SPHERE OF CHURCH

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20733, 17 February 1939, Page 9

SPHERE OF CHURCH

CONCENTRATION NEEDED INSPIRATION OF RELIGION (Special to Times) CHRISTCHURCH, Friday This year's president of the New Zealand Methodist conference (the Rev. Angus Mcßean) believes that the Church still has her special sphere and that she should concentrate on work within that sphere. In his inaugural address to the annual Dominion conference of the Methodist Church, which opened at Christchurch last evening, Mr Mcßean took as his theme, “The Uncontested Province of the Church.” He quoted with approval the word of Canon Barry "The task of the Church is not to put forward an alternative to the schemes of statesmen as they try to find. their way to a better order, but to inspire them to produce their own, and to supply that spiritual dynamic which can bring those schemes to victorious fulfilment.” “It has become fashionable to talk about the lost provinces of the Church," said the president, and he agreed there were spheres in which she had once supreme influence, where now her voice was almost silent. Politics, commerce, art, education, science were quoted, as well as the relief of poverty. In view of this some were asking: Is the Church then no longer a necessity? Has she become an irrelevancy in the modern world of culture and comfort? Real Province of Church “What I want to say to-night is that the real province of the Church remains, untouched by any of these changes. Many of the activities in which the Church was once engaged were in fact outside the Church's real province, and there are few who would wish to reclaim them. For example the functions of the government of a nation can be discharged in better ways than by the Church. It is better that the State should look after the poor; better for the poor, for charity was always uncertain, and usually meagre, and better, too, for the charitable, for the load is more evenly distributed. And a good system of State education is more to be desired than that the education of the people should be entirely in the hands of the Church.

“When the Church enters upon any of these activities she has in all of them competitors, or helpers, or successors. But in the work which is peculiarly her own the position is entirely different. If she leaves her real work undone no one else will attempt it. In her own sphere she stands alone. And the Church's task is so unique that it stands mountains high above every other project to which men can set their hands. It is nothing less than to bring God to men. and to bring men to God. other organisations can do all those other things. They can even provide a religion: they can turn a political theory into a religion: or they can make a religion out of the 'better qualities of men and call it by the fine-sounding name of humanism. But if the Church fails to bring God to men no one else will do it. This, as you very well know, was Christ's chief work. There are tributary streams which flow from the main current of the Church’s life, but always this one great purpose must be kepi before us.”