SACRED AND SECULAR

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 71, 10 April 1937, Page 12

SACRED AND SECULAR

When then we come to inquire more elosely into the distinction between good and bad religion and to ask why it is that some forms of religion secm so incapable of good, we find that the chief source of the trouble is that view of religion whieh isolates it from life. When religion becomes a kind of professionalism with rules, ■ shibboleths and uniforms of its own, it is very e:lsy to shut it off fr.om one's daily activities

and from all contact with reality. The old Negro woman who said: "I'se done broke all the eommandments, but thank God I'se kept my religion," wa® only expressing in an extreme form a conception of religion that is very widespread even to-day. The distinction between saered and secular is often pressed to a point at whieh the sacred becomes entirely sui generis and so both barren aud impotent. Keligiotis days and duties are kept for their own sake and entirely shut off from everyday life. As commonly interpreted religion involves certain obligations and prescribes certain formalities, and the observance of these becomes a kind of first charge on the spiritual exchequer. Now no one questions the value of cultivating the devout life or of the use of times and seasons, ritual and ceremony, for that end. But the devout life is not an end in iteelf. It is, or it ought to be, a means to the greater good of mankind. It should produce in those who praetise it notmerely a glow of holy feeling but a keener conscience, a finer character, and a more unselfish serviee of God and men.—' W. B. Selbie.