DEFENCE OF THE CHURCH.

Otago Witness, Issue 2881, 2 June 1909, Page 12

DEFENCE OF THE CHURCH.

#' REPLY TO MR FISHER. (Faou Ova, Own ConHESPoin>ENT.J AUCKLAND, May 17. Several pulpit references were made in Auckland on Sunday to the Federal Prime Minister's recent statements concerning the attitude of the Church towards labour and social questions. The Moderator of the Auckland Presbytery (Rev. A. Macaulay Caldwell) stated that Tie was surprised that more thought and care were not given in choosing speakers for Assembly gatherings, there oeing so many men witliin the Church who have studied the problems besetting human life and conduct, and who have spent, and are spending, their strength in endeavouring to solve such problems, and are thereby capable of leading and giving advice. He hoped that the exhibition made by Mr Fisher would be a lesson to the Australian Church and a warning to the Church in ]Sew Zealand not to allow those who are outside the Church, and have apparently no sympathy with the Church, to criticise and abuse it from its -own platforms. Mr Fisher and those associated with him overlooked the fact that the Church of Christ in all lands was composed of all olgjsses and conditions of men, many of whom were in a practical way interested in affairs legislative, municipal, educational, and social, and that when any need arose it was the members of the Church who rendered needed help and donated most of the money, required. The conspicuous weakness of Mr Fisher's criticism, said the speaker, lay in this : that he did not specialise the failure, but made a general assertion, overlooking the fact that abuse was no argument. PLAIN WORDS ' FROM DR GIBB. Some -very plain words were used by the Rev Dr Gibb when asked by a

Dominion- reporter for his opinion of the sentiments expressed by the Commonwealth Premier in his address to a recent meeting of the Preabyterian General Assembly of Australia. "My comment on those sentiments," said Dr Gibb. " Is that they are bosh, and canting bosh at that. It is time, and more than time, that: ministers of religion spoke oufr plainly when called on to vindicate the Church against the aspersions of critics of the Socialist type, whether high-placed men like Mr Fisher or hoodlums like those that have turned at least two recent meetings in this city into a veritable bedlam. If I have? any adequate knowledge of the situation, the Church has been for some time past very vigorously telling ihe rich man of his shortcomings and lack of the feeling* of brotherhood; ifc is time the Church had begun to tell the poor man that he may bo as poor as he calls himself and as selfish as the devil. Socialism may be right or it may be wrong as an eoonomic theory — I think it is wrong-,— trbufc a man "J^y be a good Christian ana a convinced Socialist. But it will not be 'the Socialism of plass hate and general yahooism. The Church has been the friend of the poor, the genuine poor, and unhappily too often the .friend of the poor whose poverty is due to their own thriftlessness and wbrthlessness. It would take a s long time to recite what is being' done m this city directly and indirectly through th© churches to relieve Buffering" and help the' helpless. The Rev. Mr Mayer, the representative of the Barnardo Homes, the _ other evening named a large number of 'the- leading philanthropists of our own and reoent times, and every man and woman of them were disciples and followers of Christ. And the Church and Christian men will continue to be philanthropists. They cannot be anything else without denying the Christ, Who was not only the Son of God; . bufc also the carpenter of Nazareth. But if the Church takes up the political role to which Mr Fisher calls it, and begins to preach' Socialism or any other ' ism ' than the Gospel of the grace of God — the Gospel which is not primarily bread and butter, but righteousness — the only reliable guarantee in the long run even of bread and butter— then her end will be at hand. There will in this case be as few to mourn her disappearance as there would o© to mourn ■ the disappearance of some Labour agitators and the .Socialistic, crank if they were to vanish from the sum total of created things."