RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 96, 24 April 1926, Page 22

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

PRESENT DAY OUTLOOK. (Contributed.) ; • UNITARIANS AND THE RESURRECTION. In his evening sermon last Sunday at the Unitarian Church, the Rev. A. Ttiomhill, M.A., made special reference to a recent utterance by Archbishop Averill favouring the authenticity of the Resurrection miracle. Mr. ThornhiU said his interest had been aroused by tho fact that the Archbishop had given prominence to the opinion of a great Unitarian scientist of the nineteenth century , —the late Dr. W. B. Carpenterthat he was not conscious of any scientific prepossessions against miracles euch aa would prevent him accepting them if trustworthy evidence of their reality could be adduced. Many people, said Mr. ThornhiU, had held the opinion that God supplemented His original design by miraculous intervention, and among them there had been some eminent Unitarians. It could hardly have been otherwise; for the Unitarian movement began at a time when the authenticity of the Bible was all but universally accepted; and as miracles were attributed to Jesus and the Apostles in the New Testament, and to Elisha, Elijah, and Mosea in the Old Teetament, those miracles were accepted by eighteenth-century Unitarians at their face value, as a sign of the Divine warranty of the message of the prophets and of Jesus. That indeed was Paley'a argument. But that argument had no longer the convincing power of a century ago. Few apologists of the first rank could be found to-day who would defend a miracle without reservations, or advance miracle as an argument for the truth of Christianity. Very few Unitarians to-day held to the belief in miracles or thought that religion could be either proved or fortified by the miraculous. The claim that doctrinal truth, should be dependent upon the power of its advocates to modify or supersede the regular laws of nature, •would reduce religion to the ephere of magic and leave it open to chicanery and knavery. New Light. If the phenomena of the healing ministry and post mortem appearances of Jesus conformed to any laws, it must be to those laws of the mental and epiritual life upon which psychology and philosophy are beginning to pour a flood of new light. Dr. James Drunv mond, in referring to the Insurrection, eayai "If we say that these visions were not the offspring of a fevered imagination, but self revelations made in some ■way which we know not of, I do not think we enter the region of material mjraele Rather do we get a glimpse into a world beyond the range of physical law, where spirit may be bound to spirit by a thousand subtle ties Which we qannot yet discern."; Proceeding to analyse the New Teetament evidence for the theory of the Resurrection of the body, Mr. ThornhiU said that this evidence had been sifted >y the ablest New Testament scholars of this generation, and the verdict must be "Not proven." Professor Schmiedel had . shown conclusively -that there are over a score of discrepancies and contridictione, some of them so vitai that to build faith upon such testimony would be moet hazardous. These discrepancies did not Tefe'r to unimportant details. For example, St. Luke expressly limited the appearances of the risen Christ to Judea, trnd eaid the disciples were told to tarry y in Jerusalem, and did. so; while St. Matthew's gospel represented the appearances as taking place by express appointment in Galilee. One tradition seemed to assume a risen body which ate and drank; another tradition assumed that it was a spirit. A. S. Drummond argued: "These ere contradictory accounts; and, however they might endeavour to harmonise them by admitting some inaccuracy of inference on the part of one author or the other, they .betray a vacillating tradition which assumed at least mutually exclusive forms? A Stumbling Block. The argument he desired to stress, 'however, was that' miracle was futile. Miracle did not bring conviction to the enemies of Jesus, nor save Jesus from the cross. Miracle to-day was a stumbling block rather than a help to the progress of Christianity. To a generation nurtured in the knowledge of the constancy of law all appeals to the infraction of law or supersession of law Bounded like an appeal to credulity, rather than to reason or to faith. Testimony of St. Paul. . . Referring to Dr. Averill's appeal to the testimony of St. Paul, Mr. ThornhiU said St. Paul did not witness the • events he referred to and could not corroborate the rumour. Moreover, St. Paul neither taught the resurrection of the body, nor regarded the resurrection as a miracle. He taught that Christ was the first spiritual man, the first of -a new order towards which man had been moving through the world's childhood and youth. He experienced the great transition from immortality to immortality, which he believed would come at no distant time upon all. Paul - was indeed the first great spiritual • evolutionist. It made an immense difference to know that in interpreting j Pauline thought we had to deal not with' risen flesh and blood tout with a glorified spirit. They must seek other keys to unlock the mysteries of the power of Christ over the suffering souls of His ownlday than the miracles; and they could not afford to base their belief in the soul's deathlessness upon an ill-attested story of a resurrected ■ body. The key to the power of Jesus and the diie to immortality would be found in Christ's life and teaching. At the heart of that life and teaching was His own felt- filial relationship with God. This experience inspired his prayers to "His Father" and "Our Father," His God and our God. He knew Himself as God' 3 child—rail men aa God's children. And this experience kindled the like experience in Paui, and made him realise that he too was a son of God and joint heir with Christ of immortal glory. In the light of this filial relationehip between the human soul and God we are no longer ' strangers bqt fellow citizens with the saints and pf the household of God. . When, the college was founded at Khartoum tp the memory of General 'Gordon, it is doubtful if the subscribers ever dreamed of the state of affairs as referred to by Dr. Samuel M. Zuemer when delivering an address "in London' This was: " Chief'b sone who go to Gordon College, Khartoum, as pagans, come away Moslems. When I visited the college, the only Bible to, be found there np Gordon* own poekrt one, kept Iβ the muMum wider » (law eta*.' •

