For the Sabbath

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15353, 29 September 1923, Page 12 (Supplement)

For the Sabbath

things enough. “That man can thank his lucky stars Whose things to keep are few, To which the moth and rain and rust Find little harm to do; “A faith that makes his handshake warm ‘And simple things most wise; A wife to make each morning sweet morning-glory eyes; “A love to make him foot green roads Which others motor on; A garden small and kind enough To let him watch the dawn; “ A pity for the hungry ones, The ragged and ill-shod; A tree that’s tall and straight enougli To malm him think of God." > —Robert P. Tristram Coffin, in Ilarper’s Magazine. ECCLESIASTICS AND THE CLOSED MIND. “Several addresses were delivered before the International Congress of Psychology during the week-end, including a sermon In Christchurch Cathedral by Canon Barnes, and a lecture by Canon Streeter on ‘ls Religion a Psycho-Neurosis?”’ says the Post. “Canon Barnes said it seemed to him a significant and welcome fact that those who had organised the Congress should have included in their programme a sermon in the CathedraL He doubted whether such a sign of friendliness would have been possible a generation ago. The belief then persisted that religion and science were bound to quarreL Divines regarded men of science if not with hostility, at any rate with wary suspicion. Undue familiarity might tarnish the pure lustre of orthodoxy, Religion and Truth. “On the other hand, men of science, conscious that they were giving their lives to the pursuit of truth, resented the timid and grudging recognition aocorded to their work. The burning of Bruno and the persecution of Galileo could not be forgotten while the obscuranist spirit that lay behind those crimes still manifestly prevailed. In this City of Oxford sixty years ago Bishop Wilberforce attacked with foolish unfairness ‘The Origin of Species.’ In 1877 the Pope described Darwinism as the ‘system which is repugnant at once to history, to the traditions of all people, to exact science, to observed facts, and even to reason herself.’ "Naturally, leaders of science were sensitive to ignorant presumption. They saw that religion, divorced from truth, was religion divorced from reality. If ecclesiastics demanded the closed mind the Church ceased to be the home of spiritual freedom. So men like Iluxley, profoundly religious in temperament, sought in isolation to solve the riddle of human life. Fortunately, the absurd and unnecessary strife had at length in this country been wisely abandoned if we might Judge by the general attitude of representative Anglicans and Free Church divines. Saints and Neurosis. “In his lecture Canon Streeter said that to a psychologist interested in medical practice the autobiographies of certain of the saints could not fail but suggest the reflection that some of these people would have been all the better for a course of treatment by a competent psychotherapist. Many saints and religious leaders of the past had been persons of a neuroliconstitution, but so had many of the greatest poets, artists, and even scientific discoverers. “But though a genius was frequently a psychoneurolic it would be untrue to say that the majority of psychoneurotics tended towards genius. “To concentrate attention on the extravagance of a few professors of religion was lo mistake the circumference for the centre. Religion to Ihe mass of men was a force that made for sanity. The mediaeval picture of Hell was one admirably adapt-' ed to cause a traumatic neurosis in children of sensitive make up. Indeed, it was his own belief that the hysterical element found in the religion of the saints was due to psychoneurosis so induced." MISS PANKHURST’S NEW FAITH. The signs of the times arc witnessing iirresistibily to the truth that Christ is coming, and coming soon,” says Miss Christabcl Pankhurst in The Lord Cometh, published at lls Cd net by Messrs Morgan and Scott, Ltd. "It is awe-inspiring to watch current history fitting into the very mould of prophecy,” she says. "Once you have the clue to the meaning of the existing world crisis you marvel that everybody does not also see how prophecy is fulfilling itself in the world-events of the passing days." Miss Pankhurst says the faith that Jesus would come again first dawned on her in 1918 through some writings on prophecy. “Like so many others,

I bad Jived in an atmosphere of illusion, thinking that once certain obstacles were removed, especially the disfranchisement of women, it would be full-steam ahead for the ideai social and international order. . . ‘ But when, in 1918, I really faced the facts I saw that the war was not ‘a war to end war,” but was,despite our coming victory, a beginning of sorrows." ' MEN AND THE CHURCH. The Philadelphia Public Ledger sent a questionnaire to a thousand men, seeking to discover ‘‘what was wrong with the Church,” and a few oilier tilings. The answers came back and the editor wrote an editorial upon them, in which he 'summarised the situation as follows:—"It helps nobody merely tflo find fault and do nothing. The great need for the Church will keep it alive. The world lias here and there from time to time tried to get along without the Church, but found that ttie spirit as well as the body craved its daily broad. Church worship is not religion, but its purpose is to satisfy an appetite of religion. The individual shortcomings of its members arc to be set down against their own private account, not to the failure of the institution as a whole. The world without religion would bo a world of social chaos, and those who decry the influence and activity of churches arc usually those who wisli to lead their lives by their own wills for all their laws and all 1 heir Gospel."