CHURCH AND POLITICS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1282, 10 November 1911, Page 9

CHURCH AND POLITICS.

HIATUS BETWEEN" PROFESSION AND I'lacTICE. In tho courso of his sermon in Knox Church, Dunedin, on Sunday nielli, the Itev. K. L. Da vies touched upon llio functions of the Christian Church in regard to politics. He said that there were two extreme virus h(.] ( | Ihe question. The first was thai the Church should have nothing to do with politics, either individually or as corporations. Proceeding. he mid: They assert we are citizens of another world, and hold that the management of this world is uo concern of ours. So mo carry this principle so far as to refuse to record a vote at an election. Tho other extreme is (hat it is the dutv of tho Church to convert itself into a kind ot social agency, and as such to see that the citizen is supplied with all he needs, from a sanitary dwelling-house to a cricket club, and from a fair wage to a pleasant Sunday afternoon. In fact, according jo this view, it was tho business of the Church to direct and control tho movement of tho citizen at every turn. The middle view—the correct one —was tha t it was not the business of the Church to involve itself in the turmoil of social or political reform, but that it was its business to turn out men and women fit and eager to apply Gospel principles to all tho varying circumstances of presentday life. It was recently stated in England by a prominent divine that it was tho duty of tho Church to attempt a settlement of the great industrial prob-, lem in Britain. He said that if both the' employer and the employed were possessed more fully of tho Gc-spel spirit the solution of the great industrial difficulty of the present day would be easy. The difficulty lay in the fact that there was a hiatus between Christian profession and Christian practice. There was a need today for tlw application of religious principles to tho actual conditions under which tho people of this 'country lived, and the application must be dono by individual Christians rather than by tho Church corporally. In every-case when tho Church' had taken a" strong stand on tho question of principle it had always strengthened its position. Tho Church existed for the propagation of tho Gospel, for communion with God. These were tho primary duties of the churches, and tliev had no right to do anything tending to hinder them or unfit them for the attainment of these ideals- It was frequently asserted that tho Church was antagonistic to tho Labour movement. That was due largely to ignorance of the conditions that obtained at the present day. It was true that in the generation gone by the Church was too other-world-ly in affirming that Christians were citizens of the heavenly commonwealth, while paying little regard--to the conditions that obtained ill the present life, where character was formed and destiny fixed- Jlany of the leaders of Labour admitted that they could do little without the assistance of religion. Jlazzini, the great Italian reformer, took as his motto, "God and the People." That would be an excellent watchword for the movement to-day. Some spoke as if the Church was capitalistic. That was mere nonsense. 'Ue look round about us everywhere, and wc set! tho workers in numbers in our churches. It mattered not whether a man worked with his brain or his hands, it was work, it was labour; and in that federated empire of the future, the parliament of man, the brain worker would have learned to respect the worker witii the band, wliilo the latter would have realised the true function in the community of tho man who spends himself in anguish of soul and mind in the elucidation of truth, and in the propagation of the principles of life by which tho ideal social order for which they all worked would bo attained.—Dunedin "Star."