The Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1906 CHURCH UNION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 3727, 4 December 1906, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1906 CHURCH UNION.

If “union is strength” the churches in New Zealand are not strong. The old slur that “the English have forty religions and only one sauce ” is as true to-day as when the French wit made it, The churches represented in New Zealand do not differ in essentials. They clash over uuessentials and prefer to walk alone because one or the other does not believe in some unimportant matter that if arranged to the satisfaction of all parties would nut in the least affect the morals of the community. Australia is at present engaged on an attempt to unite all the Christian Protestant churches. At the foundation of Christianity there was but one church. There seems to be no especial reason for the augumenting of the number except the very human one of selfishness and obstinacy. Man’s instinct is to live this life in the fullest possible sense. The man who is perpetually thinking about death and how to leave “ this wicked world ’ ’ as soon as possible is not a normal man. He has something physically wrong with him. It is more creditable to live every minute of one's life well than to spend the last minutes dying well. Dogmatising on moot points of literature is. being religious, but it isn’t doing anybody any good. Pointing out the supposed weaknesses of a rival church isn’t helping one’s fellow man to live a good life. It doesn’t feed the starving, or empty the gaols, give work to the workless or emancipate slaves. It is painful to have to say that much of the church work of the present day is preaching without practice. Controversy without cure. Accusation without palliative; Show without result. It is true that many of the clergy in New Zealand are earnest workers according to the light of the particular church which sends them out‘ into the world, but should any clergyman depart from the particular “doxy” of his particular church,

he is considered to have sinned and to be unworthy of his charge. For one brand of clergyman to preach a brand of “ doxy ” held by a rival organisation is for that clergyman to count the loss of his billet. Why all these differences ? The fact that there are an inconceivable number of denominations all differing on the one teaching is an insult to the Teacher. For an immense number of persons to be drawing countless millions of money for consistent quarrellings on the one eternal subject is proof positive that the essentials of the tench‘ng are overlooked in the human joy of squabbling. New Zealanders are not going to have a better harvest next year because they are Presbyterians, nor a larger wool clip because they are Congregationalists. Religious instruction is not going to be of better quality because there are innumerable kinds of it and theological word-splitting never did anybody any good and never will. A very simple and essential bit of advice occurs in the most remarkable literature of all time: “ Let brotherly love continue.” All churches claim to be working towards the brotherhood of man. Every church and every pastor of the Protestant Christian religion claims to be working towards the same end. Why is it thought necessary to get to the same end by so many devious routes ? Unity is strength in labour, politics and religion. Unity would remove the most common obstacle to religious work denominational bickering and bitterness. The concentrated efforts of those who are able to guide us by reason of their study of biblical literature might effect some reforms. At present small isolated factions concentrate on showing other small isolated factions the error of their ways, not in removing the cause of errors that are shared by all denominations alike- If we all have the same disposition to sin—and there doesn’t seem to be any doubt about it—the same medicine is good enough for any of us. It doesn’t matter whether the reprobatory sermon comes from an Anglican bishop with a hundred pounds worth of uniform on, or from a Presbyterian moderator wearing bishop’s sleeves and special trousers. The average person who may be deemed irreligious doesn’t scoff at religion. When he laughs at the mummery and the lace sleeves and the queer headgear and the shepherd’s crooks he is not necessarily irreligious. A concentration of parsonic talent in one groove, by one means, through the teaching of one church might be more effectual in the enlightening of the heathens than dozens of opposition bodies who are more concerned in giving the opposition bodies a ‘nasty jar’ than in spreading the gospel, A union of all the Protestant churches in New Zealand will not come yet and perhaps never will. There isn’t a church self-abnegating enough to throw all its worldly interests into the pool in order to give the people the spiritual lift they are supposed to be so badly in need of.