INGE ON DEITY

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 10473, 31 December 1927, Page 2

INGE ON DEITY

“ANTIQUE IT)EIAS OF HAS NATURE WILL DISAPPEAR.” NOT LIKE A SULTAN. LONDON. Nov. 23. Advocating humanity toward animals, Dean Inge, of St. Paul’s, in a lecture before the British Science Guild, declared: “If the lower animals could devise a religion, they would certainly represent tho devil as a great white man ” Superstition, faith healing and similar subjects afforded the dean an opportunity to enlarge upon his previously expressed beliefs and disbeliefs. He predicted that, due to science, 'many superstitions and antique ideas of the nature of God will have disappeared two generations hence, faith healing will be placed on a scientific basis, and “mood’ sports and a more jiumane attitude towards animals as well as a. cheek in the destruction of natural beauty and wealth. “If there is a personal 'God,” said Lean -Inge, “Ho certainly is not- like a capricious Oriental sultan, from whom favors may be obtained _ h.v making friends with his couriers ; neither is He a magnified school-' master, distributing prizes and punishments.” The dean supported the theories ot Bishop* Barnes of Birmingham, whose utterances on evolution have stirred up a nation-wide debate. Dean Inge’s review included superstitions, chiefly among half-educated people. He described the development of modern towiis with “bungaloitl growths” as a new oriine anu condemned modern conditions ill industry. Then: “God certainly is not the heaci oi the clerical profession.”