CHURCH CONGRESS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19965, 6 December 1926, Page 3

CHURCH CONGRESS.

PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. THE FEAR OF HELL. SUGGESTION BY JEROME K. JEROME. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON. October 11, Modem religious belief and its attitude towards science and ‘’the-old symbol o£ the fear of Hell” wore subjects discussed at the opening meetings of the Church Congress held at Southport. Dr David, Archbishop of York, in his presidential address, spoke on progressive revelation, and surveyed what ho described as the tong, slow progress by which mankind had been brought to the knowledge of God. There was even row, he said, familiar language about God which suggested to the unthinking an omnipotent despot imposing his authority from ahovCj dominant, irresponsible, forcing his enemies to submit when ho chose. When that conception ot God stood by itself, did it not account for many of the difficulties and confusions of popular theology? Men still asked, “If .our God is omnipotent, why did He not stop war or the coal strike?” But oven among the men of old time side by side with the revelation of God’s power ran the revealing of His love. Wo watched mankind struggling upwards out of the chaos of savagery into the primitive beginnings of co-operative order. Men might not refer these impulses to their source, yet every attainment was due to the same Spirit of God. How should the <. hurch open the first presentation of the truth to the ignorant, the indifferent, the uninterested ? THE EMOTION OF TERROR. “Wo have inherited,” Dr David continued, “a method, an apparatus, a technique of evangelism appropriate enough to the last century, but as I would venture to suggest, inadequate now. In the first place it assumed the fear of hell. I do not moan that the great mission preachers of old always deliberately relied on the emotion of terror, or the motive of self-inter-est Nevertheless, it seems to me clear that their appeal did awaken in their hearts a sense of fear. “How should it be otherwise at a time when everybody took it for granted that an eternity of physical suffering was a possible destiny of all created beings and the probable fate of many. For us the old symbol is gone. But let us not allow it to be forgotten that the reality behind it remains. God’s stern, unbending hatred of evil, the immutable law that he who sins must suffer, or, what is worse, bring suffering on others. “I suggest the question whether we do well to hold to the tradition of presenting the idea of sin and judgment as a first appeal. I would not deny that there are thousands who will yet be drawn to the Saviour, mainly by the conviction of hopeless entanglement with which they are themselves powerless to deal, but others, they are more numerous, I think, who are first drawn to Kim when they see that God trusts them. Show a man first salvation is positive, not negative. NEW DIRECTION OF EVANGELISTIC WORK. “The typical evangelist of the past, in his desire to awaken first a sense of sin, tended to present a vision of God narrowed and incomplete. “I would offer for your suggestion a fresh direction of evangelistic work showing God’s spirit moving within men’s souls towards the perfection of truth and beauty and goodness which are from eternity in 'Himself.” He recognised, continued Dr David, that such an introduction to religious truth opened the way to certain dangers. Might it not foster a spirit of pride and self-sufficiency? It would if they represented a man’s goodness as something of his own, but not if it was recognised that the soui’ce was God. He did not think what he had advocated would tend to the many-sided peril called pantheism. In many places and in divers matters men were turning shyly to a new hope, faint as yet and undefined. Could the Church meet them on their own ground? JEROME K. JEROME’S ADVICE. Speaking at a meeting in London. Mr Jerome XL Jerome, the well-known writer, referred to the subject of Dr David’s presidential address. “I suggest to oijr ecclesiastical authorities of all denominations,” he said, “that they should clear .hell out of the way and so enable the spirit of St. Francis to go to and fro about the earth, unhampered, teaching the right of all things living to the common love of God.” It had been the blot on the escutcheon of the Christian Church, declared Mr Jerome, that it had done so little —less even than Mohammedanism and some of the pagan religions—to impress upon man his duty of justice to the lower animals. The reason why it did not was not far to seek. The Roman Church worshipped a God who had condemned the great majority of the human race to eternal torment. “We do not nowadays,” he proceeded, “believe in hell. When we say ‘we,’ we mean some 10 to 15 per cent, of the Christian community. The other 85 per cent, do believe in it, and are influenced and guided by the thought of it. During the Middle Ages belief in hell was one of the chief factors shaping the character of the European peoples, and it is still at work. I do not say cruelty is only to be found where belief in hell prevails, but I do say that belief in hell—the belief in a God who would seem to have exerted all His ingenuity in devising tortures to be inflicted upon His own children —■ must have amplified and justified that spirit of cruelty that stalks abroad among men.” The time, Mr N Jerome thought, was surely due for the Church of Christ to clear its Founder’s name from the stigma of having proclaimed and preached a God of cruelty and revenge. There was no authority for it. Hell must have been the invention of the devil—going about, quoting Scripture for his own purposes. Some sayings of Christ, clearly from their context never intended to be taken literally, had been dragged from the spirit of_ His whole teaching to justify this priest-created horror. It was an evil heresy, stultifying the teachings of Christ, and until it was openly and authoritatively recanted the Church remained the advocate and apologist of cruelty.