The Wanganui Chronicle. "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1922. “GO-TO-CHURCH SUNDAY”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18458, 17 April 1922, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1922. “GO-TO-CHURCH SUNDAY”

"Go-to-Church Sunday" is the arresting device by which the churches of Brisbane united in an effort to spur the public to a fuller realisation of the desirableness of divine worship. The effort was made on the first Sunday of this month and was warmly supported by the local Press. Human nature, however altrustic, is generally inclined to slump into a cosy doze over its religious obligations, and the churches of Queensland’s capital evidently felt impelled to utter a clarion challenge to somnolent faith, in view o ftheir dwindling ranks of regular worshippers. Familiarity, said the Daily Mail, in an article on the eve ot the appointed Sunday, breeds indifference to conventional announcements of church services, and so, like the progressive trader who put up a coruscating skysign when the more prosaic poster palls, the churches intend to flash for a strategic moment the "Go-to-Church” slogan in a spectacular way that should clinch the most sluggish or jaded conscience. Something of

this unusual sort is evidently necessary. Man may be incurably religious, but his religious mechanism is seldom of the "self-starting” type; it has to be vigorously cranked up for each crusade. Moreover, his religious sense soon shrivels if it is not duly exercised in divine worship and charitable practice. In his latest book entitled "Painted Windows,” the "Gentleman with a Duster” makes the significant remark that “Science is the one voice that condemns in these days the self-destroy-ing madness of a world set in seeking to live habitually in the lower life,”• and that condemning voice is particularly emphatic concerning the peril of neglecting to develop our best faculties. Not only is the long track of evolution cluttered with biological derelicts that have been shunted into dead ends through neglect to exercise their higher talents, but Darwin, who detailed so many of those failures for our instruction, was himself an illustration of the way in which the spiritual sense can be killed by neglect. Writing to his friend, Sir J. D. Hooker, about a performance of the “Messiah,. Darwin remarked that that oratorio was the one thing that he would like to hear again; “but,” he sadly added, “I dare say I should find my soul too dried up to appreciate it as in old days, and then I should feel very flat, for it is a horrid bore to feel, as I constantly do, that I am a withered leaf for everything except Science.” The Church is not only “the never dying testimony to the possibility of the higher life in man,” it also offers a wide field for active service in which the elements of the higher life can be drilled and developed, and therefore Brisbane’s “Go-to-Church” campaign may be justly applauded as a praiseworthy effort worthy ot emulation by all the cities of the Empire. The Churches of Wanganui, for example, might well agree to stand shoulder to shoulder in such an enterprise. A spectacular religious movement such as this is bound to call some critical fire from those who are suspicious or scornful of organised Christianity; but, after all, such criticism is of little consquence. In voicing its warm approval of the Brisbane effort, the Mail urged that those stalwarts who, in the face of many difficulties, are holding the fort of institutional Christianity, should not be unduly disheartened by the prevailing popular indifference to Church services. It reminded the modern crusaders that battling against odds has generally been the lot of the Church all down the centuries. “It has always,” it said, “been something of a solitary institution, and its crusades have often taken on the pale glamour of a forlorn hope. But the amazing thing is that, in spite of repeated persecution and reproach the Church still persists. Some people sneer at the church’s halt-filled pews. It is a cheap jibe. What other organisation could attract even a handful of people week after week to its platform? If the most eloquent politician were to attempt to discourse politics twice every Sunday in the same hall for years on end, his audience would be likely to dwindle rapidly after the novelty of the scheme had worn off. The persistence of religion is a fact that confounds its critics. Faith seemed to collapse in the sixteenth century under the astronomical discoveries of Copernicus, which riddled the quaint geocentric notions of the older saints. Again, in more modern times, the evolutionary doctrines of Darwin appeared to overwhelm religious belief. But, in spite of these and a dozen similar cataclysmsfi Christianity can still kick a vigorous pair of heels. It was a very shrewd rationalist who asked some time ago. ‘Why is it that the most radical of us know in our hearts that when in a light-hearted burst ot scornful laughter we turn lour back on religion, its ghost, smiling with an irony tempered by more than a touch of dogged good humour, is destined to meet us again at some cross-roads ages hence.’ ” The persistence of religion should hearten its ministers and its regular adherents to follow the commendable example set by Brisbane.