Sins of To=day.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 17 March 1910, Page 4

Sins of To=day.

Tlio Bishop of Carlisle preached a remarkable sermon 011 a recent morning in Carlisle Cathedral. He said that in tlie year which had just begun thpy should need a full measure of that sureness of foot which faith in God alone could give. Kor a moment all seemed confusion and tumult. A babel of contending and largely intelligible tongues were ha I'd at work. Bribery and flattery were hard at work. Men who might have been great leaders were . degenerating into demagogues. The press in part at least was becomiii" blindly partisan. Deliberate misrepresentations were greedily swallowed, or cynically condoned. Ridicule was indulged at the expense of righteousness. Even obvious lies stalked openly abroad. Victory, not truth, was the glittering prize for which writers and speakers were contending. .Some of their statesmen were ceasing to be statesmen, and turning into mere gladiators. The grand ideal of a comprehensive church was crumbling to pieces before onslaughts of pigmy sectarianism. Ministers of religion were either becoming political wire-pul-lers or being torn asunder by some caucus which was supreme in the congregation. Official infallibility was covering a multitude of sins. Priests had turned into politicians, and politicians were bidding high for the favour of priests. Christiainity was being degraded into ecclesiasticism, and ecclesiasticism was bringing forth fruit abundantly in superstition and unbelief, in materialism and frivolity, in mad pursuit,of pleasure and the scorn of goodness. Among the ivople at large an anti-Chrixtia.n class prejudice was usurping the throne of Christian brotherhood. Capital was being consolidated into huge ■aggressive trusts, and labour into hostilo threatening unions. National salvation was being loudly promised on easy terms of the readjustment of finance. By the wastefulness of bureaucratic extravagance and Confusion of thrift with uu-thrift, improvidence was being nourished. impure literature was raging like a pestilence. Drunkenness and divorce, gambling and sensuality were eating like a canker into the heart of the Commonwealth. The output of healthy children was diminishing, and that of diseased and weakly ones increasing. Public worship except in the form of highly sensuous and aesthetic shows was largely forsaken. Ritualism taking the place of reveresnce, and pictorial journals sat in the seat of the Bible. The pulpit was becoming a platform, and Christian faith was bowing the knee to " Christian science."