Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 1929. DRIFTING AWAY

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 3, 3 July 1929, Page 8

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 1929. DRIFTING AWAY

In his masterly analysis of the drift away from organised religion, Bishop Sprott yesterday presented to the Diocesan Synod the basis for a constructive study of the present situation. The drift is undeniable, and it is just as surely a drift and not a conscious revolt. The majority of those whose interest in organised religion has diminished would, if questioned, be quite incapa¥e ? f explaining and justifying this diminution. Their conduct is not guided by study of the natural sciences, by profound knowledge of Biblical criticism, or by analytical examination of the psychological bases of religious experience. Probably many of them have but the haziest knowledge of the four factors which Bishop Sprott enumerated as contributing to the unsettlement of men's minds. A smattering of information may have come to them, but it is not sufficient or sufficiently positive to provide them with a new belief in place of that which they have lost. In fact, their belief and basis of moral conduct, if examined, would probably be found still mainly religious and Christian. There has been no definite and conscious rejection of Christianity. Rather there has been a loosening of the hold which is the more difficult to deal with because it is not attributable to a definite, explainable cause. The first crude ideas of the effect of knowledge of the natural sciences upon religion have been corrected. No intellectual and thoughtful mind now suggests that the theory of evolution knocks the bottom out of religion. It is widely acknowledged that the natural sciences, though they may explain methods, as Bishop Sprott stated, cannot answer the question: "Why and by whom?" Yet while there has been this drift away from religion there is still a profoundly deep religious foundation for our civilisation. At heart the white races of the world are lawabiding, and their respect for law is something more than an acknowledgment of the force and power of the State. Men are honest, not solely because there are police and Courts to punish theft when it is found out, but because they accept honesty as a moral principle. On what does that acceptance stand? The average man does not work out for himself the merits of the philosophical moral systems and decide that he will be guided by this or that. He accepts the ideas which have been accepted in the main by his forefathers for generations, and these ideas rest upon Christianity. There has been no attempt to evolve a substitute system. Indeed, experience has proved that any such attempt must fail. Comte and a band of intellectual followers attempted in the Nineteenth Century j to organise a religion of reason—the Positivism that was to appeal to the intellect and not to the emotions. But the inspiration was lacking—the absence of a personal God left Positivism unprofitable and unsatisfying. There have been other less ambitious attempts since to satisfy the religious craving of the soul, but they have not endured. Just now there is a popular resort to a watered-down system of psychology, which professes to explain the processes of the mind and teach conscious control of them.

Man has not learnt to do, entirely without religion. The craze for new religious or psychological systems proves that he is not yet ready to find all that'he requires within his own mind: There has come a time, and not for the first time, when men are heaping to themselves teachers "having itching ears." Yet deep down there is still a craving for the religion [which will satisfy all human emotions for God as described in a 17th Century Sermon of Dr. Donne:—

If some King of tho earth hays so large an extent of dominion to north and south, so that he hath winter and summer together in his dominions, so largo an extent oast and west as that ho hath day and night together in his dominions, much more hatii God mercy and judgement togetlTer; Ho brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; He can bring thy summer out of winter, though thou have no spring; though in tho ways of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintered and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped, and benumbod, smothered and stupefied till now, now God comes to thee, not as in tho dawning of tho day, not as in the bud of the spring, but ns tho sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invito his mercies, and all times are his seasons. The need may not be felt or expressed in times of prosperity and health; but in distress or disaster there is a call "De Profuridis" as poignant as ever rose from humanity before natural science or the psychology of religious experience were heard of. This being so, why is it that the people drift from the churches? In part it is the carelessness of materialism, which is not conscious but thoughtless. The age in which we ,live has idolised science, invention, mechanical genius. There are many worshippers at the shrines of the products of materialism. The development of the machine has led men to think in terms of body and mind, but not of spirit. There is, however, another factor that cannot be overlooked. There has been an

attempt with some of the churches to fashion new dogma, to publish new articles of belief with just as dictatorial an emphasis as in the old dogma: "Except a man believe these he cannot be saved." The force of the churches has not been wholly concentrated on the aim: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God." It has sought out new things, and particularly it has sought to harness the forces of legal compulsion where it should depend on moral suasion. In so doing it has confessed a disbelief in the sufficiency of religion. This may be a minor reason for the drift, but it is a reason. It tends to create in men's minds the impression that Christianity is a failure, and that they must turn instead to specific organisations to achieve what they regard as morally desirable—to No More War movements, Prohibition campaigns, anti-gambling crusades. If the churches themselves widely acknowledge inability to work without the power of the law, do they encourage men to seek them?