CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 982, 28 February 1910, Page 5

CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.

The Rev. A. Hodge conducted the services after an absence of two Sundays in Auckland. At the evening service, which was well attended, Mr Hodge took for his text, John 6, 31, "Our father's did eat mana in the desert; as it is written. He gave them bread from heaven to eat." Which, he said, told: first the threefold story, viz., the story of the desert life, which has its temporal and spiritual application; the story of the miraculous provision, which story is true to-day; and the story of the origin of the mana, which in the second place led to the spiritual mana, 3ven Christ tbe Bread of Life, as He declared Himself to be, at which the Jews murmured; which again led to the third point, "the present day infidelity with regard to the Church, the scriptures and the divinity and glory of Jesus the Son of God. Speaking of the Church at worship, Mr Hodge deplored the tendenay to make tbe "raiment more than the life," and referred to the humiliation that the high Church section of the Church of England was suffering at the present time, by being pointed at with the finger of scorn by the Roman Catholic Church, in the voice of Father Vaughan, because their Churches are "all decked out like ours," and because "they are always mimicking us"; and, also, by certain of their own great and wise leaders, such as Archbishop Benson, who long ago protested against the Anglican clergy "fingering the trimcets of Rome." Speaking with regard to the integrity of the scriptures, and the divinity of Jesus Christ, the preacher said that if he had the power'he would take the advice of Dr. Wilbur Chapman to the official missionary boards of all the denominations, viz , to recall at once- every man and woman from the mission field' who doubts for a moment the authority and integrity ot Ihe scriptures'or questions the supreme glory of Jesus Christ Mr Hodge urged his congregation to uphold simplicity of worship and to build up their spiritual fibre upon the food that our fathers did eat, even the "hid Jen mana'promised by the spirit unto the Churches, to him that o/e> ca n?th.