THE SUNDAY CIRCLE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18625, 5 August 1922, Page 18

THE SUNDAY CIRCLE.

RELIGIOUS READING FOR THE HOME. THE PASSING HOURS. What hast thou done to-day for God or man, To prove thyself a part of His great plan, Who sent thee forth some noble work to do, Some cross to bear, a life to live that’s true? What hast thou done to ease another’s load? T 6 help some wayfarer along the road? What word of cheer from thee hath made ■the day Lees dreary to some toiler on tha way? Prom rise to set of stm the golden hours Pass swiftly, but while passing they are ours; Priceless as jewels in a monarch’s crown; — •Rightly improve them ere life’s sun goes down. —Helen A. Richardson (in the British Weekly). 1 PRATER, 0 Lord, do Thou help all teachers and men who can influence thought and opinion.. Be with all who have the solemn charge! of young and plastic minds and hearts committed to them. On all colleges, schools, and places of instruction, on teachers and taught, may Thy blessing rest. On all work done oy benevolent men may that same spirit of power abide. And most chiefly grant, we beseech Thee, that the one Name - which is above every name may be magnified. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. THE TRUE TEST OF ORTHODOXY LIFE, NOT CREED, “The true test of orthodoxy is the Christlike life and the Christlike spirit,” said the Rev. H. D. A. Major, Principal of Ripon Hall, Oxford, and editor*of The Modern Churchman, in a sermon at Westminster Aboey on a recent Sunday morning. The occasion was Trinity Sunday, one of the 13 dai rs in the year on which the reoital of the Atnanasian Creed is enjoined by the Rub rio, but the “Confession of our Christian faith,” as it is called in the Prayer Book, was not used at the 10.15 service at the Abbey. In the course of his sermon Mr Major alluded to the Creed of St. Athanasius aa giving to many the impression that Christian orthodoxy was not only a very complicated and indeed almost incomprehensible affair, but that it was mainly concerned with the exercise of the intellect —a series of propositions put forward for intellectual asaent—and that those who could not assent were guilty of heresy and in peril of damnation. Such, he said, was the conception of orthodoxy and the tost of orthodoxy in tha golden age of orthodoxy, and it anil survived in the great Christian Churches of to-day. Yet it had no .support at all in the authenticated teaching of Jesus Christ It waa a test Which gave those who held it the \ impression that there was salvation in piofossing assent to propositions, whereas salvation was only to be found in possessing the spirit of. the Lord, and in striving to obey His principle?. 'The worship of the idol of a false orthodoxy cast the stigma of heresy on the Christian scholar who uttered some novel literary, historical, or scientific judgment which conflicted with Christian tradition, while it had no hesitation in holding as orthodox Christiana those who were cowardly, mean, dishonest, grasping, slothful, selfish, unsociable, providing their verbal profeaions were orthodox. “Let us have done with such soul-deceiving, idolatrous orthodoxy,” exclaimed the preacher in closing; “Christ’s orthodoxy was the orthodoxy of action. St. John’s test of orthodoxy waa Christian practice,” THE MODERN INTELLECT, DB ORCHARD ON WHAT IS THE MATTER. “I read recently in an American maga- - »ine,” said Dr Orchard at King’s \yeigh House, London, “ that if Christianity is going to exist, it must come to terms with the modern intellect That certainly will be very difficult. It will be no small matter for Christianity to humble itself so that it can bo comprehended by the modern intellect. Tho trouble -is that Christianity is too immense for us. It :s as if a thirsty man, begging a drink of water, were given a tin mug to be filled at a roaring cataract.” The triviality of the modern mind was almost beyond belief. What was the good of giving people who only read the daily newspaper a book like the Bible? Or those whoso poetic appreciation never got beyond a few extracts from Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Dante’s “Divine Oomedy”? Or people who liked their theology served up in predigested tablets, the 17 folio volumes of St. Thomas Aquinas? Or people who wanted to be , - amused, the