial to the fallen heroes is the reproduction of their heroism in the worries we have to endure, and the work we have to do. The cenotaph will suggest to us that the brave departed ones would transmit to us their spirit, -for such a thing does not perish. We do not mean to embalm the memory of dead heroes in a cenotaph, but rather to erect a tangible incentive, to emulate and express in the sphere of our own activities, the sacrificial life to which their example points. As the cenotaph is wreathed in flowers from time to time, it will speak to us of the undying flagrance of holy affection, and of life victorious over death. It will direct our attention to the endless day where ‘everlasting spring abides, and never-withering flowers.’ It will speak of re-union in the deathless world, where ‘from the ground there blossoms red life that shall endless be.’ ” A musical service was arranged, the following anthems being rendered by the choir: “The Lost Chord” and “Gloria.” Mr. B. P. Bellringer rendered the solo “Laud of Hope and .Glory” with refrain by the choir and orchestra.