From a radio address by The Reverend C. A. Newall in Bulawayo, Rhodesia

One of the striking features of our Lord's life was the oneness and wholeness of it. He didn't departmentalise life, with one side only as religious. His Spirit was full-orbed, permeating in every direction. He lived as He saw His Father live, one life in one world, seeing the relevance of the Kingdom of God to everything....How unlike Him we are, dividing and departmentalising life, treating some areas as the domain of God and shutting other areas from the touch and application of our faith. And one of the sad results is that we give the impression that our religion is so often irrelevant, and another, we isolate areas from the enrichment of our faith....

Faith helps us to discern spiritual values which cannot be weighed and measured and assessed by reason. Faith helps us to discern character and to trust it. Every day we enjoy things which we cannot explain by reason....It's not surprising that so many great thinkers are deeply committed Christians, relying on faith as a guide as reliable as the measuring apparatus of a laboratory....

Let us not, for one thing, divorce religion and science as we do. Far too often people questing for truth have been made to feel that they must make an "either or" choice between religion and science, between being guided by faith or being guided by reason. Religious people have accused the followers of science of being irreligious, and the followers of science have accused religious people of being unscientific. The impression given has been that both realms are poles apart and contradictory....

There's a story told of a young college student in France years ago who was on his way home for a vacation. On the train he was seated opposite an elderly man whose habit of saying prayers he began to ridicule. As a science student, he said that he could prove that all things came from nature and that there was no God. He asked the elderly man for his name and address and promised to send him literature that would enlighten his poor uninformed mind. The old man silently put his hand into his coat pocket, took out his card and handed it to the student. The youth took the card and read with some dismay the name "LOUIS PASTEUR, PROFESSOR OF SCIENCE." ...

When the British Association was being formed for the advancement of science, its first historian wrote, "To the Church, therefore, the British Association is deeply indebted," and in his next sentence, "True religion and true science ever lead to the same great end, manifesting and exalting the glory and goodness of the great object of our common worship." ... As Einstein put it simply, "Science without religion is blind: religion without science is lame." ...

Let us not divorce religion and conduct as we do. Religion and ethics must never be separated. Our life with God and our life with men must be one life.... Our faith must be expressed in works, and our works must be fed by faith.... Far too often religion becomes a thing apart, made up of church attendance and the saying of prayers, and never influencing the way one should live....

Religion divorced from service becomes a sickly, stagnant experience... leaving us with a hollow form of religion that is dead and useless.... We need the resources of God, without whom we can do nothing that is most worth doing.... Religion must express itself in service, and service must be fed by religion....

Let us not divorce our religion from our common life.... I am referring to the divorce we find between the sacred and the secular, in the sense that many of us are only aware of God's presence in what we term specifically religious places and duties.

Religion in the thought of many is associated only with holy places.... But hasn't the incarnation of Jesus Christ displayed for all time that God is in the midst of our common life, that His presence can be found everywhere and that men may know Him and serve Him in the whole of life?... He fills His universe. We need... churches to make us more aware of His presence, but... the presence is everywhere. The Church door doesn't close Him off behind you as you leave the Church. He is accessible in your home and at your place of work and play.... Whether you are a carpenter, a farmer, a lawyer, a politician, a housewife, or whatever you may be, you can serve and please God by doing your ordinary work to His glory. In your business you can be about your Father's business.

In the book of Revelation we read that John saw no temple in his vision of the New Jerusalem. In the perfect age there will be no need for a separate place of worship, for the whole of life will be the temple of the living God and every place a place of worship. We are a long way off realising that perfect goal, but we must work and pray for it, that God may fill the whole of life.