"BEADS AND PRAYER BOOKS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1010, 28 June 1930, Page 8

"BEADS AND PRAYER BOOKS ”

THE QUIET CORNER

(Written for THE SUN by the Rev. Charles Chandler.) Behold the child by Nature's kindly law. Pleased with a rattle, tickled with "a straw. Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little loftier, but as empty quite. Scarfs and garters amuse his riper stage, Whilst beads and prayer books are the toys of age. ■ —Pope. ’J’ L trappings of religion . . . the toys of age . . . and yet how bent upon his trappings is man. A s mustard is to beef or as mint sauce is to roast lamb, so are beads and prayer books to religion. They do not constitute the substance of faith, which is Love. They are just two of Us accompaniments. As a handrail is to a frail pedestrian, so are manuals of worship to those who grope their way in search of the Holy Grail. A prayer book is the “ Bradshaw ” of ecclesiasticism. A “book of the words” for an ecclesiastical performance. Something to be learned by rote, and done by numbers. A set of exercises in spiritual gymnastics. What are beads, save a set of counters to keep the minds of the devout from going off a prayer trackt By their aid, people keep count of their supplications. They are an aid to concentration, not a fetish. But alas! how soon these trappings become fetishes. Meant for a second place, they usurp the throne. They become bones of contention, instead of aids to purer thought. And thus we find debates concerning prayer book revision, and whether God shall be placated this way or that way, creating divisions, and taking precedence over the weightier matters of the Law. NEXT WEEK: BROWNING’S GRAMMARI AX.