METHODIST LEAGUE TO FIGHT MODERNISM.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 162, 11 July 1925, Page 22

METHODIST LEAGUE TO FIGHT MODERNISM.

With the object of defending American Methodism from the inroads of modernist teaching, and circumventing the campaign to place modernists in secretaryships, college presidencies, big pulpits, and all the larger positions of influence in the Church, a group of influential Methodist clergymen and laymen has organised the Methodist League for Faith and Life. The new organisation expects to have 10,000 paid memberships within a year. The League aims to make tho modernist-fundamentalist controversy, which has "slumbered" in the Methodist Episcopal Church, a vital issue among Methodists in the near future. One of the chief objectives of the new organisation is a complete reorganisation of the commission on courses of study for young ministers, so as to eliminate the heterodox teaching which appears in many books recommended by the commission. The League will insist upon the "elimination from our institutes, schools, and theological seminaries of all teaching that tends to undermine and explain away, or more boldly, to destroy faith in tho divine origin and authority of the holy Scriptures." The League intends to demonstrate that tho conservatives are no longer "asleep at the switch." CURRENT NOTES. The Rev. W. E. Lush, M.A., is chiarman of a committee that has been set up to select a suitable design for a now primacial cross for tho Anglican Archbishop of New Zealand. It is proposed to follow the best traditional liturgical design. Mr. Justice Fawcett, of Brooklyn, has great faith in tho value of Sunday school training. He stated recently that attendance by young men at Sunday school or other regular religious work, with its refining atmosphere, is signally preventive against crime and worthy of careful study by those who are dismayed by the increase of crime on the part of the young men of America. In a sermon on "Visions and Service," preached at St. Paul's Church, Portman Square, the Rev. J. Stuart Holden, D.D., the speaker, asked: "What is the world's greatest curse to-day? It is efficiency without sympathy, hands that pull down without building up, with no thought whatever beyond that of personal selfish triumph. You can make a fortune, you can build a palace; you can attain reputation, you can win for yourself a position in life. But let mc tell you what Jesus says about these things: 'Without Mc ye can do nothing.' " The death is announced at Wells, Somerset, on May 10, of Mr 3. Hobhouse, the widow of the Right Rev. Edmund Hobhouse, first Bishop of Nelson, at the advanced age of 101 years. Mrs. Hobhouse was the daughter of the Rev. Dr. David Williams, headmaster of Winchester and warden of New College, Oxford. Bishop Hobhouse was twice married. His first wife died at Nelson in 1864, and was buried at Brightwater, and a portion of the JBrightwater Church was erected in her memory. Two sons are Dr. Edward Hobhouse, of Brighton, and Archdeacon Walter Hobhouse. Deialjjog with -the question of the ministry of Church members, the Rev. Charles Brown, D.D., speaking at Forme Park Baptist Church, pointed out that the greater part of the Apostolic exhortations had to do, not with preaching, but with the ministry of the Church members, towards each other. They were exhorted to comfort one another, to bear one another's burdens, to support the weak, and to be patient towards all. Preaching, he said, was only a part ot the sacred oii*_ress. Ho added: "One of the most fatal ideas is that a Church consists mainly of a properly ordained and authorised ministry, an older of men who keep the ritual going." The Rev. John Kelman, D.D., preaching at St. Martin-ln-the-Fields, on "Thanksgiving," said nationally there was a great deal to cause thankfulness. It was an age full of magnificent opportunities offered to every man for the public advance towards the better days. No Christian could possibly advocate a sleek contentment with the life and, conditions of the present time, but any Christian is likelier to help the present time to be better if he approaches the subject with a bright and thankful spirit, than if he merely repels his neighbours by sullenness and virulence. All these things may seem secular, but the fact is we make ordinary things religious when we cultivate a thankful spirit. Nothing remains secular when we are thanking God for it. The Rev. James L. Gordon, D.D., preaching at the First Congregational Church, San Francisco, on "Relic Worship among _PR_fla_.tants and Catholics," said: "The foundation of every great religion is rooted in reverence —reverence for God, reverence for nature, reverence for age, reverence for history, reverence for locations, reverence for saints, reverence for symbols, reverence for remains, reverence for relics, and reverence for authority. The spirit of reverence, in its evolution, results in the classification known as 'sacred' — sacred days, sacred events, sacred sites, sacred buildings, 6acred persons, sacred vestments, sacred books, sacred postures, sacred acts, sacred words, sacred rituals, and sacred relics." The preacher pointed out that they clung to a relic because there was something about it which revived and strengthened the memory, also because of the hope that some vital essense of the old-time spiritual power still resided in the bones of a dead saint. Professor Kenyon L. Butterfield, of Massachusetts Agricultural College, is expecting one of the most profound and fundamental religious revivals America has ever seen. He gave his reasons (1) That there is a rapidly increasing determination to discover ways by which tho attitude and spirit of Jesus can be actually applied to business and industry as well as to politics and social relations. (2) That men are sincerely seeking light upon the personal problem of developing a more spiritual inner life. (3) That one of the most sincere efforts in all history is now being made to rediscover the real Jesus; to try to appreciate what were the actual attitudes of Jesus toward the political, economic, social and religious conditions of His own day and country, and to try to interpret those attitudes in terms of similar presentday categories. Not explanations of Jesus, not moral formulas, not even systems of teaching, but attitude, spirit, ways of viewing things; these are what men are eagerly, even passionately, seeking.