MENACE OF ATHEISM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19455, 11 October 1926, Page 14

MENACE OF ATHEISM.

AN ORGANISED MOVEMENT. REV. A. A. MURRAY'S FEARS. One Auckland minister, the. Rev. A. A. ! Murray, who holds that the teaching of evolution is inconsistent with a true belief in the. Bible, sees a menace to Christianity in the organisation of atheism bv certain people in America. Speaking in the Tivoli Theatre last evening, Mi*. Murray described the new movement. Its leaders, he said, declared they would drive God and every semblance of Christianity out of the land. Thousands of infidels were being organised for an onslaught against, God and the churches. There was to be a campaign of propaganda by means of public lectures, tracts, leaflets and broadcast addresses. The constitution stated, "Our object is to free mankind from the fear of a nonentity—the worshipping of a verbal idol without end." "I maintain," said Mr. Murray, "that for the past 30 years the ground has been prepared for this sort of thing. University professors, preachers and teachers in colleges and schools havo been casting doubt upon the authority of the Bible, and in many instances openly attacking it." He quoted a statement by an American journalist, Mr. Harold Boise, as follows: "In hundreds of classrooms in the United States it is being daily taught, that the. decalogue is no more sacred than a syllabus, that the homo as an institution is doomed, that immorality is simply an act in contravention of society's accepted standards, that tho change from one, religion to another is like Retting a new hat, that wide stairways at'e open between social levels, but that to the climber children are sn encumbrance, and that there can be, and are, holier alliances without the. marriage bond than within." "This sort of tlnng," said Mr. 'Murray, "will plav into the hands of Ked Labour and Bolshevism. Where tho authority of the Bible is denied the gfound is made ready for tho acceptance of the tenets of atheists and Bolshevists. I mako bold to say that the Bible is suffering more at the hands of tho apostate Protestantism than it ever suffered at the hands of Romanism. I hold no brief for Rome, but let it be said to her credit that she does not. deny the word of God.

"Unless American universities and colleges an'd schools throw overboard the false teachings of evolution and abandon their attacks upon the Bible, America will he given over to -a reign of secularism which will end in a welter of blood. Here in New Zealand, in university, church and training college, the Bible is not regarded as the inerrant word of God or as the highest and only court of appeal on matters of faith and conduct,. This kind of thing is going to bring a fearful harvest, and dull is the ear that, cannot hear the mutterings of the coming storm."