RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 52, 2 March 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

PRESENT-DAY OUTLOOK. (Contributed.) SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY. B.M.A. PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. In his presidential address delivered at the British Medical Association Conference, held in Wellington last week, Dr. J. S. Elliott made impressive reference to the relations between Science and religion. He said: "Doctors are all materialists in the sense that wc work of necessity in the finest material, the texture man, infinitely complex, infinitely precious. It may be that we are subdued like the dyers hands to what it works in, but as Paget says, 'There is no art so fine as medicine which workß in lives, and cannot correct its proofs, or begin with a sketch or waste its fabrics.' Huxley showed that the horror of materialism, which weighs upon the minds of so many excellent people appears to depend, in part, upon the purely accidental connection of some forms of materialistic philosophy with ethical and religious tenets by which they are repelled; and partly, on the survival of a very ancient superstition concerning the nature of matter. This superstition assumes that matter is something not merely inert and perishable, but essentially base and evilnatured; if not actively antagonistic to, at, least a dead weight upon the good. We know that there is a constant order of succession between matter and motion, and brain and thought, and the materialist and the idealist need not quarrel if they exclude the propositions about which neither of them knows anything. It is not for pious hands to hide the uglier features of truth, and indeed when the vision of the knowledge of truth widens, these features go to the make-up of a complete and perfect beauty and harmony." A Spiritual Fourth Dimension. " 'There is nothing great in the world but man: There is nothing great in man but mind.' The self-consciousness of the human mind is that which, as Hamlet said, makes man a being of 'such large discourse, looking before and after/* "Science tells us much of the kingdom of things, but in the kingdom of thoughts, as we look round the horizon, the east is still troubled with the morning. Our low life is 'the level and the night's.' Who's for the morning? It is the province of theology to give a spiritual interpretation of Nature, but will theology neglect the revelation of Nature provided by science? "Sir Thomas Browne, the Norwich physician of the seventeenth century, wrote the 'Religio Medici,* one of the classics of English literature, but there is a fuller and wider 'Religio Medici' of to-day. Sir Thomas Browne's difficulty was the same as ours. Men of our profession must give long years of study to material matters, to a close and untiring examination of the bodily structure in health and in disease, to surgery, drugs and diet, and to a whole circle of experiences the reverse of spiritual. A mind stored with physical knowledge must approach the consideration of the supernatural in manner different from the unlearned, and Sir Thomas Browne's 'Religio' is, in the main, a defence of the attitude of a mind that is scientific and yet reverent. Our complex myriad-celled body results from the many times repeated division of a single infinitesimal cell, for we carry with us the wonders we seek without us; there is all Africa and her prodigies ii us. It is not so difficult, therefore, for a physician to _peer into the cloudy places of the soul and see a spiritual fourth dimension in the earthly house of this mansion. Discarding the speculations of the schoolmen and the old philosophers, he can find no special organ in the body which is the seat of the soul, and yet can believe with Sir Thomas Browne that the immortal spirit and incorruptible substance of the soul may sleep awhile within this house of flesh. The physician's daily round carries him even to that valley "where the King of Terrors rides his pallid horse, and he must at times turn to thoughts of what lies beyond the bondage of the grave in that duration, as Sir Thomas hath it, "which makes pyramids pillars of snow, and all that'# past a moment."

Sublimity, Order and Purpose. "The physician, - too, while not denying the power of grace and the freedom of the will, yet can observe conduct, the result of perverted states of the body and want of balance of its internal secretions, and man, to a large extent the victim of heredity and environment. The physiologist has labelled the function of various parts of the central nervous system and knows which small area moves a limb or governs speech, hearing or sight, controls the action of tTie heart or of breathing, and he defines the regions in which the intellectual faculties are enthroned. The study of the subconscious mind has opened up a wider horizon of thought than was dreamed of in the older philosophy. The effect of radio-activity and of light has widened our outlook on energy and its conservation. Einstein has shown that we arbitrarily separate the single complex of space and time, a thought that irradiates the conception of eternity. It is a commonplace that matter is indestructible but may change its form. The picture of the universe that science reveals conveys three outstanding impressions, sublimity, order, and purpose, and behind evolution an unchanging background not itself evolving, but to the believer a holy and eternal temple not made with hands in which : s raised the throne of the Most High. Freedom of Truth. '"And now I come to the conclusion which may be drawn from the preceding considerations, and that is that we are living under a new and fuller dispensation in the interpretation of natural science, which, of course, includes medical science. This is well expressed in the words of Dean Inge. 'If we ignore natural science,' he says, 'we are in danger of offending the spirit of truth, for I believe it has been the chief revelation Cod has granted to this generation.' As ever. Pilate's question, 'What is truth?' admits a wide solution, for to preserve a truth it is sometimes necessary to recast the form of its expression, or. otherwise, a fortress may become merely a prison. As Tyndall said, there Is a p?nun:britl region which surrounds actual knowledge, and no matter how prescient the scientist imagines himself to be, every new discovery contains more than its discoverer had guessed. History shows that any great truth which cannot find a home within the sacred fold of the Church is not therefore lost

