THE RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Evening Star, Issue 15074, 4 January 1913, Page 4

THE RELIGIOUS WORLD.

A PARSON GOLFER. A hundred members of local golfing clubs foregathered on October 27 to hear the Rev. E. A. Wintle, minister in charge of College Congregational Church, at Bradford (England), discourse on Sundav recr&ition. Mr Wintle is a well-known Yorkshire player. For years he has been an enthusiastic golfer, and some time, ago decided that he would play a match on Sunday afternoon with some fellow-members on condition that a certain propel'tion of Sunday golfers attended his church at evening eervico. Mr Wintlo explained to his hearers that the. challenge was never actually made, because his deacons were averse to it, feeling that it would do more harm than good. THE LIFE STORY OF AN ENGLISH JESUIT. There has recently been published the autobiography and life of George Tyrrell, ! arranged with supplements by M. D. Pelro, and Mr George Sampson, writing in the ' Daily Chronicle,' says of the two volumes in which it is published that Tyrrell's ownstory (contained in Volume I.) ivas written when he was 40, and covers a little more than half that number of years. The deficiency is supplied in Volume 11.. which is a very careful and skilful memoir written by Miss M. I). Petre, and taking up the story where Tyrrell himself had left it. Comparisons with tho 'Apologia' are inevitable, and the matter mav be summarised briefly in the remark that the two works no more resemble each other because they are confessions, than 'Twelfth Ni-dit' unci 'Candida' resemble each other because they are comedies. A prominent note .of Newman's mind was docility ; of Tyrrell's, indocility. Newman was supple, gracious feminine; Tyrrell was difficult.' irritable angular; and all these differences characterise the autobiographies. In Newman One thinks of the moving personal touches : fci Tyrrell one marks such a grim sentence as this: It is the same life of righteousness, the fame heroic good will, that makes a savage murder his aged parents, and a Christian do all he can to prolong their miserable and useless existence. And this: Clerical philosophy, which consists in the dialectical defence of foregone conclu- ' eions, is .scarcely distinguishable from sophistry. —Not the Cardinal.— Newman, who craved for miracles, and loved (like Sir Thomas) to Jose himself m a mystery, and to pin-sue his reason to an "0 altitude." would scarcely have written thus of a famous Jesuit ascetic : Father Caspar Dmzbicki has two chapters applying the theory that, "to will to love is the same as to love "—as grotesque a fallacy as was ever fabricated. Hence, says this ingenious fabricator of merit, if I say "I want to hive God with an act equal to that of the Blessed Virgin and all the angels put together and multiplied bv LOCO/' I do. ipso facto, elicit such an act. Therefore I will take my beads, and on each bead I will renew this act. But, happy thought! I may proceed by geometrical as well as arithmetical progression, and on (he second bead sqnaie the act on the first, cube it on the third, and so forth, till the very angels reel at the contemplation of acts so exceedingly their own. This drivel seems incredible' in one who writes otherwise sanely. Such a sentence as this could scarcely Bed a place in the 'Apologia': I would rather risk hell on mv own lines than secure heaven on these (of the Jesuits); I would .rather rdiare in the palpitating life of the sinful majority lhan enjoy the per.ee of tho saintly }' cw - ■ ■ ■ St. AJoysius makes me ill, and St. John Berc.hmans makes me angry. This is tantamount to a confession of worldliness, which I will not defend by a perverse application of the text: "God eo loved the world."' Yet I have always been disposed to blame the good shepherd for having lest his sheep, and to suspect the prodigal's father of making home intolerable to his son ; and similarly I cannot help laying half the sins and errors of the world on eccle'sias- ' tical shoulders. —Told with Sobriety.— His long account of the Jesuit system of training and education is all the more cruel and pitiless because it. is told with Mm* sobriety of an impartial observer, and not with the rhetoric of a prosecutor. The. melodramatic conception of the Jesuit nill hardly survive the revelations of this book. Whether any Jesuit, ever was like the Jesuit of fiction is a .gre.it perhaps; the modem Jesuit certainly isn't. He is dangerous, it would seem, not for his wisdom, but for his ignorance; not for his subtlety, but for his uncouthness ; not for his cunning, but for his stupiditv; not because ho "makes the end justify the means" (to repeat that humorous accusation), but because he is mentally incapable o; making or justifying anything whatever. The brilliant Jesuit is the exception, the freak. Indeed, it could scarcelv Oe otherwise, for obserwe these figures • Of the 18 recruits who arrived thatevening 16 boys were from Jesuit schools, and of these all but one straight from school. Of the 26 already in the uoticeship 22 were Jesuit schoolboys, 20 straight from school. Of vocations " from the world." like my own and such as I once fancied to be 'the rule, there were, in the novieeship of 1879-1880. seven out of 48; and in the novieeship of 1880-81 four out of 39. Tho rest were boys in yeais, boys ir. mind, bovs in character. And the education they received on the theological eide had tins'effect : Most priests are grossly ignorant of \ the very text of most of the Bible—a feature that distinguishes the modern Church from the medieval very unfavorably, and explains the poverty of religious imagination characteristic of minds fed solely on abstract theology, and not on the strong meat- of the word of God.

