VALUE OF MISSIONS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10111, 5 October 1910, Page 4

VALUE OF MISSIONS.

In our issue of Monday last, reference was made to the stirring nature of the appeal that is being made to the Masterton community by the Rev. Mr Farrer. This appeal was stated to be more to thelntellectuality than to the .emotions. A Dunedin contemporary, dealing with this aspect of mission work, says that a Christian mission, to be successful in the truest sense of the term, if it is to quicken the religious instinct that dwells in man to permanent activity, and, as a consequence, perceptibly change the tone and conduct of the community, must be an appeal to, and the conviction of, that reason which alone differentiates man from the beast of the field. Christianity can do this. It can make slaves of the possessors of the mightiest intellects ; it can bring the philosopher to his knees and the abandoned of men to a realisation of his own moral unworth. For Christianity, as Bousset says, is not only the final form of religion, but it is the chief one among the redemptive religions. Christianity rightly presented (and we are not sufficiently presumptuous to suggest what is the right way) compels the thoughtful man to perceive, as nothing else ever has or can, his own imperfection*. Therein i 3 manifest the power and hope and glory of the Christian faith.