RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 307, 27 December 1924, Page 18

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

PRESENT DAY OUTLOOK. CHRIST, THE MIRACLE OF CHRISTIANITY.

(By REV. D. J. ALBERT.)

In this age of historical and literary criticiem men started with the assumption that the Christ story is a rnytli, Init uluii Strauss's "Lebcn Je.-u" had run its meteoric course, and had been buried in the grave of oblivion, then, confronted with the certainty that Cliri.-t is a historical figure, the. experts began to strip fruin it everything that seemed to tliem to savour of superstition. The Virgin birth was denied, the miracles wore scrapped, the resurrection i\as scouted, and the narratives of the | gospels were subjected to microscopical j examination. Then, when the work of, denudation was complete, they stood oll'| and surveyed that winch remained. And here w:is" ii greater miracle than all ihose that they had rejected. And what was this ininiele , ; It was even Christi himself, the miracle of Christianity. Ilcnan, gazing at the sublime figure which criticism had unclothed, cried: ''.Icsus is not unly unclasscd: he is unclas sable." This baby born sit Bethlehem, reared in poverty, growing up in obscurity and ■without the advantage of a. liberal education, followed by a dozen obscure men, dying after a public career which did not extend to three years, publicly cruciJiorl and thus rendered unspeakably jpnominious and infamous, presently turns the world upside down, comes at lust to sit on the throne with the Caesars, and, to His name are erected Matcly cathedrals, along the aisles of which march in solemn promenade emperors, and kinjrs, while before Him liowa in homage the intellect and the ■rreat heart of the -world. Could this be detached from the sphere of the miraculous? And in their study of His words, they found that by whatever name others might identify Him, He always described himself as ''The Son of Man." Searching backward through Jewish history, they sought the meaning of this name, oiily to return baffled and mystified; for its meaning lay not in the "past but in the future. Twenty centuries of experience would in due course beat out the music of that name, proving that He is not the son of some particular age, some special class, or individual nation, hut the ".Son of Man." The age that crucified Him abounded in literature, and since that day successive periods have displayed great literary fecundity. Yet He wrote no book and made no bid for literary immortality. But from age to age the story of His life has been re-written, and never so often or so laboriously as in our own time. But so great is the difficulty of rising to the level of His thought and life that many great scholars who have essayed the task, have either, like Henry Ward Beecher, given it up in despair, or like the great Dr. Sanday of Oxford, died after forty years of labour upon the apparently scant materials, leaving the work only just ■begun. Surely, one exclaims, there are enough "Lives of Christ," and then one opens a literary journal and finds that the new "Life of Christ," by Papini, published for the first time in English, in March 1923, has gone into its seventeenth edition. Nor is this all, since the gospels which tell the story of His life are even yet the best selling book on the market. And what is the secret? This, that Jesus is "The Son of Alan. The miracle of Christianity. JESUS AND SIN. This subject was dealt with in a recent sermon preached by Rev. Harold J Ilalpli. Si" was recognised as a present fact by the Baptist, and Jesus at the outset of His public ministry made a like recognition. Prophet and poet and priest had predicted for Jesus the role of a Saviour, and His life and teaching and death bore witness to the fact that He saw the presence of sin and the need of a Saviour. In contradistinction to the current view of sin, Jesus sets forth to teach that sin is no mere garment donned externally, lint an act or choice springing from man's inward nature. True it is that sin creates an external condition, but tirst and foremost it is man's inward condition of heart and mind that is involved. Sin was then and is now listed as murder, thieving, lying, etc. Jesus turned men's thoughts toward the inner, creative design and motive before making any emphasis upon the resultant expression. "Sin is tracked home to the innermost and most influential part of man- —his will." Sin is not eating with unwashed hands, nor is it first and foremost an act done against au other. That corrupt desire, that evil choice, that base intention —these things constitute sin in its primary condition. Men may speak of fashionable or fleshly sins, wrongs done against society or against nations. Jesus places His finger on the seat of the resultant trouble*; a corrupt heart and mind. !Sin is sin long before the public act is performed. Tα fact, the outward exprcsfSio'n of the sin may nt. er eventuate, but nevertheless it is sin. The lustful look alone is actually adultery. Not mud picked up on life's journey, n»t iiji. exterior condition catalogued by a national law as sin; but a corrupt inwardness is sin necordinp to Jesus. In His teaching about holiness and entrance to the Kingdom of God, Jesus further emphasises this view of bin. If evil were only a series of wrongful expressions, then the setting up of la»'« and statutes would surely suffice to keep evil and sin in check, if not eventually eradicate them. A new suit of clothes might make a man n't for respectable society, but it would not change the actual man. Jesus urges the absolute regeneration of heart and mind, the cleansing of the inward condition, as the only means of securing possible and permanent holiness and righteousness. Xieodemus was lawabiding and in every outward sense a good citizen and reasonably religions. Jesus definitely proclaims that his"need is an inward revolution and regeneration. He may be guilty of no outward act of sin, but pure holiness is an unpoasibility unless the citadel of his i life ls p ur g ed o{ lurki n i exist to-day as of old; sins are com anted against society and nations better condition of things is necessa-y Every law that aims at. the prevention Of crime idjould be fathered, and

