BAPTIST CHURCH.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XLIX, Issue 12547, 10 July 1905, Page 8

BAPTIST CHURCH.

At tho Baptist Church last evening, to a large congregation, the Key. Arthur Dewdney delivered the second of his series of "Plain Talks on Puzzling Problems." Mr. Dewdney's subject was "Christ and Socialism, and he took as the keynote of his address part of the prayer which Christ taught His people to use: "Our Father which art m Heaven. Thy will bo done on earth, as it is in Heaven." After quoting from an article by Robert Blatchford, in which that writer said "I oppose the Christian religion because I do not think the Christian religion is benefacial to mankind, and because I think it is an obstacle in the way of humanism, Mi". Dewdney, in.a powerful sermon, went on to show that the essence ot the Socialistic programme was the programme of Josus Christ. And yet, tha man who set himself up to win these good things for men, turned and fought the Christ by whose spirit the very „ conception of such a Socialistic programme had become possible. Never m the history of the world had as much been attempted in the endeavour to realise this great programme as was being done to-day. "And for every Socialist who was engaged in this work there were a hundred Christian men and women spending'themselves, with no hope of profit for to-day, that that programme might become an accomplished fact. Jesus Christ was not a Socialist, but He enunciated great principle, and liberated great moral forces by which those principles should bo applied to the specific needs of each passing age. The nearest approach to any ewe of laws that Jesus Christ gave was jn the Sermon on the Mount. The •abstract principles then enunciated remained eternally true, but the concrete shape with which Jesus Christ in that Sermon illustrated it had changed with the changing conditions, and it would be only a stupid literalism which would mistako the outward form for the essential spirit if we tried to apply those illustrations to modern experience. The principles remained good for all time, but the application of them was left to the common sense of the men who lived in the age. Mr. Dewdney then went on to contend that if, as Mr. Blatchford and others held, this life was all and there was no Heavenly Father, the doctrines of Socialism were useless, for why, in that case, should a man trouble himself about anybody else? If .there ■was no Father, men could not be brothers, and what claim could one man have upon another? But Christ taught us to say "Our Father," not "My Father." And no one could pray that prayer without becoming possessed to a more or less degree with the spirit of true Socialism and of real brotherhood.