RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 144, 19 June 1926, Page 22

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

PRESENT DAY OUTLOOK. (Contributed.) 0 THE THEOLOGY OF SHELLEY AND MILTON. The Bishop of Manchester preached a midday sermon on Shelley at St. Ann's, Manchester, recently. All that there was of positive doctrine in Shelley, he said, was pure Christianity, though no one searched the rhetorical resources of the English language so closely to find terms to express his horror of what he thought Christianity to be. What Shelley denounced as Christianity was a caricature—in fact, a caricature of Calvinism. But in Shelley's time the pernicious theological influence of Milton was even greater than it is to-day. The damage Milton did by combining superb literary skill with perfectly abnominable theology was almost beyond calculation. Probably every sensitive reader of "Paradise Lost"' had found that, quite inevitably, all his sympathies were Satan. Milton had never presented God's conflict with evil in the smallest degree after the Christian fashion. And the God that Shelley pictured was not God as revealed in Jesus Christ, but an almighty, vengeful fiend. Thus we had in Shelley a reaction against what he supposed Christianity to be. On the other hand, Shelley had written passages that might well have been written by Francis Thompson, Coventry Patmore, or any of the mystical Christian poets. There were passages in which Shelley used the term "Mother" where Christians used the term "Father" in referring to the Infinite Spirit from which all things sprang, but in these passages there was nothing which Christians should not say, and a good deal which it were good they should learn to say. The theme of "Prometheus Unbounded" was that the victory of self-sacrificing love over self-assertion was the supreme fact of the universe. This was the essence of the Christian doctrine. It was to this that Shelley was led, even though he left on one side all Christian tradition and all ordinary m&rality. BRITISH AND AMERICAN PREACHERS. When British preachers reach our ■hores we become painfully conscious of their superior scholarship and their individuality and originality of thought and utterance. They think for themselves and speak for themselves (writes the Rev. W. T. Hangsche in "Christian •Work" of America). And we are painfully self-conscious as we smile in a sort of a now-watch-the-little-birdie way at the criticism of a distinguished Britisher: "American preachers have big motor cars and little libraries!" Perhaps there is a measure of truth in the words of Professor Peabody: "A great many ministers have practically abandoned thinking. ... They have become men of affairs, church mechanics, social reformers . . . in organising parishes, directing multifarious operations, reforming neighbourhoods. Socialism, temperance, .thrift and public health, administrative efficiency and moral sympathy are more cultivated than intellectual power and disciplined wisdom." And yet the average man yearns for knowledge of the mysterious world. Yet theological issues must not be fought out, but thought through. The call is not for pastoral engineers, but for prophets. Maybe it is a dilemma—efficiency and pastoral standardisation, or inefficiency and prophetic originality? But what I want to know is this —who is to be my model, anyway, Henry Ford and General Motors, or the Major Prophets and the Great Master? Am I to be a standard! ser or a standard bearer? * CURRENT NOTES. The centenary has just been celebrated of a Methodist church at Conway. For the first 25 years of its existence the services were held in a barn. The Rev. Alexander Mitchell, of Rosslands United Free Church, Scotland, has intimated his intention to resign next October, after being in charge for 40 years. A well-known lay preacher of the Baptist Church at Peterborough, Mr. John Robinson, died recently, aged 96. For sixty years he ha_ performed the duty of a lay preacher. "As far as we are concerned I feel the most pressing task is to get on with our work for a new Parochial Hell." Vicar's letter in "Parish Magagine." And give it to the printer? The "Christian World" is responsible for the following paragraph: "Do you know where the little boys go who do not put their Sunday "school money, in the plate? Yes, to the pictures!" The Rev. Jonathan Goforth, a former Presbyterian missionary at Korea, has accepted an invitation from Marshal Feng, the Chinese Christian general, to serve as a chaplain in his army. A Baptist missionary, Miss P. Watson, of Rochdale, returned recently to England after having travelled hundreds of miles alone in a wild region in China. She came into contact numbers of bandits, but was never molested. "I sometimes imagine," said the Rev. M. Davies, when speaking at the Preston district of the Lane's Mission, "if Nonconformity took the good leaves out of Episcopacy, and vice versa, a Church Would be formed which would sweep the tearth." In a sermon at Sheffield, Canon F. L. ! Donaldson gave the following as the seven deadly sins of the age: Politics without principle, wealth without work, i pleasure without conscience, knowledge ' without character, commerce without morality, and science without humanity. . During the war the Kaiser bell at Cologne Cathedral, which weighed 500 tons, was'melted to make munitions. A little over a year ago another big bell replaced the one that was melted down. This, however, was not rung until midnight on the date of the evacuation of the city by the British. Then for the first time its deep tone sounded forth. An idea of the immensity of the work in the mission fields may be gathered from the fact that at the present time there are 29,188 Protestant men and women engaged in the foreign branch, and the total budget is £14,958,102. In sixty years the Protestant missions' •budget has increased from £1,000,000 to just under £15,000,000. In addition to this there is a large expenditure by the Soman Catholic Church on work in the fprsign mission fields.

