THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 10522, 25 February 1920, Page 2

THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE

PROBLEMS FOR. CONSIDERATION

At a recent function, the vicar of St. Mary’s (Auckland), the Rev. P. E. James, outlined four of the great problems to bo considered at the forthcoming Lambeth Conference, and upon which the clergy were eagerly waiting a pronouncement. First in importance would be purely theological questions raised by the current of thought in recent years within and without the Church, a necessary restatement of their traditional belief in terms of modern thought. Secondly, there were the changes in their worship. There was an overwhelming conviction of the urgency of the overdue reforms necessary in the prayer-book and in their modes of worship. Any idea of making worship merely popular was utterly wrong. It was a different thing to order their worship so that tho greatest number of people might find in it the best mode of approaching the Almighty. A third question was that of reunion among -the Christian bodies, especially with those that loft the great Mother Church centuries ago lor reasons which no longer existed. They must be prepared to make sacrifices, tho greatest of which would be inherited prejudice. There was great danger in premature measures; the matter was one for the whole Church. ,

A fourth point on which tho whole British Empire was seeking an answer from tho Lambeth Conference was for some ' clear guidance, amid all the manifold social, industrial upheaval of tho xiresent day. The fruits of victory the Empire was in danger of losing consisted in the lesson we had learned in regard to despising self-indulgence, luxury, and ignoble seif-seeking. Tile Empire had yet to learn to admire what it had hitherto omy pretended to admire, namely, self-sacrifice and, tenderness of heart. One had just to) study the industrial world to realise that.