A RELIGIOUS MAN.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5158, 29 July 1927, Page 4

A RELIGIOUS MAN.

WHAT IS THE COKBECT VIEW ’ DR. FORT NEWTON’S IDEA. "What is a religious man ?” asks Dr. Fort N'c-wtou in the Atlantic .Monthly, and he sums up his ansjwer as follows : : — “Much of what is called religion, as usually interpreted, conveys nothing real or helpful to the average man ; it contains little to link on to life as he knows it. Its; outlook is remote, its imagery alien. "Its ideas and insights need to be restated in the terms of our time, in plain every-day spetech, s|o that men can understand it, lay hold of it, and attempt to live up to it. No idea of religion is worth anything that does not have a vital effect on character, in which the eternal values are revealed and attested. “One does not forget that life is profoundly influenced by belief, as belief, in turn, is clarified and confirmed by life—matter itself for an essay. Yet a man may believe all five* creeds and have little moral worth or spiritual loveliness ; lie may believe in the resurrection of th'e body and be dead of soul. “As Carlyle said, the religion of a man is not the creed he professes : not that necessarily, often not that at all, since me-n of all degrees of worth and worthlessness sign all kind of creeds. His religion is, his life, what he acts upon and knows of the moaning of life and his duty ill it. “In the meantime we want finally to get rid of the idea that a bad man who believes a creed is more religious than a good man who does not. As Jesus put it, the sheep and the goats are not believers and unbelievers, but the unsellisih and the selfish ; those who serve God better than they know, and those who profess but do not. “Religion is not safety ; it is service. It is not a plan by which we escape Hell and get int.o Heaven, but a life of fellowship and ministrant goodwill. As a rule the best men are not those who are. most sure ?f their salvation, or think most about it. They are those, who, while,.aware of their own failingsi and limitations, do not indulge in morbid reflections bn their own spiritual ' state, but put their power into a life of love guided by truth. “Many a man who has only a hsizy idea of whaUit-means to love- God is really doing it all the time, in the most real way, by helping his fellows along the road. “If such words, seem to be trite, they art- none the less true, truer by far than many a dogma; and it is by such things that wc learn that religion is not a thing apart from life, but life itself at its best.”