THE FEMALE PREACHER. MODERN CHRISTIANITY.

Colonist, Volume XVI, Issue 1660, 15 August 1873, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE FEMALE PREACHER. MODERN CHRISTIANITY.

A Miss Ttjbneb has been officiating for some months as Minister of the Unitarian Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne. A contributor to the Argus writes:—

On Sunday morning Miss Turner chose for her text the words from Acts v., 38 and 39_« For if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to naught: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it." She read her sermon at a little reading desk, quietly turning over the leaves of her manuscript, and hardly raising her eyes, except now and then mechanically, to glance at her congregation. Her discourse at the outset observed that at the present day the question of the suitability of Christianity to the conditions of bur complex modern civilisation was much discussed, and pointed out that in advance Gamaliel had in these words indicated a kind of test by which the then new faith, would be tried. By that criterion it had been tried, and a »y»tem that

had endured the test of time for 1800 yearr must have divine truth at its foundation; She went on to protest against the assumed opposition between a divine and human origin of truth implied by Gamaliel in the test suggested, and maintained that >in matters of faith the essentially human was the essentially divine. But Christianity conveyed to modern society a very different message from that it gave to the Judeans. In the origin of religion it was, as was required by the undeveloped condition of humanity at that time, preceptive and didactic, its commands being negative rather than positive. The qualities that require restraint are the earliest developed, and those which require culture only come in the second place. Next to the preceptive stage came the ascetic, when the idea of selfrestraint assumed an exaggerated predominance. This was followed by the epoch of intellectual creeds, when the idea of religion became one of logical accuracy of belief; and it to a great degree '{>, lost its lifegiving power, and its command over theheart feelings. Having passed these developments, the question was ; now asked whether Christianity had not done its appointed work in the world • whether it now only demanded quiet interment and appreciative recognition of the good, it had done in its time. Books were written to propound, the question whether Christ's life: in these days was possible, or, if possible, whether it was derirable. To this question she answered that the internal principles of that 'life* its true essence, its pervading spirit-were aa true now as they ever were. Humanity could not: return to ita beginning. The-circumstances amongst which we lived were not as,those of Judea. But in its applicability to the changed conditions of our times, the spirit of the doctrine preached by Christ was as true; now as then. As man had grown, that religion had also grown ; gifts had been added to it by good laen, and it had been so expanded that it had taken all human hopes and duties under the Bhadow of its lofty sanction..

Such in a very summarised fortniwas Miss Turner'ermode of responding to the important question that she essayed to answer. If.you take the internal spirit of the religion divested of all of its transitory forms/this is as true, now as it was when it was first sent 'as a divine message to mankind. In this abstract colorless style did she propound and answer the question which has within the last year or two been narrowly discussed by such men as Strauss, Matthew Arnold,,Greg, and by a host of writers in reply. Her stating of the difficulty and her response to it was intelligent and dispassionate. But as it seemed to me, Miss Turner had never descended below the surface of either the question or. the answer. Both as she appeared to have viewed ?hem, were mere abstract generalities, to be dealt with by a few smoothly rounded, nicely turned sentences. To answer a question of such tremendous issues as are here involved in such a manner appeared to me mere trifling with life and death. The soul of the generation is weary of illusion and sick with doubt. It has seen some of the traditionary faiths transmitted to it, sanctioned by the unwavering belief centuries; attacked and overthrown. This mighty Titan—Bcientifiic inquiry—has gone along smiting idol after idol with his remorseless mace, and shattering them to fragments; and now with so much of its faith torn from its hold humanity asks wbether it can preserve anything that is at all worth preserving. The time ia one of deep spiritual unrest, when mouldering creeds are shaking and falling in ruin, and men are already asking whether religion as they have hitherto known it is henceforth possible. I confess it see us to me incredible that anyone who has ever for a moment realised all the scope and all the vast importance of the problem can believe it answered by these cultivated generalisations offered for his acceptance by the sermon of Miss Turner. Stated in its most general form, as she gives it and replies to it, the question is emptied of all meaning. There was nothing that she said that might not have been said, and with equal truth, by a follower of Mahomet, or of Confucius, or of Gotama Buddha, who felt the need of bringing his religious faith into har&iony with the intellectual demands- of the time. He, too, would say, " the original form* the body and dress of my religion, must pass, and indeed have passed, away ; but the internal spirit is true now as ever." Each might define this internal spirit in much the same words, and you would find tbat what is given as the essence of these vary* ing faiths proved to be nothing but a vague morality, perhaps associated with a little doubtful shadowy theism. But if religion is other than mere morality, a process which left nothing but morality at the bottom of the crucible in which the faiths of the world are fusing would, under the guiS9 of purifying and sublimating religion, have destroyed it. I felt then, as I walked home after Miss Turner's discourse, that Bhe had rather skimmed over the question than grappled with it, that her concessions to the attacks of unbelief were real, while the defences she erected were unsubstantial and unreal, and that Unitarianism in this form— ingenious, cultivated, respectable as it may be—ii to be counted rather amongst the

dissolving than amongst the reconstructive agencies of the vast spiritual revolution we are now passing through.