BISHOP CRITICISES THE LONDON SEASON. "In a short time the London season will too upon us. The incessant whirl of gaiety, luxury and display will occur. I do not deny that it has its good side, even its laudable side, harmless in many ways and possibly in tome ways helpful. But into this eocial vortex, as you know full well, there will be swept the choicest of our youths, boys and girls who have had entrusted to them the responsibility of a lavish education, a comfortable home, and an adequate supply of this world's goods," said Dr. Woods, Bishop of Winchester, in a recent sermon. "How many of them will try to envisage in that pleasant world of gaiety, with its dances and diamonds, the real world with its tremendous needs, its awful dangers, its magnificent opportunities. In this whole situation, the worship of wealth, and in some of its aspects the worship of pleasure, Shakespeare's immemorial scene is re-enacted time and again. You remember Proapero'e words, as lie points to Caliban: 'He is as disportion'd in his manners as in his shape.' That is just the complaint, disproportioned. To the worshipper of wealth life is disproportioned. And how frequently has Caliban's reply been heard in the heart: 'And I'll "bo wise hereafter, and seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass was I.'" THE THEATRE A SPIRITUAL FORCE. Sir Barry Jackson, presiding at the British Drama League annual conference, held in Birmingham, said that there is an extraordinary lack of eerioua thinking, and very little idea of taking life seriously. The drama ia a very great aid to the spiritual life, and it is only by taking the spiritual into acoount and giving it proper attention that we can be of any service to the world. Mr. Miles Malloson, the playwright, who is now devoting most of his time to the dramatics activities of the Independent labour party in England, said that history never quite repeats itself. He said that in any movement of real vitality, as soon as it had found its feet it threw overboard much, and shocked some of its' neighbours. "Sooner or may be -sooner—we shall have more leisure. It is a dangerous thing to give people leisure with no knowledge of how to use it, and the drama has a great mission in teaching the people how to employ their time with profit." Lady Mabel Smith said the Church in the Middle Ages was a great (believer m the educational value of the drama—a fact which we have rediscovered to-day. It has been recognised in our prisons, through the support of the officials, by the presentation of plays; and in many ways the Ghurph. is returning to the promotion of the drama sg a, great spiritual and educative force. Capon Stuart Blofeld considered that if man was happy in his leisure he would be in his.work also—a converse of the usual theory. In the theatro the actor is a servant of the country, and his spoken words are a ministry of healing. \ Our amusements must, and can, help to bring in the Kingdom of God. For the first time at an annual conference of the League, the delegates attended officially at church, and a special ser-i mon was delivered to them at Birming-1 ham parish church. The non-Church delegates attended the famous Carrs Lane chapel under similar conditions. CURRENT NOTES. The Hey. j: W. Weenink, of Holland, ie visiting the Baptist churches of Australia, under the auspices of the World Alliance of that body. Bishop Taylor Smith, in a speech at London, said: "It is the civilians who make war. it is the soldiers who make peace." A somewhat unique concert was held in Birmingham a abort time ago, in which all who took part therein were clergymen, and it provou to be a great success. The Rev, Dγ, OTlwyer, Superfor Qen-, eral of the Irish Mission to, China, has arrived in Sydney.from the East. After visiting, the Australian branches of the Mission, he will go to Borne and then to his headquarters in Ireland. The Bey. Hugh Martin, M.A., speaking'in England, said: "The question is not, can people living in slums be Christians, 'but can we continue tqv, foe Christans if we allow the slums to remain ?" The Bey. Richard Thomas, Archdeacon of North Queensland, has been con/ secrated as Bishop of Willoehra by Archbishop Wright, in St. Andrew's Cathedral, He succeeds Bishop 6}lr bert-White, who retired from the See. Four large dioceses in England are soon -to be divided. Manchester will'be divided by formation of a diocese of Blackburn, "Peterborough by a diocese of Leicester, Southwell by a diocese of Derby, and Winchester by the two new dioceses of Guildford and Portsmouth, Colonel Charles Kncjtt, chief secretary for Canada East, who has been appointed chief secretary for the Salvation Army in New Zealand, entered the ■work from Chelmpford, and served as an honorary chaplain to His Majesty's Forces. ' President Coolidge, upon coming home from church one Sunday, was asked by his wife what the sermon had been about. "Sin" was the laconic reply. "And what did he say about em?" asked the lady, to whioh the brief answer was "Oh, he's against it." A beautiful communion set for use in the Melanesian Mission has been presented to the Australian Board of Missions by the family of the Bey. Charles Bice, who was a missionary in Melanesia. It is inscribed in memory of Joanna Elizabeth Pattesofi, sister'of the mar tyred bishop, The chalipe is inlaid wjth pearls. " '" Reference was made at the sitting of the Auckland Presbytery to the death in Australia of a veteran missionary, the Bey. William Watt, who laboured at the island of Tanna. A resolution of sympathy with the relatives was passed by the members of the Presbytery standing in silence. A writer in the.-'" Christian World" states: Congregationalism must cater for the common people as well as the intelligentsia. It is th* temptation of the Congregational minister to address himself to. per ; cejit of the people, in his church, who. are capable of taking a keen intellectual interrst in-the problems of the theologians. Let. the thoroughly furnished preacher be also a faithful pastor, and he will, fey nic sympathetic knowledge and understanding of the average, be safe* guarded against tbii temptation.