—Science!— On the scientific side things were ;is bad : The chief use of this smattering of science is to teach the more prudent to hold their tongues on. subjects they knowso little about, and to save us from such venturesome statements in public na that of a certain Father, who 'infornjed his audience that, according to science, some, of the stars were nearly as big as the world, and were hundreds of miles awayAll this,' it is necessary to remind the reader, was written by a Catholic who received th« last sacraments on his deathbed, and asked to be described on his tombstone as a Catholic priest. Let us turn for a moment to a matter of special interest just now. Saintly barristers and colliery owners have recently been displaying their fervent Protestantism to an admiring world. Perhaps English people hardly realise that theological differences in Ireland are social rather than religious. Thus writes Tyrrell of his Pro-" testant days: I remember the fusty old square-pewed Protestant c!:nr;h. . . . And there was the tawdry lit'Je Roman chapel in the village (my first experience .of", the Scarlet Lady) which my uncle's friends, the Barrys, and Judge Waters & family need to attend; and I wondered to see gentlefolk belonging to such a. vulvar religion, suited only for servants. TJiat Romanism was the religion of the Helots, and of the vulgar and uneducated classes in Ireland, was one of the strongest, if the least -ational, prejudices of my childhood. I mention this as an anti-Roman influence not existent in, England. THE LONDON CONGREGATIONAL UNION.

At the annual business meeting of the above the -Rev. F. Hastings, the chairman, said that, like other denominations, they found that tho masses were often very shy of them. He did not believe the masses \yere •.willingly opposed to them, but they had keen eyes for their inconsistencies. They generally, as ministers, used motor cars, trams, and trains on Sundays, while ' even church diznitaries winked at Sab-

bath golf-playing, and then they all wished to condemn Sunday cinematograph shows. A man once "told him he believed in "Christianity rather than Churchianity." The same man stated that Mr John Burns once said to him: " I don't know what to believe with all the divisions among you preachers, but I know I can do service for the mass of the people. I go prowling around London to see how to improve it as their dwelling place." That was Christ's spirit, although his friend seemed not to know it. There had been too much pomp and worldliness in all denominations. As teachers thoy had not always put before men plaiii doctrines. They had often used terroristic and repellent doctrines, technical and abstract terms. They might even have permitted a patronising tone to get into the pulpit. The man in the street wanted to see the meaning of Christ's truth and the plan of life made plain. They had to arouso men from t!ie spirit of indifference. They had to present not an abstract system, or mere ritual observance, but a life. They wanted less professionalism and less thought about wealthy churches. They must think less of salaries and more of opportunities. They must throw off the cloth of gold from the pulpit. A SEEKER AFTER TRUTH. A MOST REMARKABLE IRISHMAN. ''To a wide circle of his friends, and those who. though they never knew the. man, followed with elo.se attention the part he played in the Modernist movement, the, 'Life of George Tyrell,' just published' from the pen of Miss M. 1). Petrie. is a work of special interest. In a movement which produced such men as Lnisv, Sabatier, and Fogazraro. Tyrell more than held his own. and was, indeed, the foremost English-speaking exponent of the new theories. —A Seeker's Confessions.— "AVhnt can one who knew him well and owed him much add but this?'' asks Rev. Alfred Fawkes in the cchimns of the London 'Guardian.' "A child of to-morrow, the Church of yesterday was closed to him. His home was in the' Church of to-day." If one lingers longer over the first volume it is only because Tyrrell sets down his mental 'Sturm ami Drang' with a frankness \vhi:h recalls Ccllino or Rousseau rather than Newman. Augustine's question 'What then have I to do with men that they should hear my confessions ;:s if they could heal all my infirmities'.'' weighed so strongly with Miss Petre that it was only after much heart-searching that it was decided to irive the autobiography to the world." says the 'Glasgow Herald.' "To have done otheiwise would ! have been unjust to the <\or.t\ man's memory ; for this fragment reveals beyond question how utterly alien to Father'Tyrrell's critical and inquiring spirit was the whole system, training, and doctrine of the Society of Jesus." Meaningless Ritual.— "Father Tyrrell's bovhood calls for little comment. He was born in Ireland in 1861. and he left th- countrv in 1879, never again to return. Drought up in the Protestant faith, he came at an impressionable age to look longingly on the ordered ceremony of the Church of Rome. A period of association with Father Dolling, then starting on his life's work, led him to believe that he might find comfort in the High Anglican fold. But here the attention paid to lavish and meaningless ritual disgusted him. as the following' extract shows, ft relates to a time when he stayed in London with Father Dolling. who was then engaged in social work: One great blow was a service conducted by two youths who were holding a sort of mission in a schoolroom somewhere in the south east of London. They persuaded Dolling to v>ine rind preach for their,. :;nd I went from sheer

