SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3770, 3 September 1907, Page 2

SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY.

At the Presbyterian Church bn Sunday evening last, the Rev. G. K. Aitkeu, in the course of his sermon, said there are considerable and growing demands being made to-day by persons who characterise themselves by the term socialist. Men who aim at the production and distribution of commodities on what they term a more equitable basis than they contend exists today. My opinion is, said the preacher, that if Christian men and women had taken their Christianity down into their business, and all the duties and paths of life as Christ himself inculcates, there would have been no necessity for demands of that character. And it is because we have failed unwittingly, and perhaps innocently enough, but nevertheless failed to carry out the Christ principle and the Christ likeness in temporal as well as spiritual affairs, that human society is being stained and racked, and revolution rampant. On the other hand, those who are making the demand, and seeking to evolve a new order of things, must, if they are to be successful, bring them into harmony with the law of Christ. Instead of doing this, they are trying to work out a social revolution apart from Christianity. Here lies the supreme error of their movement. If instead of fostering a revolution outside the Christian Church, they would but turn their energies and their intelligence in the direction of reforming the Christian Church, and bringing its operations into harmony with the work and teaching of its great and divine Founder, they could have within its folds all the reformation of human society and practices they need. The effect of Christianity in the world has been the establishment of institutions and principles immensely superior to anything ever known under any other civilisation, and the happiness of mankind and the equality so largely demanded to-day, can be obtained mider no better system or better principles, —The discourse was listened to with close attention by a large congregation.