THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 1929. RELIGION AND DRIFT.

Wairarapa Age, 3 July 1929, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 1929. RELIGION AND DRIFT.

i Presiding over the Wellington Diocesan Synod yesterday, the Bishop of Wellington made, as he unfailingly makes on such occasions, a striking contribution to the religious thought of the day. Discussing what he called "the drift away from organised! religion,” Dr. Sprott found the ultimate cause of this state of affairs in the perplexity and doubt that are in the air. Religious conviction, he said, had been weakened, if not annihilated, in the minds of multitudes and hence plflffie worship was no longer regarded as an obligation or a privilege. The cause of the present vast unsettlememt of religious conviction, Dr. Sprott considers, is to be found in the deluge of varied knowledge and still more varied hypotheses with which the world has been flooded during the last seventy years. To this point, the Bishop’s outline is one with which all thinking people are likely to agree, whatever the school or camp to which they belong. There may not be as general an acceptance of his further contention that the dash between science and religion had been, at least sometimes, a clash not with what was essential in religion, but with what was unessential; at times, perchance, a clash between things that were unessential in both science and, religion. Whether the clash between religion and science is to die away, leaving religion established on firmer foundations, is to-day something of an open question, but it is on all grounds a question of supreme moment to humanity. Even, those to whom much that is called religion to-day makes no appeal are bound to recognise that the annihilation of religion would leave an appalling void in the lives of men and in the outlook of humanity. Apart from what it means to individual human beings, religion is infinitely the greatest unifying, directive and regulative force that has ever been brought to bear upon mankind. At the present day the best hopes of men are set upon

the development of nobler standards in national and internatioal life—upon great social reforms and measures to safeguard the peace of the world and bring nations together in friendship and understanding. It may be doubted whether anything short of a mighty religious impulse will give these aspirations practical significance and value. An overwhelming need of the unifying force of religion is one great factor tending *c support the belief expressed by Dr. Sprott that the present state of unsettled religious conviction will pass as did that which followed the Reformation, “ itself,” as he observed, “largely the result of the revival of learning.”