DRIFT FROM CHURCH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20300, 6 July 1929, Page 15

DRIFT FROM CHURCH.

THE DESIRE FOR PLEASURE.

VIEWS OF BISHOP SPROTT.

PERPLEXITY AND DOUBT. Causes that have led to tho drift away from public worship and tho general unsettlemcnt of religious convictions wore analysed by tho Bishop of Wellington, Dr. T. H. Sprott, in his presidential charge at the opening of tho Wellington Diocesan Synod on Tuesday. "The most obvious feature of tho prosent roligious situation," said Bishop Sprott, "is tho drift away from organised religion as expressed in our public worship. Differing perhaps in degree in different places, this drift is, I think, to bo observed throughout Christendom. Some of us can recollect a quite different state of things, when churches wcro generally well attended Sunday by Sunday. Ido not, of course, mean that in thoso days all who could attend church did attend, or that all who attended were devout and earnest worshippers; such an ideal state of things has never existed in any age. But certainly attendance was far more general than it is to-day. To Christian people this drift is perplexing, distressing and alarming; but I sometimes think we fail to perccivo wherein its real gravity lies. "It is not merely that habitual absentees from public worship deprive themselves of tho present help and uplift and inspiration for life they might obtain. Tho really grave thing is that they are incurring the inevitable extinction of tho mstinqt of worship that is innate in human nature, according to tho well-known law that instincts, functions, and capacities become atrophied by disuse. They may imagine that this disablement of tho highest part of their nature—for surely man's capacity for the Divine is the highest part of his nature—is a sign o) progress, and that they have grown superior to religion. As well might a man who has grown deaf imagine that ho had become superior to music. Matter For Earnest Thought.

"Tho situation is plainly a matter for most earnest thought on tho part of those who, liko ourselves, hold office in the Church and must have at heart the purposes for which tho Church exists. I therefore make no apology for asking you, who arc in synod assembled, to consider with mo the probable causes, or some of them, to which this widespread defection from organised religion may be d;io. To know tho causes may show us that we are not faced with an inexplicable mystery, and that the position is not entirely hopeless.

"Now I imagine that if I were to ask you to name tho cause, somo of ycu would answer: The inordinate love of pleasure, so characteristic of our time. And truly that is what meets the eye, as Sunday by Sunday wo see processions of motor-cars and omnibuses, and excursion trains bearing multitudes, on pleasure bent, into tho country at tho hours of divine service, and reflect that this is going on in every Christian country. "Among tho striking developments in these wonderful days of ours, not the least striking is tho development of tho machinery of pleasure," continued tho bishop. "I myself can recall a time when this machinery of pleasure simply did not exist. In those days, unless people had horses and vehicles of their own—and, of course, the vast majority had not —Sunday travelling was practically impossible. People could take walks on Sunday, pay social calls or play games near to their own homes—though public opinion rather discountenanced this; but such recreations did not necessarily interfere with attendance at public worship. Now all this is changed. A vast machinery of pleasure has come into existence. An ever-increasing number of people possess motor-cars, and private companies and railway departments vie with one another in attracting for financial profit the custom of those who have them not."

Perplexity and Doubt. Tho bishop proceeded:—"Within tho past 70 years or so men's religious and even ethical opinions and convictions, have been shaken to their foundations. Perplexity and doubt are in tho air. And just as in tho life of the individual suspenso enervates tho energies, so in tho life of communities does religious suspenso weaken the force of religion. This is, in my humble judgment, the ultimate causo of tho present religious situation.

"Religious conviction has been weakened, if not annihilated, in the minds of multitudes. Hence public worship is no longer regarded as an obligation or a privilege: and, seeing that Sunday is by law a holiday, men not unnaturally spend its vacant hours in amusement. For this reason I personally count it quite futile to scold people for not coming to church. "What is tho causo of this vast unfiettlement of religious conviction ? Ia it like some mysterious epidemic of which no account can bo given 1 I do not .think so. I think tho cause is to bo found in tho delugo of varied knowledge and still more vafied hypotheses with which, during tho last seventy years, the world has been flooded—a deiugo which, for volume, is surely without parallel in any other period of liko duration in human history."

The bishop expressed the opinion that of this new knowledge four departments had specially contributed to tho unscttlement of which ho spoke. They were the natural sciences. Biblical criticism. tho history of religion and ethics, tho psychology of religion.