POLITICS AND THE PULPIT.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19669, 12 July 1929, Page 5

POLITICS AND THE PULPIT.

SERMON BY DEAN INGE. (FBOM OUB OWX COBSESPOKDENT.) LONDON, May 23. Dean Inge, preaching at St. Paul's Cathedra] on Whit Sunday, said that the General Election, quite properly, occupied most of their thoughts that week, but he really did not think that it was very suitable for a Whit Sunday sermon. Party politics ought to be rigidly kept out of the pulpit. The clergy were not specially qualified to lay down the law on those matters. The phrase "Christian politics,'' so often heard now, was, in his opinion, very objectionable. They had no right to talk of Christian politics when honourable and sensible men notoriously differed on social and economic questions. Our Lord's two answers to political interrogations were "Man, who made me . . . ." and "Render unto . . . " —neither of them verv encouraging. The only advice which he (the Dean) had any right to give to them was: Do not forget to pray for our dear country. Try to form a clear notion of the real issues of this election. And vote according to your conscience. The subject of his sermon was the Christian idpal of education, an rmportant one, especially as education in England wis far from satisfactory. The dead hand and obsolete ideas had crippled progress _in education perhaps more than in _ any other field An important question was whether they had the right to mould the minds of children in a certain groove. Had they a right to stamp a child indelibly if they had their way. with the brand of a good Catholic, or a good Protestant, or a robust free thinker? There were two fanatical bodies which answered enthusiastically "Yes"—the ultramontane Catholics and the Gom- ! munists. Personally, he thought that neither of them ought to be allowed to take any part in primary education. They were propagandists on principle, and children ought not to be exposed to this unfair pressure. Object of Education. More and more they were coming to believe that the office of a gooa educator was not to stamp the pupil with his own image or with the image and superscription of the sect or party to which he belonged, but to help the pupil to stand alone and gradually to make himself (the teacher) superfluous. The modern idea was that every human being had it in him or her to be something, and that the object of education was to liberate in each person the best that he or she was capable of becoming. That, he thought, was the Christian view—the sacredness of the individual soul. It was one of the chief doctrines of Christianity, and if the doctrine of the indwelling spirit of God meant anything it meant that character must develop from within, and that the centre of gravity in religion oncht to pass, as it was passing, from authority to experience. ... . , The present definition of education sounded the note of liberty, and this at first sight might appear a victory for the Christian principle, but the most important part of education was that which they must give themeelves—self reverence, self knowledge, self control. Their ancestors might have been too hard with themselves and their children, but our temptation was to be too soft.