i favoured by the Church. All measures J for the making of better social conditions must be courageously put forward and supported by the Church. But the ( hurch must remember that first the inward condition from which most of the world's wrongs and much of mankind's unhappiness arise must be cleansed. A permanence of better times can only be secured by the eradication of sin and wrong as they exist in the heart and mind of man. A thorouguly purged heart will result in a permanently happy home. CURRENT NOTES. Tlio Congregational Churches of Waled made a special collection amounting to £2182 towards missionary work in Madagascar. A family named Roll?, of Aylesbury, England, pretty well holds the record lor preachers. Two are Methodist ministers, one a Congregational, and one Jnn Kpi-.-copal, the rest of the eleven ' being local preachers. The Bishop of Xassau bought a Ford car. Its number was 4.'i7, which, in "Hymns Ancient and Modern." is the i number of "For all the Saints.' , It certainly carries a lew (says tlie London "Church Times"). It is "always full of clergymen. Of those who attended a Sacred Synod, comprising priests both white and native, on the Melanes'mn Mission stalf, four, including the Bi-shop, had over 20 years' service to their credit, and several others had 10 years and upwards. In the "Sunday School Herald" the fact is stated thr.t the Union has founded a fund to be known as the Jli'-s Martin Memorial, towards which a friend had derated £1000. The fund i.s established for the purpose of training teachers. At the Anglican General Synod, which meets at Dunedin in February, the question of Polynesia being associated with the Xew Zealand Church will be the first item on the agenda paper. In all probability permission will be immediately given, and the Bishop, with his clerical and lay representatives, will then take their seats. In liis book, "Solomon in All His Glory," Roland Lynd has a chapter on keeping the Sabbath. This states: ''In Ireland everybody goes to church once .in Sunday; in Scotland, everybody goes twice, or ought to; in England, hardly anybody goes at all. The Irishman may attend a hurling match on Sunday afternoon, but his conscience would prick him if in the morning he had not been to say his 'mouthful of prayers.' Thus the Irish may he described as a nation of church-going Sabbathbreakers, while the English break the Sabbath without troubling to go to church." "Denominations have all of them a precious heritage, and must not surrender," said the R2V. R. O. Hull, missionary secretary of the Student Christian Movement, speaking on the subject, "The Church of To-morrow" at the ' Oxford Church Congress. Denominations must hold their heritages as a sacred trust for the whole. But there was something much more positive than that—God had much more in store for Hl3 people than they imagined. It was "a world family of mutual helpfulness" that Christians were striving to construct. Dr. Maltfblm G. Gray, a son of the late Rev. R, S. Gray, formerly of Christchurch, the well-known leader in the prohibition cause, has passed the examination for the degree of M.R.C.P., London. Dr. Gray studied medicine at Otugo University, and for 18 months he was at the Trentham hospital. He then secured an appointment in Great Britain,- and afterwards held a position at the lit. Vernon Hospital for Heart and Lung Diseases, London. Out of 20 candidates for the degree of M.R.C.P., only eight passed. One of the others was also a New Zealander, Dr. Kenneth Scott, M.D., formerly of the Wellington Hospital. The "Christian World," October 16, has a paragraph etating that "Birmingham clearly is going to be the battleground for a stern fight between mediaevalism and modernism. AngloCatholics bitterly resent the appointment of Dr. Barnes as bishop. They speak in extreme terms about him, and he, on his part, has not minted his words in warning the people of the diocese against the 'pagan eaoramentalism" which pretends to 'create the bread of salvation by some magic of ritual and formula.' Preaching in thi cathedral _on a recent Sunday morning, Dr. Barnes sought to explain to lumbers of people who had written to him that he fully meant to carry out his consecration vows. One was to banish and drive away all erroneous and stranse doctrine contrary to God's Word.'" The African Orthodox Church, founded by Bishop McGuire, is as yet a small body, with only 21 congregations and 2500 communici..its. Its ritual is compounded of the Roman Catholic mass and the Protestant Episcopal form of Morning Prayer, with the use of censers, bells, and the like. Bishop McGuire himself appears at its services with mitre and crook and in full episcopal vestments. The Church teaches that Jesus was a black man. Bishop McGuire recently said:—"Of course God is not a negro. A spirit is nothing physical, but one must visualise someone to listen to prayers, and we can think only of someone in human form." The Bishop added that in addition to tile blood of Shem, according to the pedigree, Jesus had I also the blood of Ham in his veins, and since one drop of negro blood makes a man a negro, if He were living to-day in Dixie, the colour line would be drawn against Him. A few weeks ago, in a crowded street in Glasgow, a Salvationist in uniform was accosted by a woman, who asked for money in order to buyfood, but on being invited to go to an ; eating-house, where a meal would be ! paid for for her, she laughed, and said: ' "It's the money I want, to put on a j gee-gee, you fool. Be a sport. I know i a good thing—a cert." She did not get the mone)-. Later, when the Sal- , vationist mentioned the matter to a policeman friend, lie was told: "In that . neighbourhood the women spend every ■ halfpenny they can get in "ambling, while the men, and even children, are ■ ''/-tie better. During my short r.tay in s tins district I've seen homes ruined and . people brought to poverty, and even to ™« X / entirel} " thro "S ,l '• sane effort 3 to get rich quick at the a expense of the bookmaker. But it d 'doesn't come off." .