Passion Play of our redemption? That was what waa the matter with us, and it we only knew it, it might beget in us humility, and through the gate of humility we might find the way to greatness. THEOLOGY AND EXPERIENCE. Theology, Dr F. J. Powicke argues in a valuable article in the Holborn Review, must be tested and justified by experience —that is. by spiritual life. Neither the speculative method of reaching truth about God and‘His ways, nor the strictly “Bibb-' cal”—the piecing together of texts “taken at large from a book presumed to be infallible”—suffices. Each tends to the evolution of a sereis of dogmas which the Christian conscience may revolt against as dishonouring to the God revealed in the teaching of Jesus. In Christ, declares Dr Powicke, we have the ideal for oar spiritual life, and thereby the matter for an ideal theology. “The . revolt, now in progress, against the traditional in theology is not bo much on intellectual as a moral revolt, inspired by the moral insights of a life more distinctively and fervently Christian.” We are “to take into our hearts the inexhaustible truths for which Christ stands—the Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the work of the individual human soul, salvation through sacrifice, the Kingdom of God as toe goal of humanity.” - CAPTAIN OF HIS SOUL. Rev. F, W. Macdonald, ex-president of the Wesleyan Conference, with another fine reputation in the literary world, has been laid aside by illness for sixteen months, with little prospect of ever resuming ordinary, life From his sickbed he recently sent out a message of singular beauty arid fine Christian fortitude. “By the mercy of God,” he writes, “such mental powers as He has seen fit to trust me with are still in good working order. My reason, memory, imagination, and, I may add, my sense of humour, I can still depend upon, and they show no-falling off in their willingness to serve me. And, best of all, Hhe inward man’ is ‘renewed day by day," with 'new thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven.’ Withdrawn as lam from active life, I am perhaps losing touch somewhat With the ecclesiastical and administrative side of things with which I was long as- • sociated; but with the essential and eternal truths that have their centre in our Lord and Savour Jesus Christ, I trust I am making deeper acquaintance in this my retirement and time jof bodily weakness. Mnch of my time is ‘spent in prayer for the somewhat depressed church, and for the restless, troubled world. In this ministry of intercession I am claiming a larger part, 'as other forms of service are closed to me, and by its means I trust to have some ah are m hastening the coming of the Kingdom, ‘the onejar-eff, Divine event to which the whole creation moves,’ as we used to say in the days when Tennyson was still quoted.” ‘' ' I / . NEWS ITEMS. Lord Leverhulme defined his religious faith at a Newspaper Press Fund luncheon. He did not, he said, believe in the" religion (■ of his boyhood days: his religion now waa one of joy and happiness. Under the n modern tension and strain, he also said, he believed the theatres and other forms of legitimate and honest amusement were more necessary than ever. ' . The 'concluding sentence of Miss Maude Royden’s prayer at the Eccleston Guildhouse on a recent Sunday night was:—“We i thank Thee, 0 Lord, for tho financial relief that has come to Lilian Baylis. May her future be under Thy guidance. We further pray for all poets and players, all actors and actresses. May they always / desire the highest ideals.” Miss Lilian Baylie is the manageress of the “Old Vic.” Theatre in Waterloo road—the modern home of Shakespeare—which has been saved " v from' extinction by an anonymous gift of £3OOOO. It was at Miss Baylis’s request A flat Miss Hoyden offered the. prayer of - thanksgiving. v .--The Baptist Union Ocwnoil report opens ' with a summary of church etatiotios for the '-. year 1921. There is an aggregate membership of 402,685—a decrease of 2416 on the figures for 1920; 517,969 Sunday school I- -; scholars, an increase of 5604;' and, 66,543 irt' teachers, an increase of 985. During the I*';-, ' post year grants were made from tho Sue- :"'• ' ’ fetation Fund to 583 ministers on the in- ' creased- scale—namely, a minimum stipend flT’iheO. with £lO for each child under 16 «*>