WORLD'S GREAT NEED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18551, 8 November 1923, Page 10

WORLD'S GREAT NEED.

SIMPLICITY IN RELIGION. REV. J. J. NORTH'S VIEWS. A plea for simplicity in religion was made by the Rev. J. J. North, of Christchurch, during his lecture at the Baptist Tabernacle last evening. The building was crowded, Mr. H. M. Smecton presiding. Mr. North said that many people to-day did not know the answer to the most elepnentary questions. They did not know, for instance, what they were here for. A procession which recently .passed through London streets paraded the words on a banner:: "We do not know what we want, but we want it mighty bad, and wo want it pretty quick." It was only a simple Christianity that would solve the great problems facing the world to-day. A tense situation confronted them, making religious life more difficult than ever before, yet more essential. There was sexual laxity, the divorce court doors were, wide open,'there was gold and gluttony, and the exploitation of laggard nations— were pursuod to-day with all the equipment and impedimenta of this vast scientific age. The world could not do without religion, but it anted a religion that was simple, direct and forceful. A survey of the various denominations of the Christian religion was given by the speaker, who said it was impossible to harmonise the two great conceptions of religion, Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism. There was nothing surer than that the Anglican Church would be split in twain within a decade, so great was the division in the Church, with High Mass on the one side and an almost noisy Protestantism on the other. The speaker saw the greatest hope in the Baptist Church, whose name he considered misleading. The Baptists stood for the great Biblical concept, the '•-credness of personality, a religion unencumbered by creeds or dogmas. Mr. North, in conclusion, gave a graphic account of his experiences at the great Baptist Congress in Stockholm.