CHRISTIANITY IN NEW ZEALAND
Sir,-"Nabal" writes according to his experience, and I must answer him according to my own. His letter sounds as I imagine the wisdom of the Greeks sounded to St. Paul. Though sufficient to himself and those of a like mind it is certainly not sufficient for me. In isolating the moral element from the full Christian story "Nabal" does an injustice to, Christianity. He cracks the nut but leaves the kernel untouched. Christianity is a continual drama in which individuals are led or bludgeoned from blindness and self-sufficiency to sight of and dependence on God. A heightened moral sensitivity is bound to discover the moral law which in its impracticability "Nabal" rejects. And, as St. Paul has written, this law becomes so intolerable and exacting in its demands that we are eager to fad its mitigation. Deliverance is unexpected because it comes through One who while commanding us to do more than the bare’ law, frees us from its paralysing burdens. Yet should I turn away from. this answer I can find nothing stable or guaranteed..I cannot turn my back on the noblest aspirations of mankind, which as "Nabal" indicates, exist not only in the Christian faith: that would surely be morat suicidé. The principles of science and education upon which "Nabal" stands so firmly appear to me as hollow in themselves, for science and education are amoral. "I can give no unqualified trust to a temporal-leader, and I would be foolish to assume that within myself I could find the perfect integrity morality exacts, gee : ‘ Therefore I must turn to reach beyond morality and must use that ladder between time and eternity, earth and heaven which was prefigured in the Old Testament. That ladder is Christ. I can give nothing to "Nabal" except, perhaps, food for thought in pointing to what for me is a personal experience.
E.
JONES
(Spreydon).
(Abridged.-Ed. )
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 412, 16 May 1947, Page 5
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316CHRISTIANITY IN NEW ZEALAND New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 412, 16 May 1947, Page 5
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