THE RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Evening Star, Issue 12008, 3 October 1903, Page 10

THE RELIGIOUS WORLD.

AN INTERESTING ADDRESS. The Rev. F. B Meyer, 8.A., lately of Cliristchurch, Westminster, at the final meeting of the Sunday School Union Centenary on July 13, was deputed to'reply . to the fraternal greetings brought by the | Continental delegates—Pastor Charles Bieler, of Paris, and Pastor Clans Peter?, of Berlin. He said he could not tell how well an English visitor was treated among German Christians. They were lavish in their attentions and in getting ministers and people to hear the brother from England. One of the most enthusiastic men he ever met on the Continent of Europe was Prince Bernadotte —one of God's elect pools, a man of irreat manly beauty, strength, and stature, who gave up his light of succession to the throne of Sweden for the love of one of the loveliest women that ever lived. He (Mr Meyer) wondered how he did it till he saw the lady—then he ceased to wondpr. On one occasion when he stayed with the Prince in his beautiful pala.ee the latter said on Saturday evening: "You will exrase the Princess and the children and myself to-morrow morning, and take your break.* ust by yourself at the -sual hour." Mr Meyer inquired the reason, and learned that thev always breaicfasted an hour earlier v.n Sunday morning, <j that they might no* miss the prayer meeting before Sunday school. But Mr Meyer went with them—all carrying their Bibles—to the prayer meeting. Family prayer in the Prince's home was one of the most remarkable and beautiful functions he ever atttended. First the Prince would read, then he would pray, and Mr Mey<_r— as a stranger and a minister -would fohow; then the Princes, and after wards the Salvation Army cook, would pray, and he (Mr Meyer) did not know which was best—h.pr praying or her cooking. Then the butler, who was a good orthodox Lutheran, would follow suit, and then the footman. In Germany, as in Norway and Sweden, he had always found that English Christianity struck a kind of keynote. English papers lay on all tables, and articles fi-om their religious periodicals were frequently translated. When he was asked to speak to a number of boys in Stockholm he proposed to bring an interpreter. But the boys said : " Oh. no. thank you! We understand English perfectly well—we of the High School " The German and Scandinavian countries teach English in their elementary srhools, so that the literature of England is open to the growing minds of those great peoples. Only when he was out in Germany, Norway, or Sweden did he realise the magnitude of the conflict the Free Churchmen of England were just now engaged in. He saw and heard that ihoughtful people on the Continent were axing their eyes upon England as being the arena where the last great fight against Dltramontnnistn was going on. People came round him and cried : "What are vou sroir.g to do? What will the issue be?* If yon are de'eaS-d by the priest-spirit in England it v.iil ride through the world. If you defeat it. it is the Armageddon in which it will be trodden under foot for ever!" They must do their best to indoctrinate the children of their Sundav schools and elementary schnols with so much of the wholesome evang.Tica! truth of Jesus Christ that error would hava no entrance or foothold afterwards.

A BISnOP ON SOCIALISM. The Bishop of Balb.rat (Dr Green), in a recent sermon, pointed out that Socialism was not a noveltv. It was spoken of s : x centuries bffore Christ's advent; but when Christianity came the Socialistic spirit did not last, and it was only in the early part of i-.e n;ner<."~th century that it grew in pow«-. He had no wish to attack Socialism's nroMr.ms, but only to say that its economic principles were based on pigantic fallacies, disproved along the of human history. It was a French Socialist who said the trinity of evil was property, marriage, and relision : but the good mrin just dead, Pope Leo XIIL, who wrote that the distinctive characteristics of Socialism are un-Catholic and un-Christian. It began at the wrong end. It endeavored to right the world and make people h'ippier by i: aterialistic means. Socialism had, however, got hold of a truth which the Christian Church had forgotten—the brotherhood of man. The greatest part of. all the propaganda of all revolutionary Socialism dealt with possessions wrongly used. The man who owned and used what he owned selfishly and oppressively was doing more for revolutionary and anti-Christian principles than all the Sydney Domain and Yarra btnk orators could. He was a man guilty before God, and a traitor to his country. GLEANINGS. At a special meeting of the Clutha Prcshjtery, held on Tuesday at Balclutha, a cejutation from the Warepa and Kaihiku congregation bore testimony ft> the good work done by the Rev. Mr Kilpatrick in those districts during the past ten years, and, on behalf of the congregation, expressed deep regret at the prospect of losing his ministerial services. The "call" from Green Island was then placed in the rev. gentleman's hands, and having been accepted by him he was directed to await instructions from the Dunedin Presbytery. In parting with Mr Kilpatrick the'different members of the Clutha Presbytery bore strong and eloquent testimony to his Christian character and to the good work he had done in his own congregation and throughout the presbytery. At the great Roman Catholic Conference •leld at Liverpool in July last, over which Cardinal Logue presided, a paper p-# pared by the Rev. Mr Pinnington was read, beginning thus: "We are constantly being told of the enormous leakage which is gointr an in,the Catholic Church in England, of" the thousands who are drifting away from the faith. Various causes are" assigned for the loss which is going on," and after mentioning a great number of these the author proceeds : "It is not for me to decide which is our greatest enemy. The truth of the fact that th» leaJcagc is there is, alas! only too well known to us. It is folly to close oro eves to it. Far better to accept tho fact, and each «y? to the best of his ability endeavor to ihe drain." Mr Pinnington proceed to Drove his position by the statistics of Liverpool. He beliered the Roman Catholics to be fairly estimated at 126,720 fifty years ago, md ou'_'ht, in proportion to the increase of population in that city, to be now 200,000. A house-to-..Duse census, taken by the clergy jn 1902, however, showed that their actual number was 135,412, being less than it was forty years ago. when the fiaures weTe

