RELIGIOUS WORLD

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 134, 8 June 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

RELIGIOUS WORLD

PRESENT-DAY OUTLOOK.

(Contributed.)

WHITHER MANKIND ?

SCIENCE AND RELIGION,

The latest American compendium of speculative information is entitled, "Whither Mankind?" writes Mr. R. Ellis Roberts in the '•'Guardian." He proceeds:—There is one article which is a remarkable exception to the general run of rather safe and undistinguished essays. It is Mr. Bertrand Russell's on '•Science." It is remarkable for the mere fact of its authorship, but even more for the admissions which Mr. Russell makes. These can best be shown by quotations: "The essence of the scientific n>ethod is the discovery of general laws through the study of particular facts. It is thus a synthesis of the Greek and renaissance outlooks. Particular facts are the basis of the whole structure, but they are used for the purpose of induction, and when they have led to laws inductively obtained, the Greek methods of deduction are applied to infer new particular fact? from the law 3. This method has had the most amazing success —amazing because it is as indefensible intellectually as the purely deductive method of the Middle Ages. Gradually, however, more especially during the last thirteen year 3, the bes x men of science, as a result of technical progress, have been led more and more to a form of scepticism analogous to Hume's. Eddington, in expounding the theory of relativity, tends to the view that most so-called scientific laws are human conventions. Some of the leading authorities on structure of the atom maintain explicitly that there are no causal laws in the physical world. And some philosophers hold the same view. 'Superstition,' says Wittgenstein, 'consists of belief in causality. , "There is, to begin with, an intellectual inconsistency in the scientific outlook. The nominal practice of science is to accept nothing without evidence, to test all its assertions by means of facts. But in reality, as Dr. Whitehead has pointed out in 'Science and the Modern World,' science has dogmas as ill-grounded as those of any theological system. All science rests upon induction, and induction rests upon what Mr. Santayana calls 'animal faith.' The proofs of the validity of induction are as numerous as the proofs of the existence of God; but not one of them is calculated to carry conviction to a candid mind. This will not impede the progress of science so long as most men of science remain genuinely unaware of their theoretical insecurity, but as soon as they have to practise a semi-delibe-rate shutting of the eyes, they will lose the ardour of fearless explorers, and will tend to become defenders of orthodoxy."

The importance of these statements of Mr. Russell's can hardly be exaggerated'. They remove from the men of science, at one blow, that panoply of superior exactness, of greater possibility of proof in which they were wont, in the heyday of their success, to make war on the philosophers and the supernaturalists. Again, many have argued that the law of cause effect was, from a strictly scientific point of view, an assumption as irrational or an rational- as the other assumptions of eupernatural philosophy; that the fact that such an assumption was needed before men could think or argue at all was no proof of its truth, for we have no scientific evidence that thought is necessary, or even possible.

A Mystical Philosophy. Whither mankind? Well, if men of science are going the way which Mr. Russell here maps out for them, it is not difficult to.answer that question. There are only two answers. Mankind will either return "to superstition for relief," as Mr. Russell remarks, or they will return to a belief in a mystical philosophy —I dare say that Mr. Russell thinks there is little difference between the alternatives. The mystical philosophy will have two main articles in its system; there will be a return to theism and there will be a return to a belief in revelation. The two are indeed indis3Olubly united. It is, of course, conceivable that a man who believed that he and all men were mere bundles of chemical reactions should also be a theist; he might believe, that is, in the existence of a God Who was altogether outside our observed universe. But although such a man is imaginable, he has in the course of history scarcely ever been known. I believe that the next generation will see a remarkable restatement of a new and completer theory of revelation —on lines following Platonic philosophy as well as Christian and other theologies. Turning with boredom and disgust from a system of thought which denies the possibility of thought, mankind will once more occupy itself with an investigation into those phenomena —seen in the lives of saints, in the lives of lovers, in the work of all artists —which seem _to indicate that man's most real aspirations are concerned with his progress and wisdom in truth, in beauty, and _in love. That desire has been given him by the eternal power. which he calls God, and his muddled efforts to satisfy it are a genuine struggle to apprehend a revelation, and achieve on this earth something of the beauty of which all mortal and earthly beauty is a dim and distant reflection. Science has declared for complete scepticism; and few more hopeful things could have happened, for the spirit of scepticism, of inquiry, is the beginning of belief.

CARDINAL GASQTJET.

CHURCHMAN AND SCHOLAR,

Cardinal Gasquet died at Rome recently at the age of 83. His most important service to the Vatican -was the revision of the Vulgate, which he began in 1907, and a task not yet completed. With Mβ death the number of English cardinals in the Sacred College is reduced to three. Cardinal Gaequet was born in Lo»don in 1840, and was the son of Dr. Raymond Gasquet. He wae educated by the Benedictines at Downside, near Bath. It 1865 he entered the Benedictine novitiate at Belmont, near Hereford, and ste years later was professed a Benedictine monk at Downside. Jn 1874 he was ordained priest. At the early age of 32 Dom Gasquet was made Prior of Downside, and continued in his office for seven years (1878-8.5). With energy characteristic of the man, he set about modernising (in the best sense of the term) tho abbey school, and began the erection of the abbey church. In 1890 Gasquet was made a member of Leo XIII.'s Commission on Anglican Orders; In his own Benedictine congre-

gation his prestige culminated in his becoming Abbot President of the English Benedictines. During his term of office (1900-1914), Downside, Ampleforth (Yorks), and Woolhampton (Berks) were raised to the rank of abbeys. The Abbot President had the satisfaction of seeing the two first and older foundations rise to the front rank of English schools.

