DIVINE JUDGMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 January 1940, Page 8

DIVINE JUDGMENT

“We have been reminded pretty constantly in religious addresses and articles during these past few weeks that the thing which we most need is trust in God," said Canon F. A. Cockin in a8.8. C. broadcast. “What are the terms on which we can have this trust in God? Is it something just waiting there for anyone who wants to come and take? Is it something that we can claim as ours by right? Or are there conditions which must be fulfilled before we can enter into this experience? The answer is that there are. At any rate there is one. We cannot find the reality of trust in God: we cannot have the assurance of His unfailing help and direction: we cannot know what it means to say as the Psalmist says, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,’.unless we are prepared to accept something else first: and that is the reality of God’s judgment. That is a phrase which people are beginning to use again nowadays. It is a stern phrase, and in some ways a dangerous one. And some at least will be inclined to regret its reappearance: for it will seem to them to be a return to that rather crude puritanical view of their grandfathers, which was only too ready to interpret accident and coincidence as God’s judgment upon individuals whose moral conduct failed to satisfy their own personal standard of behaviour. And no one who values either truth or charity wishes to see that way of thinking revived. But I am convinced that the reappearance of the word ‘judgment’ is a good and healthy sign. It is a sign that we are getting away from the sentimentalism which misrepresented the goodness of God as mere benevolence."