THE CATHEDRAL—AND THE FUTURE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 85, 4 January 1919, Page 8

THE CATHEDRAL—AND THE FUTURE

1 L ...... . ■ -. ,-., . - ' .'■• . .. Sir,—Personalities, like the poor, nre ■■ ' ever with us; ; Your (Correspondent, r "H.M.," in opposing the word rather ! than the spirit of my letter; in dragging, ' after tho manner of a vicious ■ whistler, ? my sentences from their context; in heaping' Biblical quotations (which, as- you ; pleaee, prove, or'disprove-anything) .upon - E my head until I- feel ihat this miniature 3 Dante '■ has doomed Ms enemy to the ninth gulf of hell; has found in the wisdom of-the mediocre a multitude of pusil- , lanimous platitudes. I acknowledge that it would he as futile'for me to say that f the Anglicans'have no right tp build a cathedral as it is for "H.M."..t0 urge i that-I have written from mercenary motivee". Sects-have teen Vuilding catliej drills for hundreds of years, during which time atheists and freethinkers have been civilising the world. It is the small man : who shrinks back from a great-truth as ■" a child from an imaginary, ghost; it is i ' the-'small man who.opposes-all, progress on the sole ground that : it is^inmoral; it is the small man , who,-.as.Goethe, says, contradicts intellectual ideas , for the pleasure he obtains in stirring up a blaze t and watching the cinders setting tire to outside-things. If my opponent thinks that of late there has teen no sectarian J Wife-'or. if any. it, tas. arisen .«. nihilo-and that the i-e ion of the Anglicans will be -responsible for its exter- • urination* then may the Anglicans go . ahead with their scheme and may God 1 bless their endeavours; ? but if,-.- on the o her hand, he realises tnat this inherit ed jealousy which, unless a hermit, J be ■ must know actually exists, will be fanned into no gentle flame by the appeai- . ance of a magnificent cathedral, surely 1 he must admit that the disadvantages of such" an institution loom black. Perhaps, I- am more fortunate m>uig 1 able-to extricate myself from thewsJμ. of religion and dogma, and vie*, the 1 situation with 1 an open mind, fhat i* a ' treat help. A seer is, rHer all, only oe : who, knowing the »«».»» taW 1 tions of a thousand years, disregards ' them Mr words may rot be prophetic, but"let me eay I am. as anxious ; for the future of. my country as H.JL I is for the future of his church. I can. that in our land where every., re- ' ..souixe abounds, unity cf « ' a fertilisation of many soils, ami m ; proposing unitarianism irfused lui , iWniiitv I merely wishsd to *nng lor " »•' worS/religion to ; I am, etc., •.. -. -w.E.L.' i I ' ';