EASE AND IDEALS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4908, 27 November 1925, Page 2

EASE AND IDEALS.

. RELIGION TOO COMFORTABLE. ATTACK ON MODERN' LIFE. . < A virile attack upon the ease of modern life, especially upon the readiness of some people to accept a compromise between .religion and the pleasure-loving pursuits, of the. day, was by the Rev. F. E. Harry in the Vivian Street Baptist Church at Wellington on Sunday evening. ‘‘ls religion made easy, ?” asked the preacher.. “If we must walk with peas in our boots let us first boil them—that is the spirit of the age. The preacher must not talk of se ,e--denial or sacrifice; must not emphasise the asperities of the Gospel. It is the same with our educational system. We make the path as easy as possible for our young people, and they are not taught to think for themselves. Our forefathers walked; we ride, and complain of our lack of muscular power. There is no doubt that luxurious living is fatal fo the growth of moral .fibre. So in religion everything is made easy to-day. Ideals are lowered, truth diluted., men talk of the Cross, and ignore the one they are told to take up .and carry. Our ornate temples shame the conventicles of our fathers, whilst! their sturdy character dwarfs our own. The rolling psalms of yesterday are displaced by the musical gymnastics of a paid choir. Strong and definite theology has given place to rhetorical fireworks and ethical essays. Jonathan Edwards would listen in amazement, could he reappear, to the and spineless utterances coming from the modem pulpit. If people would only wind up their thinking apparatus, and not let editors and preachers do their thinking for them, they would not he so easily lured and misled by the gaieties and trickeries of Vanity Fair.

“Men and women plan , for years ahead, and speculate about, rises in values, discuss social, and political developments, but never give a single thought to another world than this, as though death were the end of everything. *They know it is not. Into this age of cheap luxury and easy living the stern call, of Christ comes, ch alien gi ng tour man hood 'and womanhood, and summoning us to the heroic and self-sacrificing after the pattern He has given us in His life and on His, Cross.” ,