A UNITARIAN'S CHANGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 279, 24 November 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

A UNITARIAN'S CHANGE.

The Rev. D. C. Evans, minister of Kettering Road Unitarian Church, Northampton, announced in his farewell sermon recently that he contemplated taking Orders in the Church of England.

In a statement he urged other Nonconformists to follow his example. Explaining the reasons for his action, Mr. Evans said: "In making this change I am not actuated by any motive of expediency, but 'merely by 'my conviction that the Church of England represents the truest idea of Catholic Christianity. The idea has been in my mind for some years, during which I have been thinking my way out of my old positions. I part on the best of terms with Nonconformists after' 12 years in the Unitarian ministry, but I have to follow the light, as it were. I consider that the best thing for Nonconformists would be to enter the Church of England, and I believe that the Anglican Communion is the centre round which union might be formed, not only between Nonconformists and Church people, but between the Eastern and Western Churches. It will become the rallying ground for the Christian forces of civilisation..

"Nonconformity arose as a corrective principle in the coinse of religious developments, but whether it is necessary to-day is for the future to .decide. Nonconformity has changed. It does not stand where it did when it came out in strong protest against the abuses which existed in the Established Church. "The need for protest is not so acute. At the time of Wesley there was a.need for some .revivifying movement, though Wesley himself never meant that the movement should leave the Established Church. I believe I am right in saying that he remained and Churchman. Now the great call is for Christian unity, which is one of my chief ideals. As to what section of the Church I shall favour, I have not got to the stage of worrying about that. Underlying both Evangelicalism and Anglo-Catholicism is the same vital principle."

CURRENT NOTES. "What folly it is," writes the Rev. A. H. Collins, in the Taranaki "Daily News," "to decry thinking, and. treat thought and religion as antagonistic, and take refuge in ignorance! It is not modern thought wo need to fear; it is obscurantism that is the foe of religion. The cultivation of the mind is part of the Christian duty."

Speaking at the Modern Churchmen's Conference at Cambridge, .Professor F. C. Burkett said that Christianity from the first and all down the ages had been centred in what theologians called' the Incarnation. There had been many theories, orthodox and heretical, about the nature of this doctrine, but the essence of the Christian idea was that in some way or other the Divine life and power and grace were personified in Jesus, that in Him that which was really Divine had a career among men,' with all the necessary limitations that such a career involved.

Dr. W. E. Orchard told his congregation at King's Weigh House Church, London, that he would not have on the communion table just any kind of bread mixed, as it commonly was, with chemicals. The purest wheaten flour must be obtained. Ho had himself watched the wafers being made. They were made in a rescue home where about 90 poor girls had been gathered from the streets, and when their penitence was fully shown one of the happy tasks to which they were set was the baking of wafers. Similarly, the wine was from grapes grown in a monastery garden, and no hand touched it save tho hand of those who loved the Lord.

The Bishop of Kensington recently gave some of the impressions of South Africa gathered on his recent visit. The native girls were, he said, very much like factory girls in London—just as keen on shops, knowing the latest fashions, wearing short skirt 6 and silk stockings, and they were beginning to use lipstick! His experience also showed him something of the religious fervour of the African Christians. Their intelligent worship and understanding reverence, he said, would be amazing to a Sunday ■ congregation in England. On Palm Sunday afternoon he held a confirmation in a place called Sophiatown. The church was crowded, and it was appallingly hot, but nobody fainted; no one was carried out. All were absorbed in devotion, and they sang the "Veni Creator" in five different languages.

The Rev. A. H. Collins, in the Taranaki "Daily News," condemns gambling in very strong terms. "On that subject the conscience of the community is drugged. It is a bad business from top to bottom. It is the' ruin of clean sport and honest trade, and. that the slime of it should be found on'sweet charity and religion is disgraceful.. -Better churches were never built, or organs played, or Red Cross funds raised than these things should be done by a gamble. I care nothing whether it be card parties, or horse racing, or scrip—the whole business is mean and ungentlemanly. Gambling stands condemned in this, that it renders no service 'and supplies no fair exchange of values."

A memorial, presumably inspired by the rejection of the Prayer Bool: Measure, has been placed on Buckland Beacon, Dartmoor, by Mr. William Whitley, lord of the manor of Buckland. Carved in black on a mass of virgin granite at the top of the beacon are the Ten Commandments. 'Then come the dates, December 15, 1027, and June 14. 1928, on which the Measure was defeated in the House of Commons. The inscription concludes with Job xxxiii., verse 14. The verse indicated reads:—"For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not." Since early in the summer moorland residents have been mystified by the activities which had been going on behind hoardings in front of the rocks. In an interview, Mr. Whitley declined to divuigo the reason for the memorial.

"The Presbyterian" asserted recently that denominationalism is no bar to church unity. The article said that the reason for churches maintaining separate organisations is as a testimony to certain subordinate but essential facts in obedience to conscience and their respective interpretation of God's Word. This is claimed to be a higher spiritual condition'than the.one which is ready to bury, testimony in order to secure greater power, of organisation. Indeed, there are to-day many .members of different, denominations who live in closer Christian brotherhood and fflllowship than do, many who are members of the same denomination. The ' greatest contention. and disunity in the church to-day does not'exisfc between the denominations," but - ' tfithin the denominations,' 5 '':'■':. " ■ • ' '