EMPIRE AND CHURCH

Evening Post, Issue 119, 16 November 1925, Page 7

EMPIRE AND CHURCH

THE SPIRITUAL POWER-

HOUSE

THOUGHTS AFTER EXTENDED TOUR

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, 9th October.

In a second sermon, preached in Bristol Cathedral on Sunday, Dr. E. A. Burroughs, Dean of Bristol and Bishop-de-signate of Ripon, gave further impressions left upon his mind as the outcome .'of his recent Empire tour. He outlined the forces at work in the building up of the British Empire and said he came home a moro ardent Imperialist than ever, if by imperialism was meant belief in the historic mission of our Empire and the importance to mankind of the ideal symbolised by its flag; but with a. new anxiety about presentday developments, aa bearing on that mission, and a new sense of the responsibility resting upon all guardians o£ the best British tradition at home, and not least upon the Church of England. "It is not so much that our forefathers went out with the name of God upon , their lips," said Dr. Burroughs. "It is rather that they went with a real, if sometimes rudimentary, fear of God in their hearts. I must make much of what the Empire owes directly to actual Christian missionary work. New Zealand, for instance., is ours to-day simply because of the pioneer work of Church of England missionaries; and so is a great -part of our East and Central African possessions. But lam thinking more, of indirect efforts, the result not of deliberate evangelisation—the work of the Church —but of' the line almost unconsciously taken by pioneers and early Em-pire-builders. These men, in the England of their day, were brought up in the faith and fear of God, and emerged, not. necessarily 'religious' men, but men with a solidity of character and conviction which is far rarer in those we are sending out to-day. I. claim that a great part of our success in winning 'the heritage of the heathen' is due to what God shewed our ancestors of 'the power of >£li3 works.' . ' ' ■ PRODUCTS OF SECULAR STATE EDUCATION 1.

"Are we in the present keeping up the I tradition of the past, the tradition which has made our Empire ? and what is to 'happen to the human future if we fail 1 Frankly, the outlook is in many ways disquieting. ... The only hope lies in a quickening of the spiritual instinct of the British people and to that end we need (I think) especially a new spiritual initiative and gift of leadership in the English Mother Church. The materialism of Australia and New Zealand to-day is not, like that of America, a strenuous moneymaking force. Pleasure, rather than Mammon, is the popular deity; and pleasure largely in the peculiarly British guise of so-called 'sport,' which, at a certaiu point of its advance, invariably becomes all that an Englishman means by 'unsporting.' . . . All this mania is fed by high wages and. a. climate which lends itself to open-air life throughout the syear: and the same conditions favour constant indulgence in other forms of pleasure-seeking. . . . A'dd.to this that .Suriday.is;a picnic festival par excellence, and'that it takes an unusual degree, of religious' conviction to . bring younger /folk'at any rate, to church-it all—especially 1 where they-• -are -- the products of. Secular . State education— and you will see how different spiritual conditions are, even if the ChuTch were as strong as it needs to be. THE EMPIRE THAT COUNTS. "It is \in relation to what I have already said about, the British tradition, and its importance for the human future to day that the seriousness of these symptoms must be judged. I do not say that this materialism is universal or allconquering. On the contrary, religious life, at least in Australia, is in some places eminently vigorous; and the. strength of our own Church, as revealed at the Melbourne Congress, was a surprise as well as a delight to see.' But the situation as between the Church and the world out there is one which concerns the tvhole British Empire, and, above all, the whole Anglican Communion; and that is why I am trying to bring it home to you. As an Englishman who had lived two years in New Zealand put it to me) 'England is done; it's the Empire that counts to-day.' There- is a lot of truth in that. And, if so, there is truth no less in the claim that, instead of just 'the Church of England, we must think and live in terms of -the Anglican Communion as a whole. It is we who are largely responsible for the spiritual problems and dangers of the new lands overseas. It is pur duty to be the spiritual power-house of the Empire; to keep all parts of it in mind of its historic, providential mission, and, by any form of help which we can send, to make it easier for the daughter nations to be 'not disobedient to the heavenly vision' which •is the true inspiration and consecration of the British Empire as a whole." :

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