ARCHBISHOP JULIUS.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 November 1925, Page 7

ARCHBISHOP JULIUS.

CENSURES RELIGIOUS PEOPLE. A “MOVIE” MORAL. “There is something very uncomfortable about religious people,” said Archbishop Julius in his sermon at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in -Sydney recently. “I am not talking about Christian people, but religious people. They do not always make it very happy for the irreligious. There is a good deal of indifference on the part of religious people towards the great big world that goes its’ own. way. “I have known a great many of our younger people who, after confirmation, drift away, not going to the bad at all, but just drifting away. The trouble is that we take so little concern about them that we let them go. “It is astonishing that the church people, who recognise tjie immensity of the task to which the church is called, do so little to help the younger people, and to make life brighter and happier for them, while they shake their heads at naughty people who will go on the harbour instead of coming to cb’-irch.” The Archbishop was preaching on the parable, of the Prodigal Son. He said he thought the elder brother in the parable concerned the cathedral congregation more than the prodigal. To his mind the elder brother was represented by religious people. “Why did the younger son go away?” he asked. “I’m not sure that the elder brother had not something to do with it. Representing, as he did, an over-much righteousness, there was no sympathy between them, and I fancy that in part the young man was driven away by the severity and austerness of the elder brother. “The mistake we are always making is that we believe we are all children of the Father in Heaven, but we question if we are brothers, instead of to find that brother everywhere. “What a stir there would be in Sydney if all churchmen, were astir to look after their brothers and sisters. I don’t mean to pity them or to support rescue homes, but to go after them and bring them back. There is one thing we Christian brothers can’t do —sit in our churches and wait till the younger brother comes back. It is our duty to go out and bring him back. “A little while ago we had a movie picture, the ‘Ten Commandments.’ The good woman at the head of that house was enough to turn anyone against religion. Take care that you arc not like her,” said the Archbishop.