THE RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 18 June 1932, Page 10

THE RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK

(Contributed). Mr Luke Thompson, M-P., on Church Attendance. At a well-attended meeting of the Gateshead Brotherhood Mr Luke Thompson, the popular M.P. for Sunderland, made some observations on church-going. He said lie led a pretty busy life, but with all his public engagements he had not come to the point of neglecting Sunday morning church attendance, and added that for him attendance at a church service on Sunday morning meant everything. Speaking of the Sunday Cinemas Bill and the fact that he had appended his name to a motion.objecting to the Bill. Mr Thompson said that for himself he was solicitous for the institution of the Sabbath and he did not intend to sacrifice lightly that respite from labour which the British Sabbath had given through the ages and still gave to-day. Humility. “Humility is good when it stimulates, it is bad when it. paralyses the active powers of a man. It may do either. We have noble examples of humility as a'stimulus; the sense of Weakness making a man all the moro ardent to use all the strength he hasBut if conscious weakness causes a man to believe that it makes no difference whether he works or not, then his humility is his curse.—Phillips Brooks. Canon’s Analysis of Man. “Can modern' man believe in God?" was the question answered by Canon Pollard, Vicar of Lancaster, speaking at the Lancaster Brotherhood meeting recently. The Canon gave three pictures —one illustrating the wonders of astronomy, the second the wonders of chemistry, and the third a chemical analysis of man. I The analysis of the average man, said the Canon, was enough fat\ for seven bars of soap, iron for one nail, sugar |to fill a small basin, lime enough to whitewash a hen-coop, phosphorus for 2.200 matches heads, magnesium for one dose of magnesia, potassium to explode a toy canon, a pinch of sulphur, and the rest water. The whole, at present market prices, was about four shillings, The Church in Politics.

The “Presbyterian Magazine” publishes an interview given by Senator Borah to W. T. Hanzclie. Asked what place the Church has in the movement towards reconstruction of the wrecked world. Senator Borah said: “The Church lias been and ought to be a great factor in all matters which pertain to the building-up of character in the. individual. The Church ought to devote its effort to equipping the individual for citizenship by building up his intellectual and moral status. The Church, however, has no business in politics. There seems to mo to be a lack of steadiness, a lack of courage, a lack of wilingness on the part of the individual to-day to bear the burdens of adversity. If we are not on the crest of material success, we think the world has all gone to pieces. But, after all, material success is only a small part of life. It is the Church’s business to develop character that can stand up under adversity, character that realises that life does not consis

I merely in possessions. Let the Church 'keep out of politics and centre its effort on the development of character. Jt, will then make a fundamental contribution to the nation—the development of true citizenship.” Of much interest to churchpeople in his native county of Hertfordshire and in his adopted home at St. Mark, Noel Park, Middlesex, is the 'recent consecration of the Bov. Charles j Christopher Witts, as Bishop of St. | Helena. | It is a tiny diocese, comprising only 125 square miles of land, in the | islands of St. Helena, Ascension and I Tristan da Cunha, with a population | under four thousand, three-fourths i being “coloured." | The diocese was founded in 1859, , being taken out of the Diocese of , Capetown, and now possesses six | churches and five church schools [ served by four clergy. ■Mr Watts was born at Kensworth Vicarage, and after Cambridge and iCuddesdon was curate of Noel Park from 1900 to 1907. Then he heard the call of Africa, aif 1 was successively priest of Mbabane, head master of the European School and of the Coloured School there, until 1927, becoming a Canon in 1917 and Archdeacon of Swaziland in 1918. After two years back again at St. Marks, Noel Park, as Vicar, he was still eager for the front line and went out again in 1929 to be Warden of • Zonnebloem College in the Diocese of Capetown. Beauty in Worship. “There is to be no room in the j future for cheapness and barren- | ness in worship,” declares the Bev. A. S. Hamby, Vicar of Kirbymoo.rside, Yorks. “When this age of restlessness is over, people will go back, and they will feel not only the noed of worship, but of worship in houses that are as beautiful as we can make them. So let us set to work and let people who will come in the future see that hands have been at work in 1932.” j _Mr Harnby’s words are indeed timely. I hope they may be widely ! heeded. —Church of England news- | paper. ! , Bishop Welldon and Christian Unity- | Addressing a gathering assembled to. j welcome the newlv-ordained Presby--1 tcrian minister at Durham, the Dean of Durham (Bishop Welldon) said: “I am tired of talking of Christian union and doing nothing. If the wounds are to be healed, then you and I must do some-' tiling to heal them, and my great desire is to co-operate with my fellow Christians in all the causes which the Church of England and other Churches hold in common. I desire to draw the Churches still more closely together. “I suggest that there might.be once in, every year a great service in Durham I Cathedral, in .which all the reformed i Churches should assert their unity. It I would be natural to hold that service in , the Cathedral if only because the CatheI dral is larger than other churches and j chapels in the city. It would be, I believe, a commanding testimony to I the unity which the Christians of all rei formed Churches are coming more and jmorc strongly to feel among themselves. I have sometimes thought that the best [ day for such a service would perhaps be I the Festival of All Saints,'which re- : minds Christians that sanctity is not ! the prerogative of one Church alone. 'Let us forget the past. Let us live in the present and for the future.”