curiosity. There were these irresponsibly untaught shopbovs conducting solemn vespers with lights, incense, processions, and nil the rest--a sort of ecclesiastical debauch-- fooling themselves and fooling evervthinir thcv'cor.M. T sat there with a sense of degradation and bitter disgust. —A Penny Catechism.— " "After much hesitnncv Tvrrell made up his mind to enter the Church of Borne, and called on a Catholic priest, who presented him with a penny catechism. He has something to say about the irouv of this method of welcoming an educated convert bin he wer.t through with it all the same! j-nd shortly at'tei wards entered on his probationary period under the auspices of the Society of Jesus. He mav be left to speak for himself on his subsequent attitude to the Otder:— I did not . . . either love or reverence the society—T never did at anv t.me— but, gradually 1 got interested in it as a system, as a life. J wanted *r, comprehend it and put it together, rather than to question it. To live for two years at my then age exc!u,;i.-elv in the company of -hose who never questioned ' tne aH-suffic ; ency of Jesuitism m their own minds, much less in conversation ; • . . tc read no bcoks but those whicn were permeated with it: to healths pn.-idples of Jesuitism ie f .cuU>d aaxiomat.c- dav after dav. i:ll bv mere dir.t ot -repetition thev seized bold of tne imagination I : ke the advertisement of s-mie patent medicine uiat one se-ins -,t the. beginning and buvs at the end : all this was more than aiiv ordinarv character could hold out against, unless one singularly stubborn to social influences and almost inhumanly rationalistic. THE MOHALITY OK MYSTICS. The. Dean of St. Paul's, in the course ot onoof three lectures on 'Christian Mysticism,' outlined the general scheme tor the conduct of the moral life the scale of perfection which wo found in J lotinus first and in most of the Christian mystics afterwards. He said that tho lowest step which all must take was the practice of civic and social virtues. Tho lowest ideal of the mvstic was that he should become the ideal citizen. But he who wished for anv spiritual inheritance, must not stop there. The soul was not created morelv to practise the outer activities of the body, but to regulate the social life bv the virtue of what they called purification. The good man must try to liberate the soul from these trammels not by running away from the sociai life, but by inner detachment and outer self-discipline. There was nothing in tho mystic's attitude to encoiirag'e harsh asceticism and contempt for the world. The consummation and the reward of the purificativo way was illumination. This was the mvstie's heaven upon earth. Strictly it was not a moral state, as morality in the ordinary sense was transcended in that state. The illuminated man knew winthings were right and wrong; lie saw the world almost as God poured it forth from His own being, pulsating with His own life. - One of the characteristics of mystical morality was the identification of sin with selfishness. They must not minimise the doctrine of complete selfabnegation. False self must be crucified before we could attain to our true condition. The mystic, as a rule, was not a very passioiiate social reformer He tended to view social ills in an external manner which caused him sometimes to be suspected of indifference to them. Some Christian rnvsties, among them John Bunyan. had appeared rather callous under bereavement. The soul had its home in a TWO GUINEAS FOR FOUR LINES' A CHEQUE for £2 2s has been sent to Xi. the writer of' this verse—Mr H. ITC Cronadon, near Reef ton:— '' Tonkina's Linseed for Cough. Croup, or Cold Is v:orth much more than it's weif/ht in ij old. When "flu "ha* f/ripp'd you, never say die, But widely " Ton!;inr/'.< Kmiihion " try WIN TWO GUINEAS! Prize Poem published every Saturday. Best original fou' SEOKT-line advt. verse about "Tonking's Linseed Emulsion" wins each week. Front Cardboard Cover (the Cherub) frcm bottle must be enclosed. With Is 6d size may be tent ona verse; 2s 6d size, two verses; 4» 6d size, four versos. Address: "Tonking's Linseed Emulsion," P.O. Box 290, Wellington.

