RELIGIOUS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 889, 15 March 1889, Page 7

RELIGIOUS.

CHRISTIANISING. THE MASSES. The first and essential step toward Christianising the masses in our centres of population is to Christianise the Christians. Until that is done nothing else can be done that will be effective. While the churches remain pleasant and fashionable Sunday clubs, whose sittings are sold to the highest bidder, and in which the worship is conducted in a fashionable manner that says to the poor, these are no places for you, the poor will stay away. Until Christians are willing to make their religion one of selfsacrifice—willing to worship on equal terms with the masses—they will have little influence in the way of'inducing them to come into the churches. If more churches are needed in the cities, the majority ol them should be in the quarters in which the working classes dwell, and not in the rich and fashionable quarters. The great wall which riches and social distinction have raised between the Protestant Church and the masses must be broken down or, in spite of all, the proportion of church-goers to population in our large cities will continue to decrease.— Philadelphia Times. Henry George recently addressed the clergymen of Loudon from the City Temple pulpit—Dr Joseph Parker’s. The Czar of Russia lias in the last five years spent $300,000 in tho erection of a beautiful church at Jerusalem, in memory of his mother. Since 1852 the English Church missionaries at Amritsar, India, have baptized (out of 555 adult converts) 253 Mohammedans, which is about one-half. The Kaiserwerth Deaconess Homo, Germany, has 600 workers in various fields in Europe and Asia. Their hospital at Alexandria is said to be a model of skilful arrangement and Christian benevolence. In Scotland there are 750,000 people who have no church connection of any kind, and a Glasgow clergyman says that tho want of sociability among the members is one of the chief causes that keep people away from the church.

A telegram from New York of December last tells us that the Rev. Heber Newton, pastor of All Souls’ Protestant Episcopal Church, started his people thinking by a sermon in which he asserted that the need ef the present age is a new religion. The earnest manner in which he avowed his belief that Christianity in its present form does not satisfy the spiritual aspirations of modern progressive humanity has caused a sensation in the religious world. There are those who believe that the independent clergyman has got himself in hot water with his Episcopal superiors.