Religious Outlook

Wanganui Chronicle, 27 December 1950, Page 4

Religious Outlook

When I read the letter in last Friday’s issue by "Old Pagan” under the title of "Religious outlook” I.said to myself “Well, if ever a pseudonyon was appropriate, that one was.” Then I noticed that a proper answer to it was. in the next column, in the two short Xmas messages, one from Bishop Owen of Wellington and the other from the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church.

It seems to me that “Old Pagan” is living in an unreal world and is missing the point altogether. If he ceased from setting up straw men just to knock them down again and instead, gave heed to the main point of the two messages he would be much better off.

Let me repeat what I think is the core of each message: The Bishop writes—“ The only hope is the coming into the world of a new spirit of goodwill. It is worship that creates goodwill and it is worship that sustains it.”

The Moderator writes—“ The story of the Babe of Bethlehem reminds us that the greatest power in the universe works, not through the spectacular forces of human right, but through the gentleness of Divine Love. Wherever that truth Is accepted and allowed to govern the lives of men and women there is experience of peace and gladness." Now we might very well equate the /‘New Spirit of Goodwill’ of the Bishop's message with “the gentleness of Divine love” of the Moderator’s and both are developed and fostered by worship. So far as I am aware nobody has given a truer definition of "Worship” than the late Archbishop of Canterbury. Dr W. Temple, who said—"To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the holiness of God, to open the heart to the love of God and to devote the will to the purpose of God.” So when “Old Pagan ’ and all the rest of us, worship sincerely and honestly as Dr Temple suggests then the "Religious Outlook of this old world of ours will undergo a most vital and necessary change. I am. WATCHMAN.