' spiritual region, out of suffering and out of sin. An important problem in mystical education was its attitude towards sin. I'lotinus clearly stated that the spirit was sinless, and that tho highest soul was so too. The question was: Could they hold the comfortable view that we ourselves never sinned, only in our lower self? He (the Dean) was no universalist. Ho regarded it as certain that men could so far identify themselves with their lower soil' as to lose all touch with the glorious company of beatified, spirits, but still tho doctrine he had just mentioned might b6 held in a helpful form. There wero many faults which to any seeing eye wero clearly caused by the body and its condition. How far this extended they did not know, but thoy might take comfort from the thought that where there were indications of wrong and wickedness in men they might hope that the soul itself would be kept pure in spite of any indignities to which it h.id given a passive assent. On the whole there was no typo ,of religion which could so confidently appeal to be judged by its moral fruits p.s mysticism. GLEANINGS. The Mcrninglou Baptist Church are anxiously awaiting a reply to their " call " to the Lev. Mr Oldrieve, of London. Mr IT. D. Bedford. M.A., filled the pulpit during December, and for the next two Sundays Pastdr Howard (of Yarraville Baptist- Church, near Melbourne) will conduct the. services. At a recent meeting of the Free Church Presbytery at Cupar (Scotland) Mr A. Jlamsay, a local elder, horrified his brethren by declaring that lie was the only man in tho assembly who hud tho courage to point out in- a church court that if ministers in receipt of £1.500 a year would give £IOO to help the central fund, it would do more good than all the circulars sent tint. Thev saw cases of ministers dying and leaving £30.000. That was not the spirit, of the Master. Working men and employers of labor pinched themselves to contribute to the central fund, and thoy gave all they could, for they felt that no minister should have less than £2OO a year. Lot the wealthy ministers support their weaker and poorer brethren. It hardly requires to be added that no member of the court made any remark on Mr Bamsay's speech. " I wish the ministers would ftop discussing the question : Why do not people go to church: and discuss instead : Why .should they go to church?'' says Dr Lyman Abbot, in the 'Outlook.'"' " Theie great religious forces—dormant, ineffective, scattered—must- be brought together. and the Church must change from a guerrilla force into a. united army. We i shall not accomplish union by trying to make a creed so small that nobody'object,* j to it because nobody cares anything about j it. We shall find the point of our union in the object which we seek, not in the point from which we start. AAV are all seeking th<' same end—if we onlv knew it."

Some striking changes have been made ill the revised txlition of the Bible just published by the American Baptists' Society, states tho New York correspondent of a London newspaper. Tho names Adam and Eve are excluded, and tho words ''man" and "woman" substituted. The chamrcs. and they aro rather numerous, arc based on a claim that the substituted words are more direct Iranslations than the version authorised by Kino; James. In the new Bible the story of Jonah and the whale is changed, so that the words "great take tho place of "whale." "carved" replaces "graven." aj:d the. word "immerse." in parentheses, follows the word " baptise " in every instance. The Baptist ministers in Xew York admit the alterations may spoil the charm of the old English phraseology, but they sav that charm is only a secondary consideration to accuracy. Some members of the Baptist body that the new Dihle sliould be printed in simple spelling, but answer is returned to the effect that the time is not yet ripe for such a step.