to mankind, but finds a lodgment outside her pale, and is sooner or later used as a weapon against her. There was a time when theology helu natural science in thralldom, and science has not always been content with its own freedom, but has attempted to extend its dominion into territory not its own. With regard to religion, science is necessarily neutral. Wonder Upon Wonder. "In Galileo's struggle for the freedom of truth, he said, 'Before all things we must be sure of facts. To these the Bible cannot be opposed, else would God contradict himself, and the capacity of making su»h researches is also the gift of God.' Our imaginations are still so narrow that, when new knowledge and unsettling facts are revealed by the experimental method, we are inclined to be incredulous and have almost to hav.e acceptance forced upon us. Another, great Italian, Leonardo da Vinci, said, Let bigots talk at leisure and heed them not. The study of Nature is well pleasing to God and is akin to prayer. Learning the laws of Nature we magnify the first Inventor, the Designer of the World, and we learn to love* Him.'"

CURRENT NOTES. Each age must interpret the Bible by the best light it has. What was found helpful by an earlier generation is simply untrue to us. We can be sure of this, however: the same Spirit who inspired the sacred writers will inspire us to understand their words.—Professor G. A. Cooke. Speaking at a luncheon in honour of the Bishop of Haarlem (the delegate from the Archbishop of Utrecht at the enthronement of the Archbishop of Canterbury), Dr. Scott Lidgett, said as a Wesleyan that any embarrassment one who belonged to a nonEpiscopal Church might feel was removed by the great and noble utterance of the new Archbishop of Canterbury at his enthronement. Reunion, in his opinion, must be corporate and universal, and was inconceivable unless based on the historical episcopate. He might not follow all that Dr. Gore meant by the latter phrase, but he would like to put on record his opinion that the courageous action of Dr. Davidson in sanctioning the Malineß Conversations was thoroughly justified from every point of view. Dr. Parkes Cad man believes in churches being beautiful. Recently he related how when two Irishmen were passing his church in Brooklyn, one said: "You tell me that is a church? It looks more like a gas house." Dr. Cadman declared that the Irishman was right, and added he believed that the Protestant Church of the future will no longer spend millions on edifices that proclaim ignorance and ugliness, but will erect churches whose outward loveliness and eternal beauty will be an inspiration to greater devotion. Dr. Cadman pointed out that people of to-day are not acquainted with the great realities of faith as they were in the past, and it becomes necessary to teach them through architecture, beauty of form, music and symbolism.

Dr. Julius Richter, of Berlin University, has summarised in statistical form Protestant foreign missionary effort throughout the world. He finds that the total number of missionaries employed amounts to 30,000, who are assisted in their evangelistic work by more than 8,000,000 Christian natives who have been converted from heathenism. 1 The Protestant missions maintain 50,000 elementary schools, giving instruction to 242,000,000 pupils. In addition, there are 100 mission high schools, 32,000 students, .300 normal schools, with 116,000 students, and 460 mission theological seminaries, with 11,000 students. Over 1100 physicians serve the people on these mission fields through 858 Protestant mission hospitals. This work is maintained at an annual expenditure of. £14,000,000. Preaching in Liverpool Cathedral the Dean of St. Paul's (Dr Inge), discussed the universality of the Bible. In every country, he said, the language of the Psalms had become a part of the daily life, passing into the people's "proverbs and mingling with their conversation. Yet we did not read the Bible nearly so well to-day as it was read a hundred years ago. Speaking about the "Word of God/ the dean said that when "word" was used of God's voice it was to be understood in a less literal sense. God did not-use human speech. He revealed Himself to us in many ways, through nature for Did He not speak to us in the region where there was neither speech nor language, in the deep silence of our own hearts and consciences T Wherever there was revelation or inspiration, there was the voice of God. At Christmas Dean Inge referred to peace in the Church: "As regards the relations of the divided branches of Christ's Church to each other, there are some encouraging signs. The old bitterness of the Nonconformist to the Church of England is a thing of the past. Almost everywhere relations are friendly and cordial; and I attribute this change for the better very largely to the disappearance of the social arrogance with which Churchmen too often used to treat Nonconformists. I believe myself that in all our social troubles bad manners have as much to do with ill feeling as economic grievances or political differences. There is such a thing a a Christian democracy based on the equality of man in the sight of God. The Church is doing its proper work in encouraging social equality and condemning that odious thing called classconsciousness, whether it shows itself among the rich or among the poor."

Preaching on "Qrace Abounding," Dr. L. P. Jacks, principal of Manchester College, Oxford, referred to the words written by John Bunvan under the title of his book, "For the support of the weak and tempted children of God." The preacher said if he had to give a list of who are the weak, tempted children of God he would have to begin with the Pope of Rome, as one of the weak and tempted children of God, and to include all the Archbishops and all the Bishops who had just Leen preaching such eloquent sermons about Bunvan, and then he would have to run through all the names in the London Post Office Directory, and in all the post office directories of the whole world; and he thought they would agree, especially those rrho had traius and buses to catch to-night, that he had better not embark on the list of the weak and tempted children of God. So he would content himself with saying to every inai: and woman in this congregation: "You are one of those weak and tempted children of God, and I am another. But Grace, ' thank God, abounds for both of us."