CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5443, 3 July 1929, Page 3

CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY.

“GAS-LIT AND GAS-INSPIRED” TIME OF LOOSE THINKING. “Never in history has there been more loose thinking and more loose talking than to-day,” declared Canon Percival James, who was inducted vicar of St." Paul’s parish at Wellington, in the course of his sermon in the Pro-Cathedral bn Sunday., “During the war,” continued Canon James, “those who were fighting in the Army were, told by those who were not engaged in the struggle/that they were making the world safe for democracy. ■, Anyone who was with thd soldiers in the line would smile to themselves when they realised j how such a phrase was received by the men at the front. Those young men—the best in the Empire^—who went to the war did not go there on account of any high-sounding phrases dike that. Lord Kitchener knew better; he told them r “Your; King and Country need you I” ■ “The task of to-day,” said Canon James, “is not to make the world' safe for democracy, but‘to make it safd from democracy. None of these phrases that we hear will make a better world, and I believe that the present time; to a great many, is a time of great disillusioment. The only way of creating a better world is to make better men and women to live in the world—that is, to provide more Christians andi' better Christians.” Canon James said that Christ as presented, to-day was simply not good enough to be true. Christianity today was the thing that Ruskin called; /‘our gas-lit and gas-inspired Christianity.”