POINTS of INTEREST

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 280, 26 November 1932, Page 13 (Supplement)

POINTS of INTEREST

CRAVING FOR MAGIC. “The division of God’s realm into the natural and spiritual docs not satisfy our theological decadents,” continued Dr. Barnes. “They crave for magic and pretended miracles of healing, and tho conferring of a spiritual character on inanimate objects. Let mo illustrate these truths.” He reminded his hearers of a clergyman who held an annual service for the blessing of motor-cars. The people smiled, “I assert that such a service is a mockery of Christian truth. We can rightly pray that God will bless a person. But to bless a machine confers upon it no spiritual character. The idea belongs to the realm of mere magic. You are just as likely to have an accident in a motorcar which has been blessed as in one that ha a not been the object of such a ceremony. Take another example. We can, as I believe, rightly pray that God will relieve us in sickness or pain. Sometimes, as we think, a favourable answer is given. But then we have no reason to assume that God has acted otherwise than by natural channels. Divine answers to prayer do not belong to a fabulous region or the supernatural. It is the duty of Christian teachers who wish to retain the respect of boys and girls trained in scientific method to assert that no well or shrine can convey a supernatural grace of healing. Wherever we may be, we can reach God in prayer. There arc no places or things, sacred shrines or saints’ bones, that have supernatural curative properties. Similarly, if oil be blessed by a priest or bishop, it docs not thereby acquire any healing virtue. ’’ INDIA AND THE EMPIRE. Speaking on “India and the Empire,” Sir Stanley Jackson, late Governor of Bengal, said that he was one of those who believed strongly that an advance, a very considerable advance, in the near future in tho shape of provincial autonomy must be given to India. Undertakings had so repeatedly been given by the Government that any failure to implement these undertakings now would shako the confidence of well-disposed Indians, of which there were millions, in the good faith of Britain, and it would be nothing short of a disaster. The main consideration was the rate or the pace at which responsibilities could safely, with due regard to the best interests of India, be transferred to Indian hands. Alluding to the recent visit by the Franchise Committee to India, Sir Stanley Jackson said that he gathered from their report that they visualised in the near future a very considerable extension of democratic government throughout die country. He thought the Franchise Committee in their report went farther than most people who knew India expected them to. Ho was sceptical of the success of a full-fledged Western democratic system in India. Any democratic system there would have to have a touch of Eastern ideas, and it seemed to him fihat there would have to be something in the shape of a full power of veto entrusted to sonic responsible head in the provinces. It was his view that for some years to come there should be control at the centre, absolutely and carefully maintained. RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION. Preaching at Westminster Abbey, Dr. Barnes, Bishop of Birmingham, denounced “superstitious” religious teaching, which, he declared, was “radically false and fundamentally non-Christian,” and to which science could give no quarter. He had no fear that cither unfettered criticism of Christianity or free scientific inquiry would in the end destroy the fundamentals of Christian belief. “Our preachers,” he said, “seem to me too busy with attack and complaint to notice the extent to which Christian leaders arc to blame for that contempt which the Christian standpoint often receives. Have the churches consistently maintained the highest moral standards? Can any Christian investigate tho records of the Roman Church with regar dto marriage and divorce alike in medieval and in modern times without a feeling of shame? Again, the social evil which has Increased most disastrously in our time is gambling. In Ireland the Roman Church is all powerful, and th 0 Dublin hospitals 1 sweepstakes flourish.” Down to the middle of the nineteenth century our leading divines were fairly clos Iv in touch with the best philosophical and scientific thought of their time. They believed, as he believed, that the revelation of Christ would .grow naturally into our expanding knowledge; but any suggestion that, new truth must be repudiated, or twisted to accord with old assumptions, would have made them indignant. “This attitude, moreover, is the only one possible if a quarrel between science and dogma is to be avoided,” declared the bishop. “If the man of science, by careful observation and honest thought, roaches new conclusions, the theologian must embody such conclusions into his view of God’s nature, or by equally honest, thought inns: show how they are mistaken. A mixture of casuistry and invective is no adequate substitute for the arguments of a trained mind.”

