INVOKING MAGIC

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 123, 21 November 1932, Page 10

INVOKING MAGIC

"CHURCH MOCKERIES"

RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION

SEKMOtf BY DR. BAENES

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 11th October..

Pleaching at Westminster Abbey on Sunday, the Bishop of Birmingham (Dr, Barnes) denounced "superstitious" religious teaching, which, he declared, vi;as "radically false and fundamentally non-Christian, 3' and to which science could give no quarter.

He had no fear, he said, that either unfettered criticism of Christianity or free scientific inquiry would in the end destroy the fundamentals of Christian belief. . . .;"■.. .

v Our x eachers," he said, "seem to me too busy with attack and complaint to notice the extent to which Christian, leaders are to blame: for thai' contempt . which the Christian, /standpoint often receives. Have the Churches consistently maintained the highest moral standards? Can any Christian investigate the records of the Roman: L/hurch with regard to marriage and • divorce alike in medieval and in modern times without a feeling of shame? Again, the social evil which has in. creased most disastrously in our time is gambling. In Ireland the Boman Church is all powerful, and the Dublin: hospital sweepstakes flourish." ■ _ ■ Down to the middle of the nineteenth -century our leading divines ■ were fairly closely 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. HONEST THOUGHT. "This attitude, moreover, is the only one possible if a quarrel between science and dogma is to be avoided/ If the man of science, by. careful observation and honesrt thought reache* new conclusions, the" theologian must embody such conclusions into nis. viewof Gods nature, or by equally-honest thought must show how they are mistaken. A mixture of casuistry and in- « vectivens no adequate ■ '■ substitute for the arguments of a.trained mind - The division'of God's realm into the natural and the spiritual does not satisfy our theological decadents. They. • crave for magic and pretended" miracles of healing, and, the conferring of .a spiritual characte-. on inanimate objects. . ■;

['Let me illustrate these truths," he said, and reminded his hearers of a clergyman who held an annual service tor the blessing of motor-cars. The people smiled. -■.-.■:•:

I assert that, such a service is-a mockery of. Christian truth. Wo 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 hate an accident in a motor-car which has been blessed as in one that-has 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.; times, 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 metKod to assert that no well or shrine can convey a supernatural grace of healing. Wherever we may be,-we .can: reakh God in prayer. There are. no placet or things, sacred . shrines- or saints' bones, that have supernatural curative properties. Similarly, if oil.be blessed by a priest or. bishop, it does not thereby acquire any healing virtue:" HOLY COMMUNION. ; In the Holy Communion we ; dra-w near to Christ as we remember, in= a service intimately connected with His last supper with- His. disciples, His selfsacrifice for righteousness', sake. With such associations" the Eucharist was especially sacred and, the' Bishop believed, spiritually helpful to. all Unristians. But when one was told that by some supernatural process, as th c result of .the prayer of consecration the bpirit of Christ became to or inherent in, the bread and wine! then from the heights of-spiritual religion we had descended to magic As he had heard Dean Kyle say from that pulpit "There was no magic at our altars." God came directly to the devout worshipper; He did not , dwell in inanimate objects, and the whole service of Holy Communion was the channel of His grace. There was no point in keeping the consecrated elements m a' church save on the falsa ' assumption that they were snpernaturally endowed with the presence of Christ.

I neea not give," he said, "further examples of the religious teaching, : alike unsound and anti-scientific, -which- 1 is all too prevalent to-day. I would reiterate that, in. go far as ■it has crept into our own Church, it is degenerate Anglicanism. ' But more especially would I insist that to such superstitions as I have ' described science can give no quarter. If they become established among .us men of science will develop independently a more truly spiritual religion free from such absurdities; and in the; end their religion more faithfully represent the teaching of Christ."