Religious World

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 21, 25 January 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

Religious World

BELOVED KING. liTFB FILLED WITH DEEDS. (Bv S.) I little thought two weeks ago when I wrote an article for this column bearing on the death of one of the prominent citizens in a town I used to know well that 1 would be called upon to write an article to-day on the death of the King, The citizen was only tliirtv-fivc — had scarcely outgrown the garments of youth, as 1 put it —and the King was twice that age, but his passing was even less expected, and it is not only a section of men and women, or even a nation, or an 'empire, that is to-day mourning his loss; the grief of a great world-wide public is paying homage to the memory of a man whose life, though it hud reached three score and ten, was filled more with deeds than with days. Few men who have held the highest title of sovereignty have so escaped contention as did King George. And it is not surprising. Everybody knew that he had been a loyal son and that he was a true husband and a good father. And everybody knew that he performed the duties of a sovereign conscientiously and well and was full of sympathy for great and small alike. He lived among his people, as he lived for them, and could traverse the streets of the most crowded cities without any fear of peril. The saying of Shakespeare, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown/' was not true of him. The King was a great gentleman. That has been the testimony of those ■who were privileged to meet him in private and of those who were privileged to eujov his friendship. He was the head of an ancient and stately civilisation and ruled over more teeming multitudes in more quarters of the globe than any of his contemporaries, but he remained to the end a plain, unaffected man, simple and natural, with nothing proud or overbearing about him. No "wonder he drew the admiration, the respect and the affection of all who came in contact with him. And Ik wa- a true Christian, submitting to the will of God, rely in 2 on His providence and trusting in His grace. It was his religion, indeed, that formed the basis of his character an* that inspired him, in the words of the Psalmist, to walk uprightly, to work righteousness, and to speak the truth in his heart. The Bible was the spiritual meat on which his soul fed, and prayer was the niea-ss by which he daily braced himself for life labours and cares in the cause of God and of his people. Those with whom he discussed religion and religious and social movements were struck, like the late Bramwell Booth, with his earnestness in all matters connected with the religious and social welfare of men and women. It was his lot to reign in an age that was characterised not only by enormous progress in many directions, but also, alas! by a quarrelsomeness. a tempestuousness, and a tumult of war unknown to previous ages. Yet all through he maintained his piety, as he maintained his optimism. Our sympathy goes out to the widowed Queen "and her family, and it will be long ere the memory of our good fortune in having such a King to rule over us for more than a quarter of a century will fade from us. A REMINISCENCE. I venture to give this reminiscence of Archbishop Temple. I thought it characteristic — more than that — the remembrance has always been a great comfort. He was, as my Archbishop, spending the day at the rectory and preaching for me. After lunch we went into my study and he let me talk to him. He was so exceedingly fatherly that day that I was led on to talk to him about the great problems and mysteries of life, and told him of a certain matter which weighed upon me at times with an almost insupportable weight. It was connected with the hereafter. I may as well say it was the notion of the endlessness of time. He listened patiently and suggested certain lines of thought—and asked, if I did not think Hegel's philosophy helped over such a matter. Then I said, bluntly enough: "My lord, have you never had any of these troubles? Don't you ever feel the mystery of that other life?" He turned in his chair, put his hand ?P to his chin, looked at me a moment in his steady way, and then said: "Yes, I think I know what you mean. But I believe so entirely that God is my Father and that He loves me and that He will make me perfectly happy in the other life, that I never worry over what that life will be." It made me think: Here is one of the biggest men in England, living in the same simple faith that supports the Urnmblest Christian washerwoman— l>elief in God's love. The answer did more to help me than anything else he said, and it may be a comfort to others. For these problems and mysteries of life must ever remain, in spite of many attempts to solve them.—"The Record." THE YOUNG RULER. The point of the story is not what the young fellow was told" to do with his possessions in the way of distribution. It was not the effect on the poor that Jesus was considering at all. "Get rid of your possessions, for they are possessing you instead of your possessing them," He said in effect. "Get rid of them, anyhow, anywhere. Sell everything and throw your part of it away. The poor will absorb them without taking much alarm. It was a personal application as to what he could do to inherit the Kingdom 1 of Heaven. Christ's answer was to teil ( him to get rid of his inheritance- ' obsession by getting rid of the worldly ' It 111 ? 8 inheritances had brought, it 3 6 conilnon -sense way of doing His r-n,,, B youn o fellow was to join of HeavJrfH't' ~ vhich was the Kingdom ' her of tv + moment; for a mem- ' euperiontv 1 coni P a ny, flashing hi* •CEr would have broken itX-in an ideals.— A Local l'Ji V act aml Zealand Methodist TiS") ( " New , A PRAYER. Most merciful God, Thou bountifu Giver of all good, we humbly pray Then to help us m our endeavours to be ful to the teaching of the Saviour in the smaller as well as in the greater matters of conduct, that we may fulfill the just expectations of those who love us. and, when our life here is finished, be numbered among His faithful followsrs Amen.

c Day Outlook ::