INDUSTRY’S FETTERS REMOVED. Addressing the British Chamber of Commerce the president, Sir Edward ' Kiffe, said it was a matter for regret that export trade showed a shrinkage, but that was to be expected. No improvement could take place until tho bargaining power now possessed was used to reduce the tariffs which other nations placed against our exports. “We arc now free to’outer into arrangements with other nation s who are, for the first time within living memory, seeking to discuss such agreements with us. Our unemployment figures give cause for anxiety. The improvement in our national trade balance indicates that had it not been for our tariff policy, tho figures would have been much worse. Personally, 1 am hopeful for the future and I look for a considerably reduction immediately industry is in a position to finance its operations. The new conditions which now obtain justify our manufacturers in bringing their works up to date and in undertaking extensions to their enterprises ia many directions. Such extensions, however, ar e not usually embarked upon if they have to be financed by means of bank overdrafts, and the embargo placed by the Treasury on new industrial issues make s it impossible to raise the necessary capital iu any other way. This embargo was, no doubt, necessary to ensure the success of the conversion operation, but the sooner it is removed the sooner will new schemes bo launched and unemployment reduced. We may assuredly claim that wc have made solid progress during the past I vear. Much, of course, still remains to be done, but we have freed ourselves of our fetters, and although wc shall, no doubt, meet with sonic discouragement and disappointments during the coming year, I believe the turning-point has been passed and that we can look to the future with confidence.” GERMAN ARMS CLAIM. Addressing a recent meeting of th® League of Nations Union, Lord Grey of Fallodon said the Covenant of the League of Nations and the Pact of Paris were the two greatest factors for thy preveution of war. The recent pronouncement of Mr. Stimson upon the Pact was of extreme importance. It was an interpretation of the Pact to the effect that in the event of one of the signatories breaking the Pact and resorting to war it would be the duty of all the other signatories to confer on the matter, and it would follow that there would be no neutrals permitted in the conflict. The effect of that would by that any signatory resorting to force would bo challenging the rest of the world. He would like to sec the British Government at once give a similar interpretation of the Pact. He regretted that the relations between Germany and France were not so good as a few months ago. France wanted security and she suggested that it might be provided by a forco controlled by the League of Nations. Germany was demanding equality of status with the other nations. What was her real desire? Was it for rearmament, as one of her statesmen had suggested, or was it merely for an equality of status brought about by a general reduction of armaments as the German Chancellor, von Papen, had declared In his view if Germany thought the Treaty of Versailles had not been carried out the course to take was to refer the issue to the Court of International Justice at The Hague; if she wanted the Treaty amended then the proper course was to seek to gain that amendment by negotiation. The Treaty could not be altered unilaterally. It must be by negotiation. He would stand by those two principles. OBSOLETE DOCTRINE. Mr. Stanley Baldwin, when addresf ing the delegates attending the Conference of the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations at Blackpool, referred to the Liberal Ministers who resigned. ‘‘With these Liberals it was a certain logical loyalty to an obsolescent doctrine that compelled them to resign,” he said. “It was the late Lord Rosebery who said that the commonest error in politics was sticking to the carcase of dead policies. 1 think that is the affliction from which my Liberal friends suffer. We admitted protection not as a principle, but as an expedient. We have never worshipped it. With our eyes open we took every step to safeguard that policy from what we know to be the dangers associated with it. If it fails. 1 do not see our party sticking to the carcase of dead policies.” The Liberals seemed to have exaggerated one issue alone out of a score. “ 1 do wish.’’ he added in a quiet voice, “that that narrow pedantic school would give up once and for all worshipping free trade as a principle, both immaculato and immutable. For no economic doctrine is either, or can be, or ever will be." By the next election, he added, frc 4 j trade wquld be dead. The country had only one desire—to see the Government get on with its job. “As leader of this great party,” he continued, “I cannot take in silence the charge that w t » have been enforcing our party policy on the Government. Tariffs, the expansion of exports, the contraction of import?, commercial treaties and mutual economic arrangements with the Dominions have not been, since the election, party politics. We have been charged with imperilling the Imperial future of tho Commonwealth of Nations as a result of the Ottawa Conference. What were, we to do? Refuse to attend, or attend and refuse to make any agreements? Those who supported the Ottawa Bill right through must not be thrown to th<» wolves. 1 regret nothing that took place at Ottawa. (Cheers). 1 rejoice to think we have accomplished far mon* than I hoped. So long as we had an open market in the world, not a single count rv would pay the slightest attention to us. The National Government decided to tackle the problem in a new way. That weapon brought the representatives of many foreign nations to discuss what agreements they could make with us, and we are going to make them.”