THE RELIGIOUS POSITION OF THE FUTURE.
Thk importance of the religious question in discussion just now is testified to by the fact that the four first papers in the last number of the Nineteenth Century relate to it in some way or other. Viscount Halifax has something to say about the crisis in the | Church, dealing with the assertion that a j wave of anti-clericalism is passing over the I country, with a growing distrust and dislike of the clergy. Against it he sets the fact that nine millions have been voluntarily subscribed for church work in 1902. It would be interesting to learn exactly ■ how that vast sum of money has been utilised, and the results shown for it in the shape of social work attempted' or done. In the course of his article the contributor has one thought-compelling sentence. " A Church which makes no inconvenient claims," he says, "and which insists on an answer to no awkward questions, which is content to allow its members to ignore the supernatural, acquiesces in a standard of morals which is not too strict, and insists on just that amount of respectability and of religious observance which enables the conscience to close its eyes to its real condi tion, and to make the best of both worldssuch a Church excites little hostility." He finds in opposition the proof that the clergy are true to their vocation. Incidentally he mentions that "it would be an advantage in many cases if the heads of the Roman Church, the heads of the Established Church of Scotland, and of the chief dissenting bodies had seats in the House of Lords." Lady Wimborne writes of " The Church's Last Chance," and thinks we are rapidly arriving at a point where, to speak broadly, we' shall see a Romanised Church in the midst of a population clinging tenaciously to Protestantism. The growth and increasing power of Nonconformity, she says £ is one ot the startliug facts of the day. Sir George Arthur makes a third disputant, with i° paper on loyalty to the Prayerbook, and the Rev. Egbert Haudley offers an appeal to the Dean and Canons of West- : minster. This resolves itself into a warn- : ing that the English Church must be prepared in the near future to re-state its doctrine. He says the deans and canons have fractured the Athanasian Hymn. He thinks it immoral to recite its minatory clauses because they profess precisely what Anglicans do not believe.
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New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12281, 27 May 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)
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411THE RELIGIOUS POSITION OF THE FUTURE. New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12281, 27 May 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)
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