IS MAN HELPED.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3759, 12 March 1907, Page 4

IS MAN HELPED.

‘ ‘ Is man helped in his struggle upwards?” This question Sir Oliver Podge has tried to answer in an additional clause to his creed. Writing in the January Hibbert Journal, he says he has been told by militant atheists that the orthodox churches would not consider his faith as Christian, but he had not regarded their judgment as competent. He knew, of course, that his formal statement did not go far enough for any specific denomination ; it must stop where denominations begin to differ. Sir Oliver adds that he would ‘ ‘ teach people that they are the children of God,” and he objects to children being taught that they are “weak and sinful.” Weak they are, but why sinful? “I have found the goodness of some of them almost awe-inspiring.” As to the answer to the question about man’s struggle, it is this : —“ Man did not bring himself into existence, nor can he, unaided, maintain existence or achieve anything whatever. There is certainly a Power in the universe vastly beyond our comprehension ; and we trust and believe it is a good and loving Power, able and willing to help us and all creatures, and to guidejis wisely, without detriment to our incipient freedom. This loving kindness surrounds us at every moment ; in it we live and have our real being ; it is the mainspring of joy, and love, and beauty, and we call it the Grace of God. It sustains and enriches all worlds, and may take a multiplicity of forms ; but its essence and higher-meaning were specially revealed to dwellers on this planet in the form of a Divinely human perfect life, the life of Jesus Christ, through whose spirit and living influence the race of man may hope to rise to heights at present inaccessible.”