THE WORLD TO-DAY IS MORE CHRISTIAN THAN FORMERLY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19270, 6 January 1931, Page 6

THE WORLD TO-DAY IS MORE CHRISTIAN THAN FORMERLY.

T o-Day’s Signed Article

Specially Written for the “Star”

By

Mrs W. R. Inge

'(Wife of the Dean of St Paul's).

“ 'There is nothing more important to recognise than that there is growing up a great disbelief in God.” Such was the pronouncement of a Peer a short time ago. and it is one with which I take issue. Never have we been so religious as we are to-day!

PUT, first let us ask ourselves what do we mean by religion? And what part, exactly, does the Church play in the Christian faith? And —this is rather important—what is the Church ? These are the questions that have been put to me recently, and that I shall try to answer in all sincerity and if my replies are not altogether conventional, at least they will come straight from the heart. The Highest Impulse. I take it that religion is the highest impulse in man. It is the impulse that mrices possible the organised unselfishness . that we call “ civilisation.” And since this organised unselfishness is on both a higher and wider plane than at any age recorded in history, I cannot accept the cynical vieyv that we are becoming less religious. In Queen Anne’s time, children -re allow ed to die of starvation in the streets. The dainty ladies who were borne along in their sedan chairs did not even pause to mr.'.ce the passing of the little ones easier, let alone to try to save them. In the days of Capt in Coram, the founder of the famous orphanage, the little dead bodies were allowed to lie in the gutter until the street cleaners cleared them away like so much durt. Do we allow children to starve to-day? Certainly not! Indeed, we are horrified if a child of the poorest parent does not receive attention equal to that of a rich parent. We provide hospitals, clinics, institutes of all kinds for the sick and needy, for the aged and infirm. Men and women work hard, without hope of reward, that people whom they have never seen may be spared suffering and that their lives may be prolonged. I scarcely think that this seems as though we are becoming particularly irreligious. Name Immaterial. True, some people call the divine instinct that impels them to do big and fine and self-sacrificing things by other names than the simple one of “ God.” Personally, I am not very interested in names. I am interested in facts, in truth, in beauty, and I cannot become fearfully excited when people like to call God by a term that happened to appeal to them -more, such as “ a desire to serve,” or “ the social instinct.” And the outstanding fact that, to my mind, should confound all the sceptics and the cynics is that we are attempting to do more good to-day from purely unselfish motives than ever before. Therefore I say that this is the most religious age that has ever been experienced. The Peer whom I quoted said quite definitely; “There is a growing disbelief in God.” Each time in history when men have sought to come closer to the Divine and throw off some of the conventions of rigid worship, the same thing has been said. It was said in Rome that religion would die out when a scientist discovered that there was no Olympus, for then there would be no Zeus, since none could imagine a Zeus homeless. But men did not cease to possess a religion. All that happened was that they reached a' little higher than ever before, a little nearer to truth and came closer to a better ideal of God. A Little Nearer. That Christ was perfect does not imply that our concept of Him is equally flawless. I am afraid that we don’t really understand Christ even twenty centuries after his death, but it is certain that we understand more about Him than did the people of his own age or of any other that came before us.

Each generation has lifted a little nearer to Christ Each generation has seen a little more of the light—witness the growing sense of human responsibility, the gradual decline of the self-worship implied by the individual sacrificing his whole life to save no soul other than his own, witness, too, the slow but certain realisation that Christ meant to bring joy and never pain. Even our treatment of delinquent children, prosaic as this subject may sound, as an illustration of our improved Christianity We seek to reform and not to punish—to protect the child against himself and not to avenge ourselves upon him whatever wrong he may have committed. We are putting into practice the truly Christian, the truly religious principle, considering that it has become the law of the land to _ follow a precept which, in actuality, is simply an injunction given us by Jesus Christ. There are hundreds, thousands, of such e amples—every hospital, every almshouse, every charitable enterprise is an evidence of Christianity, call t what one will. As to the Church, although it is true that the Churches should perhaps draw larger congregations than is the case, I do not think that the fact that people stay away from Church proves “ a disbelief in God. * It shows. I think, only a slight misconception. Church Not A Building. What is the Church? You are the Church! I am the Church! All the men and women in the land are the Church! The Church is not a matter of building, or of preaching or even of praying—buildings can be built anywhere, people can preach in a field and a human being an pray in his heart in the Tube. The actual Church is merely a convenience for the religious—a centre from which leadership may be expected, and in which people may express the religious feeling that is deep within every human creature. It is not a thing apart from other things. As soon as the Church tries to set itself up' as a body apart from the people, the Church will be doomed —because it is a.id must be the people. Religion is still in the making. The ideals set up by the Christianity of to-day are not the same ideals as those set up by the early Christians. If they were, indeed, it would mean that the religion of each generation, instead of civilising and improving humanity, simply left it where it was. And the Church is bound to alter side by side with Christians who are still in a state of evolution. Change Essential. The essential principle of the Christian Church is change! Nothing is stable that does not change. That may sound like a paradox, but it is not. If an institution is to live in the hearts of people, it must meet the growing ideas, the expanding knowledge of the people. Of course the remoteness of the Church from the lives of a number of people is a great pity, and above all the idea that the Church is a special belonging of the clergy is still more to be deplored. We must guard ourselves against the danger of allowing the Church to grow away from us. We must understand that our acts of charity, whether they are performed through the advice of a clergyman, whether they are undertaken upon our own responsibility, or whether they touch upon the actual sticks and stones of the Church buildings or no, are still acts of sacrifice and devotion to the Church, for the Church is humanity.