World of Religion

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23339, 6 May 1939, Page 7 (Supplement)

World of Religion

TOMORROW IS BIBLE SUNDAY

DR. GEORGE JACKSON, whose contributions to the Manchester Guardian and various religious journals rank him among our most popular essayists, has an interesting paper entitled "Under the Dome of St. Paul's" in a recent issue of the Methodist Recorder. He had spent a quiet afternoon during a visit to London in the cathedral, surveying its monuments, looking back upon its history, and recalling the illustrious preachers who had spoken from its pulpit, since Hugh Latimer, in old St. Paul's, delivered those outspoken sermons which "were as faggots for the fire in which he and Ridley were consumed."

He reminds his readers of some of the more famous deans of the cathedral —Donne, Butler, Milman, Church. John Donne held the deanery from 1621 to 1631. The story of his life is told by Isnak Walton in one of the most beautiful short biographies in our language. He was, says Edmund Gosse, the most illustrious and most admired religious orator in the England of Charles 1., and so commanding was his popularity that "a sermon delivered by him was the most brilliant entertainment which London had to offer." Tho dubious •compliment is no doubt rather a reflection upon tho gaping crowds that flocked to hear him than upon the eloquent dean himself. Divine Grace The contrasts of Donne's life are striking—he was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, but became a chief ornament of the Anglican Communion, and, though the profligacy of his early years and his indifference to religion cannot be denied, by a miracle of divine grace his saintliness becamo a treasured memory of the Church.

We are brought to Joseph Butler, who in the eighteenth century held the bishoprics of Bristol and Durham and for the ten intervening years, the deanery of St. Paul's. It was his superb intellect that gave us the famous "Analogy of Religion," which men still read moved by the power of its massive reasoning, and also the "Sermons," which Augustine Birrell said were "the wisest sermons ever preached by mortal man." Stange it is, adds Dr. Jackson, that they might have been preached if no such person as Jesus Christ had ever lived, and no such book as the New Testament ever been written—a judgment which some no doubt would dispute. It was Bishop Butler at Bristol who without avail iorbade John Wesley to preach in his diocese. The story is told that when on his deathbed he 6ought some comforting assurance, his chaplain roeited to him tho familiar passage—"This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." "Ah," said the bishop, "but how do I know that Ho came to save me?" Then replied the chaplain, "Sir, the Saviour saith, 'Him that cometh to Mo I will in no wise cast out.' " And upon that all-inclusive promise Bishop Butler went home to Nineteen Momentous Years The long deanery of Henry Hart Milman lasted from 1849 to 1868, nineteen momentous years in the history of English religion. He was preeminently the scholar and poet rather than the administrator and director of affairs, and he is remembered as the historian of Latin Christianity and for his contributions to the psalmody of the Church. It was from his pen that the inspired hymn for Palm Sunday

By PHILEMON

Weary sat'st Thou seeking me. Died'ot redeeming on the tree, Can in vain 6uch labour be?

Spiritual Decadence

camo —"Ride on, ride on in majesty! In lowly pomp ndo on to die." Then in 1871 camo Richard William Church to rulo as dean for nineteen years. It was a dramatic act when Gladstone brought him from the tiny Somerset hamlet of Whatley, where ho would fain have ended his days among his books and his beloved villagers, and cast upon him tlio heavy and untried tasks of leadership in the metropolis. But ho failed in nothing;. Canon Scott-Holland tolls us how his slight figure glided in and out of St. Paul s like that of some shy recluse, _ some student of exquisite taste seeking a secret place of prayer. He shrank from publicity, practised at all" times an unworldly simplicity, was clothed in the beauty of humility and holiness. But there was within him a moral temper that knew no compromise with evil and ho passed among his fellows as one that put them to spiritual proof. Righteous Anger

In the presence of public wrong a flame of righteous anger would break forth, "the pure white anger of an outraged conscience." He was resolute and dauntless, ho led men and commanded them, he kindled new zeal in every mombor of the cathedral staff, he restored the fabrics of the sanctuary, ho revised its statutes and supplemented its funds, and ho flung open the doors, offering a wide invitation and welcome to all. And while he and his chapter thus made St. Paul's the central shrine of the nation, his friend and co-worker, Canon Liddon, from its pulpit delivered to vast crowds those instructions and appeals which so profoundly stirred the mind of his time. In the cathedral Church, by his own command, is left without memorial. Nor is he buried beneath its roof. Instead they bore him back to Whatley, and there, on a snowy December day of 1890, they laid him to rest in the churchyard he knew so well, and carved in Latin upon the headstone, the beautiful words of the Dies Irae.

The first Sunday in May is by well established custom observed as Bible Sunday and marked by special references to the British and foreign Bible Society. The wonder of the society's work grows with each decade. Since its foundation in 1804 five hundred million volumes of the Scriptures have been circulated through its agency. During the past ten years the circulation has been at the rate of over ten million a year. The Biblo is being read in 700 languages and dialects through the work of the society. In New Zealand itself the Scriptures published by it were last year sold m 26 different languages. In tortured China men and women are turning with passionate desire to the Word of God for peace and hope, and wo read of refugees fleeing for their lives from ,*one city to another and compelled 'to leave their Bibles behind them, who clamour at the doors of the Bible House for new copies. Would that we could see a like hunger for the Word in our own privileged land! There was a day when, as the Times says, the Englishman was taught the Bible in childhood at his mother's knee, when he read it for himself at home, when he listened to it week by week in church, until by degrees its message became part of his very being. It is not the least ominous sign of the spiritual decadence of our time that this tradition of centuries is passing away to tlio detriment of all that is good among us. Maybe we shall hear to-morrow some living message that the Word of God is still a lantern to the feet of men and a light unto their path.