THE CHURCH AND POPULAR OPINION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume C, Issue 11724, 31 October 1898, Page 6

THE CHURCH AND POPULAR OPINION.

The pulpit of St Luke’s Church was occupied yesterday morning by Bishop Julius, who took as his text Matthew v., 13, “ Te are the salt of the earth, but if the salt hath lost his savour, wherewith shall it he salted; it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men.” In the course of a lengthy sermon, , he said that it had often been affirmed that there were more good Mohammedans than there were good Christians, and he believed it to be perfectly true; butthiswasbecauseMohammedanism was a partial religion, built on and adapted to human nature and to the needs of the races among . which it had spread. Real Christianity was built on the supernatural, and appealed not to human nature, but to the Divine nature in man. It called to men not as born into the world, but as born again ,by the spirit of God, and thus became ' a' universal religion. Whenever in history the Church, for the sake of her supremacy,, had lowered her standard, whenever she had come down to the level of popular opinion instead of levelling it up to herself, she had lost her true influence. Was there not a tendency, amongst them to subordinate the law of the Church, the law of Christ, to the law of the people as expressed by Acts of Parliament ? In respect to a recent controversy it had been contended that the Church should bring herself into conformity with the'age, must, in fact, popularise herself. But this was exactly the opposite of what Christ had inculcated in the Sermon on the Mount. No doubt if the Church reduced her standard, turned away from the law of Christ and accepted things as they seemed to be, she would be strengthened and popularised for a while, until, like the salt of the text, she had lost her savour, when men would tread her underfoot. But though the Church should be faithful to the law of Christ she shouldnot be unmindful that she was an institution • of the , nineteenth' ' century; she should deal with 'men! living on the earth, she should recognise that she had a Gospel for the day. Nevertheless, as the salt of the earth, the Church came into antagonism with human thought and practice. that she might purify the world in every age. Here then lay their duty, not to set forth some old word and insist on it, not to force musty ritual on the people, but to be a living law of Christ. The question for the Church everywhere was not to preserve her endowments or increase, her material strength, but to be Christ "to the people. They could only do this by- Striving individually and collectively to get very near Christ. There was nothing . more profitless than, a religion which existed just because it was there of old times, and did not exercise a healing and wholesome influence. There was an ethical Christianity in the Sermon on the Mount which they were bound to apply to the nineteenth century. Christians should realise that they had a mission in life" as individuals, and set themselves forward to be the salt of the earth, which would preserve the earth from corruption.