THE FRANKLEY PAPERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3035, 15 May 1912, Page 73

THE FRANKLEY PAPERS.

By Edith Howes. IV—THE PBEACHER. Preachers of to-day stand in the same two sharply-denned classes as the rest of humanity. There are the . thinkers, who are the rare and delightful exceptions, and the non-thinking, who form the gireat majority. Their office of teacher makes the line of demarcation moire noticeable in their vocation than in most others. . It is the non thinker who empties the churches. Oh, the dreary, dreary hours of nerveless, pulseless monologue. Or the rasping, fierce denunciation of some longdead evil! Or the weary wasted talk of old Ahab and Agag, and all the rest of them, with their sins and follies and unilluminating savagery ! That is not what we want. Neither ore we edified by hearing about a jealous and avenging God. Jealousy and vengeance are long past their prime in our list of virtues. We have no admiration for them even in our neighbour, much less in our God. He is astonishingly ignorant, this nonthinking preacher. He has been educated in a narrow theological groove, and has ever since* been shut off from the world—knowledge of ctiier men by the " sanctity of the cloth"; has been prevented, too, by tlhis same sanctity, or his apprehension of it, from reading the free expression of facts discovered through research into life and the past. Therefore, it is that he stands forth Sunday after Sunday to expound doctrines which by the world in general have been long outgrown or disproved. He stall proclaims here and there that the world was made some 4000 years ago, though every other man and woman of any knowledge, almost every child, knows that millions of -years are necessary to account for some of even the slightest of the earth's phenomena. If he leaves untouched this perilous point, he falls into trouble over the garden story. He persists in telling woman that she is responsible for sin, and that therefore was she cursed of the Lord; While he as invariably and strangely asserts that the same religion which affirms this degrading doctrine has raised her position wherever it has reigned. Every reading woman knows the exact opposite to be the historical truth. She knows, too, that the fall story and curse are but the attempted explanation by a primitive people of the obvious fact that woman carries ever th<* heavy end of the stick. He still has a literal belief in the world-wide natures of the flood and the actuality of the ark, this teacher of vf thinking people. Gravely he narrates the story, while his listeners speculate with amusement onthe gathering and the housing and the feeding and the ventilation and the chances of Noah being eaten by a tiger or a Polar bear. . Who is he, this teacher who wanders on so mistily ?. Why is he here, salaried and upheld by the people? Originally a king or chieftain of his tribe paying respect to the ghosts of his ancestors, later a temple attendant offering sacrifices to his god, the priest has come at last, through the evolution of ideas, to be the Preacher of the world, the Proclaimer of the right path, the Teacher of that conduct of life which is to ensure happiness .here and hereafter. Now, that conduct of life which is 1c ensure happiness is the one thing of all others which we feel to be of the most immense importance. Nothing can equal its gravity, nor the eagerness with which we approach any likely solution of its great problems, so abstruse to most of us. Therefore, we should naturally flock to listen to the preacher. Our churches should never be empty. Yet we find the best spirits of the community, the thinking, reading, socially earnest classes holding themelves largely aloof, while the attendance of those who do go is greatly a matter of habit or convention or even parade. The pupils know more than the teacher. That is the trouble. They turn away in resentful weariness. His profound ignorance of his own particular subject fills them with disgust. How should he' solve t'lie problem of those who are further advanced along his line of instruction than himself ? When he tries to teach the way of life he is found to be so soaked through and through with the spirit of those ancient times from which he has drawn his inspiration that he is out of touch with the life of his time. His years of reading have been spent with an alien people; he preaches as to a bygone age. The vices he denounces, the virtues he extols, are not the vices and virtues of to-day, but those of a half-savage race of long ago. In a word, modern life is even more incomprehensible to him than it is to us; or it would be, if he once began to think. Finding him so ignorant, how shall we revere his teaching, or receive it as our guide? Worst of all, is his ignorance of h : ignorance. He is so certain tliat there can be no flaw in his explanations of the why and the how of things, and his directions as to the road we must take. If we will but go to him he will solve all doubts, remove all difficulties, set us unerringly in the right path. To the ordinary mind he seems presumptuous. If he would teach, let him first learn. The thinking preacher, though trained in the same narrow school, has stepped out into the highway of life. His eyes have been opened. He preaches as if in some great moment he had said to himself t " These people are weary of worn platitudes and petty thoughts, and they have passed beyond the knowledge of their fathers. If I would teach them, I must first know. Poetry and literature, history and science, the whole wide field of man's endeavour and achievement lie aglow with gems which I may gather for the Hramdnating of my

people's forward path. Glories of earth ajid sky, marvels of sea and star and flower shine out for inspiration and delight. I will go search, that my message may be enriched-'' ;,. That preacher's church is never empty.