PRESS COMMENT.

Hokitika Guardian, 24 December 1927, Page 4

PRESS COMMENT.

| IMF CiIUBUH KXDAXGFBED. | At the very moment when unity | and I'm power to sot a visible example '■ ol love and fellowship is demanded ! of Hie Churc.'i, not for her own sake 1 only, the Modernists and the C.'atho- • lies become not only embroiled but ; publicly embattled- over what? Over a dogma. But a vital dogma, say the protagonists. True, the dogma is vilI al; hut it is vital to the individual, ('an it matter to Bishop Barnes, with his scientific knowledge and fervour, that, thousands of Communicants are partaking ot a mystical sacra men t which < nnobles and renews (hem? Can it matter to those Communicants that Bishop Barnes in his: Palace at Birmingham has grave doubts about Adam and Eve and is weak upon the literal truth of Jonah’s whale? .Matter as it may to each, it should matter more that unseemly public outbursts of indignation, whether from pulpit or nave, are endangering the Church, and are definitely driving away from her ministrations a generation already too prone to despise organised religion. To Bishop Barnes, wo would say, “There is a time to keep silence and a time to speak.” To his opponents, who feel that his attacks upon dogmas, which they hold sacred and essential must he resisted. we would say, “Let all things lie done decently and in order.” This is not the time to divide ilic Church on a point of doctrinal interpretation, nor to exhibit organised Christianity as a brawling ground for factions.—The “Yorkshire Post.”

THE ABSENCE OF CONFLICT. The value of the Bible persists, whatever may be thought of the mir-acle-stories. It is the record of the development of the religious consciousness in a race specially gifted in that direction. The Greek of those times was pre-eminent as artist and philosopher : the Roman developed the practical side, standing for law and military efficiency. To tlie Jew it was left to supply the religious element. And this religious consciousness. this spiritual perception, maxwell be a genuine xvay ot arriving at truth. The intellectual is not the only avenue. Intuition, inspiration, is a real thing. Science and religion are not opposed; cannot be opposed. if we seek truth and good in ail possible directions. Science seeks to know, by its own meihods. religion seeks enlightenment ot another kind. cnlargment of tlie soul in another direction. \Ye are many-sided beings, capable of many kinds of activity and expansion.—J. Arthur Hill, in “The National Review.”

THE MECHANICAL MAN. American genius is ever quick to respond to the prospect of saving humane labour Its latest triumph is a machine actuated by the tones of the voice. Refinement is heaped upon refinement. The germ of it all is the toy bull-dog which, standing on a spring, is hurled out of its kennel by the sharp utterance of its name, The

first refinement is to pass the voice over the telephone, the.next to supplement it by wireless waves. Already we are upon the heights when science and art are one. for there is kinship here with Keats, whose magic moved to melodies both heard and unheard. But by a more subtle refinement still the machine registers pressure upon it in forms capable of vocal transmission. Yoieo responds to voice; sound tabes its place with light as a means of bridging space , and what bgnn as the passing toy of man's fantasy is developed into the essential tool of his needs. The mechanical man—for we cannot refuse the name of man to a machine which speaks when spoken to—is the robot, hut with a difference. The robot is .’laboratory man. The svnthetic chemist, master of the complex formulae for flesh and blood, may yet produce him. lie will he man ill form, but will lack the substance of man's brain. The mechanical man is a,!! brain. He is no emergent miracle of engineering, but is living man's deliberate projection of his own brain upon inert metal.--“ The Observer.;’