In 1907 Abbot Gasquet was appointed by Pius X. President of the Commission for the revision of the text of the Vulgate. This appointment was a tribute as much to his personality as to his scholarship. At his last consistory, in May, 1914, Pius X. created him Cardinal Deacon by the title of St. George in Velabro (Cardinal Newman's titular church.). The Cardinal's hat was popularly regarded as a crown to his devotion, his zeal, his sympathetic and warmhearted dealings with men, no less than to hia work.—"Manchester Guardian."

GENERAL BOOTH'S CENTENARY

MR. BALDWIN'S TRIBUTE

Mr. Baldwin was one of the speakers at a meeting in the Albert Hall, London, to celebrate the centenary of General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. The proceedings included a pageant of the work of the Army from its°earlieat days to the present. Mr. Baldwin in his speech, said:— Booth faced right up to the fact of evil. We are (continued Mr. Baldwin) a little afraid of that in these days, and we have banished the word "sin" from the dictionary. But you may expunge the word as much as you like; the ugly fact remains and will remain. (Cheers.) Booth never discussed publicly, nor, I believe, privately, theological difficulties. He preached the Gospel, and the military organisation which, he founded suited his own character as it had in past historysuited the character of great religious reformers. A great apostle of Socialism wrote only the other day that the Salvation Army still spent in a struggle against poverty the zeal that was meant for a struggle against sin. Booth was big enough and had enough zeal in him to maintain both those struggles. Mr. Baldwin recalled that when, seventeen years ago, General Booth was reviewing his life's work in that hall he said: "I might have turned Conservative or I miaht have been a Radical, Home Ruler, or a Socialist, or have joined the Labour party; but I might"—and this was a characteristic note, said Mr. Baldwin— '•have formed another party." (Laughter and cheers.)

CURRENT NOTES.

Dean Church asked that there should be no memorial of him in this place. There could be not better memorial of n;s spirit, without any mention of his name, for the whole Church, than the publication of a Bible in which the certain results of scholarship should be embodied, but the English remain the incomparable English which he himself could write. If we have such a translation as waa asked for, and read it and teach it, the Bible will not be forgotten by Englishmen, and will not cease to be, as men of o\K said it was, the source of the greatness of our country.—Dr. W. H. Hutton, Dean of Winchester.

In a recent lecture in London ot "The Catholic Faith and Modern Science," Canon Duxell drew attention to the change that had come over scientific outlook since the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the physical sciences seemed to point to a rigid determinism, the reign of law excluding free will and proclaiming conscious choice to be a delusion. Modern science had shown that, after all, free will and moral purpose had a field within which they might operate, and that the power of choice was not an illusion. Evolution was now thought of as a process m which there was continuous creative activity, and the doctrine of Emergence held that in the evolution of life on this planet there had been stages, which were not the mere results of that which had gone before, but which showed the emergence of something new, the crowning emergence being the Incarnate Christ. Thus witness was borne to the working out of a spiritual purpose by a Creative Power, and the purpose and the power were those of God.

With impressive solemnity the funeral of the Bishop of Edinburgh (Dr. Walpole) took place in St. Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh. The body was brought to the church from Bishop's House, attended by his two sons and daughter. The Cathedral was t'.ironged by a vast congregation for the Burial Office. Representatives of the comporation, the Presbyterian Churches, the Students' Episcopal Union, the Church Army, and diocesan organisations attended the service. A muffled peal was rung on the Cathedral bells. The long procession, headed by a veiled cross, included the Cathedral choir, the students of the Theological College, the lay readers, the lay officials of the Cathedral and diocese, sixty priests, the Cathedral Chapter, the Bishops of bt. Andrews, Aberdeen and Glasgow, and the Primus. The Primus was the omciant; the Chapter acted as pall bearers. The whole Office was sung m the church except the committal. The procession left the Cathedral singing "Nunc Dimittis" and the hymn "Jesus Lives amid the tolling of the great tenor bell. The Bishops and Chapter accompanied the body to the little country churchyard of St Mary'e> Dalmahoy, seven miles west of Edinburgh, which the Bishop chose as the ; burial place of his wife.

A service was. heldoofn f the' Areopagus Rock by the chaplain of the inglwn ChSrch in AthJ/oii the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. Ine Greek Srch has for the last few 7»*»™* devotion was held by the chaplain of the English Church here on the anniversary of the conversion to Christianity of St. Paul, on the Areopagus Rock, on January 29. The Bishop of Naupactia, who represented the breeK Orthodox Church, also took part in the service, at which the English chaplain officiated, assisted by three of the naval chaplains from the British Fleet now here. The whole Rock was covered by the officers and the crews of the British Fleet, the members of the British Colony in Athens, and a great crowd- of Athenians. The Bishop of Naupactia read in Greek, and the English chaplain in English, the passage in , the Acts fo the Apostles describing St. Paul's address to the Athenians. This wag, fol* lowed by prayers by an Anglican clergyman, and hymns were then suing to the accompaniment of the ship's band. The Bishop of Naupactia then gave an'address in English on the significance of the festival."