THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND ECONOMICS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18542, 1 May 1922, Page 6

THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND ECONOMICS.

TO THE EDITOR. | Sir, —"Scrutator,” iu your issue of Satur- i day, suggests that “a general return to primitive Christianity would be most helpful to the solution of present-day economic problems.” Chiefly he has in view the com munism of the Jerusalem Christians: ‘‘And they bad all things common; and they sold their possessions and goods, and parted them ,to all, according ,as any man had need.” “Scrutator” seee in this “a pattern fox all churches for all time.” A closer scrutiny would show “Scrutator” that this pattern state of things was not with- ] out friction, 'since one section mux- I mured against another section, because ( "their widows were neglected in the daily 1 ministration”; that it put an inordinate I strain on human nature, since two of the j Ctios to it, professing to give all, kept ) k part, with fatal consequences to them | selves, and that the general result was ah- i ject poverty, so that St. Paul’ during his later ministry spent time and labour in | collecting money from Gentile congregations I for the poor saints that were at Jerusalem. ! The Jerusalem experiment illustrates Bishop : Creighton’s saying that communism would not -be possible till human nature was per- i fected. He*added, "and then it will not be j necessary.”—l am, etc., ’ I Pkrsceutatoe. I