135,537. According to the report in the ' Catholic Times' of July 10, numerous shakers, including two bishops, took part in the subsequent discussion, but no contradiction of Mr Pinnington's views is mentioned.

The Bisbop o! Durham thinks that " the King's language is in danger." The other day he was shown a letter from a young clergy-man of great ability, and he "is ashamed to say that four-fifths of it was slang."

A tonchinc; detail is related proving the affection of the new Pope for Cardinal Rampolla. At the first "obedience" after the announcement of the Pope's election, when the cardinal advanced to kiss the hand of the newly-elected Pontiff, the latter drew the cardinal to his breast, and held him tlasDed for r weral minutes, sobbing trie while. It was noticed, too, tnat Cardinal Rampolla withdrew weeping. At the historic parish church at Penn, near High Wycombe, Bucks, the vicar, the Eev. B. J. S. Kerby, has appointed Miss Benson as his churchwarden for the ensuing year. She thus enjoys the distinction of being the only unmarried lady churchwarden in England. Just fior to the departure of the missionary steamer John Williams from Sydney for New Zealand, the Rev. Joseph King said, on the authority of Mr Britten, of the Catholic Truth Society, that Cardinal Moran had withdrawn from a new edition of his

lectures the charge as to the alleged "spirituous carrro" of the John Williams made anainst the London Missionary Society. But the cardina l had not withdrawn that charge so far as Sydnr-y was concerned, where he made it originally, and, moreover, had declared that he would not withdraw it. Preaching at Marylebone Presbyterian Church, London, on July 26, the Rev. Dr (i. C. Lorimer, of New York (U.S.), referred to the recent religious census of London, originated by the ' Daily News,' and said that the question of church-going vas by the drink problem, nmuse-

ments, and the social evil, and in his opinion the churches are on the eve of a new era. The new Pope employs the human singular instead of the official plural number in addressing his visitors. He even bids ordinary people to Bit in his presence during an audience, a thing hitherto permitted only to sovereigns and cardinals. He converses with friends through the telephone, and, to crown his enormities, he invites simple

clerics to sit and eat at his table, whereas the Papal custom decrees that on rare occasions, when the Pope entertains distin guished guests, he must dine at a table apart, and be separated from their gaze by

a light screen. ' The English Royal Family, according to an American Jewish journal quoted by the ' Jewish Quarterly Review,' is of Davidic. descent. "The stone under the seat of the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey is Jacob's pillow, or the old coronation stone on which the Hebrew kinjrs were crowned in the temple at Jerusalem." King Zedekiah's daughter was married by the prophet Jeremiah to the Irish King "Eveahide, who was also of Jewish origin, in the year 583 8.C.. and .the couple were crowned on the Bethel stone. Queen Alexandra's descent can also, we are assured, be traced by two different lines to Odin, and so to David. History of this kind is not unfamiliar to students of

the Talmud, but is rather astonishing as a product of the twentieth century.

The 'Diamond Fields Advertiser' (South Africa) of June 13 devoted eleven columns

to the report of a deputation of Moderate Churchmen which waited upon the Bishop of B'oemfontein, and who, according to their chief spokesman, a Mr M. Cornwall, "were desirous of having the privilege granted

ihem of worshipping God publicly injpc(ordanee with the simple, and strict teaching of the Reformed and Protestant Church of England." They asked Dr Chandl rmost earnestly to license a clergyman of moderate views to minister to those who could i.o longer conscientiously continue to attend the services at St. Cyprian.*' and other churches of Kimbcrley. They were, be said, prepnmd to build their own church i'nd support their own clergyman. After a long argument in reply on church doctrine and practice, the deputation retired without having obtained any satisfaction, and being regarded, Fays a contemporary, as the promoters of "a sort of schism in the town." When the news of the late Pope's death was received at Blackburr.e, Lancashire (England), one of the parishioners noticed the flag at the parish church flying at half-

must, and at once wrote an indignant protost to the vicar (Dr Thornton, formerly Bishop of Ballarat), and asked if the same token of respect would.be shown to " C4eneral" Booth. Id his reply Dr Thornton reminded his correspondent'that the Pope was the venerated representative of the most numerous communion of Christians in the world, and added: "Controversy is too much with us. It is sweet to have her harsh voice hushed beside a good man's

