The Church and the State.

Hastings Standard, Issue 353, 21 June 1897, Page 4

The Church and the State.

In England Bishop Julius, who is at present " at Home" in connection with the impending Lambeth Conference, has been giving a large audience some information concerning " The Church and the State in New Zealand." Speaking of the pride with which the average New Zealander regarded the progressive policy of the colony, His Lordship said, "And when you come to think of it, they have some grounds for their self-compla-cency. They cannot help noticing that questions which in the Old Country drag on year after year without arriving at any settlement, are promptly disposed of in the colony. Colonists have looked on the many blots which rest upon the old land poverty, misery, vice and have determined that there shall not be these blots on the new world. And they start with many advantages. They are not tied and bound out there as you are here. There is not so much to be undone ; and so things which here linger on for half a century, there are settled in six mouths. I know that we are supposed to be governed by fads and faddists, by all sorts of advanced refonnei s, who are some times perhaps a little reckless. No doubt we do now and then try things in haste, and sometimes repent at leisure. But, even admitting this, you cannot blame the colonies for desiring to deliver themselves from the miseries of the older civilisation. And this is what New Zealand has sought to do." Passing on to the Church, Bishop Julius was slightly mora severe, as no doubt he felt he could afford to be. After comparing the colonial clergy with those in England, whom he said were quite equal to the latter, and remarking that the colonials liked good preaching, even to the exclusion of those men who might not be eloquent of tongue, although they were well qualified to teach the principles of Christianity, he said : " Another drawback to the New Zealand Church is a fault which also we share with you in England—the fault of being too respectable. The Church is regarded as that of—l not will say ' upper classss,' for we have none in New Zealand, thank God—but the Church of the well-to-do. People think they must be well dressed to go there." And then the Church had traditionally become too much attached to one party in the State. He himself was a Radical, bat be held that the

Church should know no party but that of God. 110 feared that there

was too much tcndencv to raspect a -nod balance at tha I'Sank, and that the wealthy members cr a flock obtained much more attention than they really deserved. And there was too little; sympathy among the clergy "with the social wants and aspirations and movements of the time. The clergy needed training to take a right view of these things. Sometimes they looked with horror on a subject on which the people's heart was full. "We have cathedrals in most of our great towns," continued the Bishop, " but we don't know how to use them. I am sure we do not in Christchurch. When I was a boy I was taken to St Paul's Cathedral in London. I remember to the day, with a shudder, what a dreary old hole of a place it was in those times, and I am deeply thankful for St. Paul's Cathedral as it is in the present day, when you see its frequent services attended by vast masses of people, and the crowded building itself sometimes crowded from end to end. St. Paul's, London, now is what a cathedral ought to be—the Church home of the people. And until we get our cathedral churches to be so regarded they will never fuilill their right functions."