SECOND THOUGHTS. » LABELS » IN RELIGION. Here are some wise and helpful passages from a little book of essays n entitled '"On Second Thoughts, or Reconsiderations of Religion," the work t of an English educationist, Professor [1 Henry Bett. „ It is a striking characteristic of the popular thought of our generation that it depends so largely upon labels. That " is to say, many people take some popu'f | lar cry and make a creed of it, without s really knowing what it means. There ii are some interesting reasons for this. It is a hurried age;* there is little quiet a thinking and little solid reading. It is y also an age of publicity, when any t popular phrase is echoed and re-echoed 0 everywhere. The mass of men glean Ii hasty opinions from the headlines of s the newspapers and the slogans of the ;. parties, and even the captions of the t cinemas. If men paused to think out - the complex situations that are repre--1 sented by these summary phrases they v would find that the phrases generally e need much qualification. Thus, in poli- •. tics, there are the labels Capital and 1 Labour. But there can be no doubt at all that in general use the terms are r very misleading. Every navvy who has S five pounds in a slate club or a co-opera-ljtive society is a capitalist, and every t manufacturer, or professor, or artist, who works at his job is a labourer, s Most people in the world are both prot prietors and workers in some degree, and a mere opposition between the • phrases Capital and Labour can lead to 2 nothing but muddled thinking. I Defenders of the Faith. 3 So in matters of religion there are - the labels Fundamentalist and Modern- . ist. There is not the slightest doubt i that these conjure up in many minds j the spectacle of devout men defending 1 the faith against sceptical attacks, and • in many other minds that of thoughtful ) men delivering the faith from strang- : ling superstitions. This is partly ex- ) plained by the fact that there are extremists on both sides who are about ■ equally crazy—those who believe that > nothing has changed since the end of . the seventeenth century, and those who 1 believe that everything has changed : since the beginning of the twentieth. ' But the fact, of course, is that every man who is both religious and rational is i both a Fundamentalist and a Modernist. I There are some things in the Christian faith that are absolutely fundaL mental. If we give up these we give up everything. Happily they are all facts of experience on which we can take our 1 stand without any fear or hesitation, j ! On the other hand, we live in the modern ' ' world, and we ought to approach and' interpret the Christian faith in the light of modern knowledge. If we do this it will alter our emphasis and our expression in some important respects, but surely not in any really vital way. Take as an example our attitude to the Bible. My grandmother probably thought that Moses wrote all the Pentateuch and David all the Psalms, and Paul the Epistle to the Hebrews. Now I happen to know something about the results of Biblical criticism, and should therefore think differently about the origin and authorship of many of the books in the Bible. Relief From Difficulties. This is quite interesting and important; it has some results which are greatly to the good, for in relation to the Old Testament, for example, it relieves us of many serious intellectual and moral difficulties, and (what is even more important) it emphasises the progressive character of revelation. Every intelligent Christian ought to familiarise himself with at least the main results of modern research into the origins and growth of Scripture; but, on the other hand, the Bible is the Word of God to mc as absolutely as it was to my grandmother, for it answers to the deepest needs of my soul, and I know that God speaks to me from its pages as He does 1 not from any other literature in the world. i NOTES IN PASSING. 1 A text: "When thou passest through ' the waters I will be with thee."—lsaiah 1 43, 2. (Said to have been the favourite s text of Sir John Franklin, the explorer.) Two memorial altars have been ■ erected to the memory of the late Areli- 1 bishop Redwood. Thev were unveiled 1 by Archbishop O'Shea a't the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Wellington. The Pope created 18 new cardinals 1 last month. In March, 1933, he created : two. There are now 09 cardinals altogether. Thirty-seven of them are I Italians. Thirty-two belong to several other nations. A writer in one of the Home papers expresses the opinion that the greatest danger to the young people of to-day lies in the sensationalism of the age, the speed and the spirit of excitement : and pleasure, for, he says, all these are opposed to meditation, worship and ' quiet, strong character building. 1 The writer of a recently-published book on "The Psychology of Conversion" defines conversion thus: To say that a man is converted means that religious , ideas, previously peripheral in his consciousness (i.e., outside his consciousness) now take a central place, and that religious aims form the centre of his energy. Wise sayings: "If left to itself, what more can any ape do to-day than any I ape did a million years ago . "God uses aptitudes, situations and oppor- , • tunities in combination to give promptings and guidance." . . . "When the grace of God comes to a man, he begins to know himself. He becomes aware of evil thoughts and evil desires, and pas- . sionately desires to be delivered from 1 this secret unworthiness." 1 In the course of a letter to "The Reli- i 2-ious World," the writer says: Jesus did not tell His disciples about commmication with the beyond. But he 1 lid tell them of communication from i he beyond when He promised the Holy i Spirit to "guide you into all truth" and \ 'show you things to come." What other £ '•evelation, he asks, ddes the Christian ■rant? A weekly contributor to the same •per —the Rev. John Bevan —writing of 1 ~;e Christian belief in the immortality J •f the soul, says it is the central thing t n the Christian religion, and comes, c hrough belief in Christ, from our per- t j °nal experience of God. "It is because 1* U ,k now God and experience His love iiitwe kn°w for certain that just as p n f ln rn here, we shall continue c l ° af r tei 'wards. I infer from what J .Purist that neither little i f mv-soui°BTlii ls J -i? artll(,uakes can destroy v mjr -soul, and that contents me." 1 U