grave. The Rev. Thomas Tait, M.A., 8.D., will commence his ministry at St. Paul's, Christchurch, on the last Sunday in October. He will leave Melbourne on tho next trip oi the Warrimoo. The Rev. R. 11. Benson, son of the late Archbishop Benson, who has joined tie Chirrch of Rome, was ordained deacon in 1894, and priest in 1895. From 1894 to 1837 he was curate of St. 'Mary the Virgin of Eton, at Hackneys ick, London, and in 1897-3 curate at Kemsing, Kent. Since 1901 he has been priest at the House of Resurrection, Mirfield, Yorkshire. Having learned that some English bishops are meditating a pronouncement which may commit them unreservedly to an approval : of the work and methods of the British and ; Foreign Bible Society, the London ' Church ! Times' urges the need of caution. "There I are certain things," pays that journal, "in which hearty co-op°ration, even with heretics, may be allowable, and one such thing is the dissemination of the Holy Scriptures, if true and honest versions alone be circulated. . . . But at the same time great care is needed in this kind of co-operation, lest errors be palliated and wrong practices cordoned. . . . The refusal of the society to supply copies of the entire Bible, as commended to the faithful by the Church, to which attention was called last year on the occasion of the King's Coronation, begins to chill our sympathy. Can the bishops give unreserved support to a society the rules of which, as the Marquis of Northampton paid, forbid the purveyance of the Church's Bible? And what shall we say of some of the versions circulated?" At a crowded Christian citizenship meeting, held in the Centenary Hall, Svdney, recently, the Rev. P. J. Stephens directed his remarks to gambling, intemperance, and social impurity. ~Rp said that no less a champion than Archbishop Kelly had come forward to whitewash the gambling vice, and he sverred that the way in which bazaars and fancy fairs were conducted bv the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church was a scandal. They were nothing kw than gambling dens, and should be

suppressed just a3 much as " two-up" schools. Reference to the declining birthrate brought forth the remarks that it was time we cast aside fancied delicacy and mealy dilettantism in religion. It was necessary to stop playing Christian endeavor, and to be real endeavorers in this respect. The impure book and the leprous Press must be suppressed. As to those who strove to decoy defenceless girl" into houses that they might ruin them, and as to the members of professions, legislators, and others who were patrons of the diabolical traffic in woman's shame, for them the lash was too merciful.—(Applause.) Perhaps the most difficult diocese to administer in the British Empire is that in charge of the Right Rev. Jc-rvois Arthur Newnham, Bishop of Moosonee. His diocese, which originally formed part of <-be Rupert's land diocese, was formed in 1872, and comprises the whole basin of Hudson's Bay. It nominally covers 600,000 square miles (says the ' Sunday Strand'), but actually it is unlimited to the North. The. population is about 10,000, of which half are Church members, and throughout the long winter tin bishop has to travel by means of slpigh and snow-shoes. The late Pope Leo XIIT. entrusted some a:x years ago the Count Soderini with the task of writing a history of his Pontificate. "While entire freedom was left to the Count,

numberless documents, hitherto wholly secret, were placed at his disposal, and. in addition, much material was dictated bv the Pope in cxp'anatim of his acts. Mr F. Marion Crawford (the novelist) is acting in collaboration with Count Soderini in the preparation of the Anglo-American edition. An interesting Mtory comes from the island of Tristan d'Acunha. When the gunboat Thrush paid its last visit the services of Lieutenant-i'ommnnder Watts-Jones, R.N., were requisitioned for the christening of eighteen children. There is no clergyman on ths island, and the only reIknous instruction is at a small Sunday pchool conducted by one of the women. There is a precedent for the christening ceremony by a naval officer, for in 1898 a similar service was held at which the " celebrant '' was the commander of the gunboat Widgeon. The Rev. C. M. Sheldon, of 'ln His Steps' fame, hns formed in the United States a life insurance company to issue po'icies on the lives" of Christians and total abstainers only. All the churches of the United States are being invited to support the organisation. An inducement offered is a 10 to 20 per cent lower rate than other compmles. The 'Catholic Times' (London) of July 10 has thft following paragraph under the heading 'A > T stural Consequence':—"Public opinion <n France is beginning to be stirred at stories which describe what may be called th'r Germanisation of the Vatican. A writer in the ' Eclair' points out the great of the German population in Rome. He <el!s his readers of the numbers of Germars who are Superiors or religious Orders and of +he important posts in administration confided bv the Vatican to subjects of the Kaiser. Cardinal Rampo'ila and other eminent ecclesiastics are beginning to employ the German language, Avith which piece of information, if it b" true, we are delighted, f OT a , kno---ledgo of German is essential to clergyman nowadays. But this is not &!!. Germany is trying to get possession of the Church of St. John Lateran in order to convert it into a Teutonic refuge, at the head of which Prince Max of Saxony, well known in Whitechapel as an amiable and zealous priest,' will be placed, with the rank of Cardinal. And all this to secure a German voto-at the next Conclave, from which the

Kaiser expects a German Pope! Such stories are really amusing, and serve to show how minds in France are drifting. But if French Catholics grow aiuriouß at the increasing rapprochement between the Vatican and Berlin they should remember that their own acts have largely assisted it. German opportunity is befriended by French folly: and, after all, the Vatican may be left free to choose its own allies."