THE CHURCHES’ CALL TO ACTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22098, 31 October 1933, Page 3

THE CHURCHES’ CALL TO ACTION

TO THE EDITOR. Sib, —Your correspondent “ Rationalist ” is perfectly within his rights in combating my views, as he considers them to be in conflict with his own, but the question I ..raised is not that presented by "Rationalist,” for it is simply an expression of his own want of confidence in the churches with which I am not in conflict. What the whole community wants to know is the part that Christianity has to perform in remedying the social and industrial condition of the people, and this makes it necessary to define the duties of individual Ghristians, This is a subject that exclusively comes within _ the scope of the Christian hierarchy. It is for them to say how Christianity is to be enforced quite distinct from any explanation dealing with mysteries that cannot be explained. Quite apart from Christianity, every individual is by nature more or loss endowed with moral perception. From this arises a minute activity that comes in contact with the self-interest of those with whom it ig our business to have transactions, the nature of which ineradicably aims at a gain to be secured from another person. From this unalterable condition arises the problem of “morals.”- The claim of the Church to infallibility rests lipon the assumption that Christianity contains a moral code, a direct revelation from God. That cannot be shown to -have had a scientific origin. This is the important part which sceptics overlook. The science of ethics cannot be traced to a Batura! origin as every other science can be explained to have had. What the human mind claims to call ethical science is the profound study of assembling and applying Christian ethics already revealed, but net yet applied. The sceptic presumes that the intelligence with which man is endowed enables Turn to act morally. Without the guidance imposed by Christianity. In that case instinct and reflection become priipary agents of importance, depending upon experience, which, strange to say, in spite of the enormous progress of education, does not support a belief ♦hat Christian ethics will ever become a natural inheritance, operating instinctively apart from culture. If Nature’s law® operated in this direction there would he no need of a revelation. Evolution Would in time evolve the perfect man and.

instinct would become infallible in selfpreservation just as we find it is in the tvnole animal creation. As morals deal exclusively with right and wrong, which embraces the good and evil that arise from human activity, the subject is seen to be within the special concern of the Christian Church, whose right to pronounce .the damnation of the wicked is in perfect harmony with the highest human intelligence_ when morals are judged in their relation to human welfare. It is claimed by the Church that self-interest is the dominant obstruction to human progress, but on close exaniination .it will be found that this dominance is largely the result of a conventional conception of Christianity, which custom and legal enactment are endeavouring to maintain in defiance of the laws that govern justice. Wherever legislation counteracts the moral law disturbance inevitably arises, manifesting the existence of injustice, the removal of which is the purpose of Christianity. Here is prhere the Church should aid righteousness by explaining bow Christian morality is superior to secular morality. The subject is one from which, politics cannot be excluded.—l am, etc., W. SIVEBTSEN.