DAME CLARA BUTT.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17169, 3 August 1927, Page 4

DAME CLARA BUTT.

HER LATEST ROLE. Dame Clara Butt addressed her concert audience at the Queen’s Hall recently on “The Returning lido of Faith.” The concert was held to assist Miss Maude Royden’s work at the Guild House, Ecclcston Square, and the Bishop of Pretoria’s diocesan fund. Dame Clara looked a compelling figure in a magnificent gown of turquoise blue. After singing Dvorak’s dramatic Biblical songs and “Abide With Me,” she preached the -sermon. She literally held her audience spellbound. She pleaded for a restatement of Christian truths in language all could understand, and illustrated her point by giving many homely examples. “Christ has been smothered by tradition and domesticity,”- she said, and rendered inoccuous by customary piety. Religion is a habit —and a had habit at that —just as saying, ‘How do you do?’ and not waiting for an answei has become a habit. The clash of men’s interests brings up a great inquiry—whether or not the peace of the world is to be found in God. There is no denying that the Church disappoints us because it appears to exist only as a bewildering number ot churches, much of whose religion is so remote from life. To believe in God in His strangely tortured world —that is the rub. But does one question or blame electricity when the light fails Does one blame mathematics when our figures go wrong? Then why question God when things go wrong? Trials are the salt of life, and nothing matters but the way we endure them. Christ is the answer of God to the great question about himself. We want more Christ-likeness and less Christianity. The word Christian, docs not mean much more when applied to a man than the word ‘sportsman’ does to one who knows all about games.” Darne Clam Butt drew the people’s attention to the fact that the King had joined in the community singing of a hymn at a football match, and expressed herself as thrilled by the earnest simplicity of the Royal example.