BACK TO REALITIES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 64, 9 December 1930, Page 10

BACK TO REALITIES

Greater Simplicity ■ ECONOMIC PROBLEM Life Been Too Complex ARCHBISHOP’S VIEWS Dominion Special Service. Auckland, December 8. “It is not the duty of the church to endeavour to find specific remedies for the present economic distress or to take sides on politics, but to witness to the principles of the Lord and Master to build up character and to endeavour to point to signs which herald the daw,” said Archbishop Averill in preaching at St. Mary’s Cathedral last evening on his impressions of church life in England. “I am quite convinced that England at heart is a religious nation, that the spiritual instinct is far from atrophied, and that men are coming to realise more and more that the spirit of materialism has contributed largely to the present chaotic state of the world,” Archbishop Averill said. “Unfortunately in England and elsewhere there is a tendency to magnify

and increase the ceremouial side of worship and make it a thing quite separate and distinct from the ordinary life and business of the world. I do not believe in party iplrit either in reigion or politics, and it seems to be the bounden duty of the Church first

and foremost to set before the world the very antithesis of the spirit of isolation, separation, suspicion and division which has helped to bring the world into its present chaotic position and to be prepared for a real sacrifice in order to bring about real unity and fellowship.” Archbishop Averill said he was struck with the absence of simplicity in so many churches in England and the inordinate attention given to detail, which so often detracted from the beauty and reality of the service. “We have got to meet the economic difficulty by a greater simplicity of life, and in many cases that will be a blessing in disguise,” said the Archbishop. “Life has been too complex, too exacting, too dependent upon outside stimulus and excitement. We must get back to the.real in life—we have had far too much of the artificial and unreal —and after all simplicity and reality are almost twin sisters and infinitely more beautiful than those other twins—thrills and sensations. I am sure we need to go back to a simpler religion.”