Budo High School, the Church Missionary Society's leading school for boys in Uganda, has produced in the courts of its history seven county chiefs, thirtytwo dist-ict chiefs, seventy-one schoolmasters, and many others who are occupying important positions.

A Syriac version of the Koran has been translated by Dr. Mingana, of the John Rylands Library, Manchester. It reveals the interesting fact that the "East of Holiness," to which Moslems are enjoined to turn their faces when praying, is really Jerusalem, and not Mecca, as indicated in the original text.

The Rev. G. Stanley Russell, M.A., preaching at Clapham Church, London, said: "I wish we could get rid of the word Congregationalist. "It is a bad word in every way. lam not a Congregationalist, but an independent, and I think we should return to a term which has a fine upstanding sound about it, which indicates where some of us are in tilings religious, and which recalls the heroic days of Nonconformity."

Few people realise the great work which missionaries are doing as educationists. In the non-Christian lands missionaries are frequently educational pioneers. In the Government annual report on Papua, the examiner, speaking of mission schools, says that the results of examinations are good, but th? number of candidates is a little bit less this year. In Standard 1., 82 passed out of 97; in Standard 11., 10 passed out of 10.

The new energy and adaptability that have come to the Church in Wales as a result of self-government are illustrated by the first address of the new Bishop of Bangor to his diocesan conference. He was able to announce that the system of pew rents would be totally abolished in the diocese by the end of the year. Efforts are also being made to meet the grave difficulty involved in the existence of two living languages side by side.

The Bishop of Southwark is strongly opposed to the proposal to tax betting in Britain. Such a tax, Dr. Garbett contends, would be tantamount to State recognition of a vast army of bookmakers of all kinds, who could freely ply their calling, not only in the great towns, but in country villages. The comparatively small revenue which the State would gain would be more than counterbalanced by the evils which would arise through it giving recognition and protection to the bookmaker.

If, as reported, the Soviet Government of Russia intends to transfer the contents of the Petrograd Museum to one of the churches in the city, the building thus honoured will become the repository of at least one priceless relic, which will be in keeping with the Church. This is the Codex Sinaiticus, one of the earliest translations of the Bible. This was discovered in 1859 in a monastery on Mount Sinai, and presented to Czar' Alexander 11. It is believed to be the oldest known manuscript of the Old and New Testaments, and probably was written some time during the fourth century.

Speaking at a city dinner, the Lord Mayor of London said he had visited St. Paul's Cathedral, "and found that everything .vas going on very well. They are making headway faster than I thought? they would," said his. Lordship. "They are dealing with five of the piers at a time instead of two. They are working in the crypt, and they are making such good progress that I think, instead of taking seven or eight years to do the work, as it was estimated by the expert committee, they may finish it in five. There will then be no more anxiety or trouble in connection with the cathedral for hundreds of years."

"The Morning Post" says that Canon Hannay—known to fiction lovers as George A. Birmingham—maintains that nowadays the most dramatic sermons are preached in Ireland. A friend of his heard a preacher in a Connaught village expiating on the terrors of hell. "The lions will roar at yez," he told the congregation. "The owls will hoot at yez, and the hyenas will laugh yez to scorn." Another Irish preacher, having described how Jezebel painted her face, tired her head and looked out of the window at Jehu, remarked: "And would you believe it, the hussy was nigh on sixty years of age?"

When all things are going well there is a tendency on the part of many people to ignore the Church, but in time of peril many turn instinctively to religion. For instance, when the crew of a British ship in the Atlantic were rescued by the President Roosevelt a most moving thanksgiving service was held. All knelt in prayer and an address was delivered by Dr. Cochrane, of the American Church in Paris. One of the German rescuers who lost his life was named Heitman. It is stated that a comrade asked him not to go in the lifeboat as the crew of the sinking ship were British, to which the noble fellow replied: "They may be, but they are brothers."

At a special service on the afternoon of the Sunday before Labour Day the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York City, was given over to the representatives of organised labour. The great building was thronged with carpenters, bricklayers, stone and iron workers, and artisans from every class of labour now taking part in the building of the edifice. An illuminating comment on the labour service was mane in the editorial columns of. the "New York Times." As this editorial expressed it, the presence in the cathedral of the vast throngs of workers showed their longing for something which the skill of their hands cannot bring, something beyond wages or meat or raiment, which neither capitalist nor union nor federation nor government can give them, but something for which the Church universally stands.

Cardinal Hayes when dedicating the radio station of the Paulist Fathers of New York said: "Within the memory of this generation physical science has contributed enormously to human comfort and health and life. Indirectly our discovery of the buried history and of the secret laws of the physical universe has brought us even greater benefits. Eacn revelation of science makes it less and less reasonable to deny the existence of the Creator. The universe becomes mort than a massive mechanism grinding out the fate of creatures as mercilessly as the millstones grind out the corn. The thought of God and the immortality of the human soul overshadows fatalism and despair. And now that we have discovered radio to us in a new and compelling way the heavens declare the glory of God. The real scientist worships at truth's altar, realising, as tbe Church teaches, that there can be no vital conflict or contradiction between the truth revealed to man by God in the natural order and that made manifest by Him in the super-natural."