THOUGHT OF TO-DAY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22211, 11 September 1935, Page 17

THOUGHT OF TO-DAY

MATERIALISM OUT OF DATE SCIENCE MORE MODEST REV. DR. DICKIE WELCOMED A ministers luncheon organised by the Auckland Presbytery in honour of the Rt. Rev. Principal John Dickie, of Danedin, was held at Milne and Choyce's Reception Hall yesterday and was attended by many ministers representative of various Churches and by lay members of Presbytery. Dr. Dickie is principal of the Presbyterian theological Hall in Dunedin, and is visiting the Auckland Presbytery as this ye'ar's moderator of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand. A cordial welcome was extended to Dr. Dickie by the Rev. Dr. H. Ranston, principal of Trinity Methodist College. As a scholar, he said, Dr. Dickie was not just the possession of his own Church but belonged to all. Those of them who read theology and tried to grasp the significance of the thinking of to-day were glad to sit at Dr. Dickie's feet and learn. They realised that his book on theology was the book of a master and of a deep thinker, and that it was indicative of deep spiritual experience behind it. They were glad to welcome him for his own personal sake and as a scholar leading the religious thought of the Dominion. The moderator of Presbytery, the Rev. T. N. Cuttle, who presided, welcomed Dr. Dickie on behalf of the Presbyterian Church and of Dr. Dickie's old students Trend oi Philosophy "'Philosophy in those parts of the world that count for most in the history of thought is not nearly so materialistic as it was 30 or 40 years ago," said Dr. Dickie, in the course of his reply. "Although there are still militant materialists among people that count themselves as philosophers and are regarded as philosophers by others, science is very much more modest than it'was when 1 was a student. In those days the men of science thought that it had solved all problems, and that God and religion were excrescences that were about to disappear from the thinking of earnest people. "Nowadays, it is only in what might be called the lower intellectual ranges that you come across that dogmatic and purely empiricist and materialist viewpoint. The thinking of the man in the street is generally just about half a century behind the thinking of the professional thinkers. The popular freethinker of to-day, for instance, is still repeating objections to the Bible and to Christianity that were exploded at least 50 years ago among thoughtful Biblical scholars and those who have devoted themselves to the study of these questions " Message to Students Dr. Dickie said he did not count himself as a scholar, but only as an "intelligent populariser." He had tried to see things with many eyes, and in coming in contact with theological students to show them that there was nothing incompatible between a thoroughlj evangelical faith and a reverent critical acceptance of the assured results of modern scholarship and modern thinking in the philosophical and scientific and above all in the sphere of sacred learning. The Churches to-day were faced with manv serious problems. There was a I great drift away from the spiritual inter- ! pretation of life, especially among the intelligent working men and women of the world. Those who were scholars and thinkers by profession were not ! nearly so much influenced by empiricism "and the materialistic view of | things as they were a generation ago, but the masses of the people were very much more profoundly influenced by the materialist viewpoint, the viewpoint which in economics and sociology found its main exponent in Karl Marx. Serious thinkers had very largely departed from that viewpoint, and were agreed that a purely mechanistic interpretation of the universe was not an intelligent or an intelligible interpretation of it.

The thanks of the gathering were expressed to Dr. Dickie by the Rev. H. J. Goring, who referred to his own indebtedness to Dr. Dickie as a teacher.