DEMOCRACY AND CHARACTER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 372, 14 April 1908, Page 4

DEMOCRACY AND CHARACTER.

The Church and the People.

The last of this year’s course of Moorhouse lectures was delivered on March 19 at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Wellington, by Canon Stephen, warden of St. John’s College. The subject of the lecture was “Democracy and Christianity.’’ The lecturer said that the debt owed by democracy to Christianity could not be over-estimated. Not only were the lundamenlal principles of democracy essentially Christian, but the Christian Church has always been, even if unconsciously or unwillingly, the strongest ally of democracy. Yet at the present day we find a distinct separation between the working classes and the Church. On the Continent there is hostility to religion, though this phase of feeling is rapidly passing away. In English - speaking countries hostility to religion is rare. “ Most of the workmen and workwomen of our country do believe in Christ,’’ says Mr Will Crookes. Similar testimony comes from America, and is echoed in Australia. We have had painful and blasphemous outbursts in some of our Labour newspapers, but the mass of workers retain a firm belief in God, and a a respect for Christ which is akin to reverence. It is a misuse of terms to call them irreligious, but they keep aloof from organised Christian bodies. This separation is due partly to the want of earnestness and reality in the Christian life. The working classes have some of the qualities of youth, the same pitiless severity of criticism. They naturally conclude that Christian men who are not wholly religious are altogether insincere. Then, again, by the working classes lire Church is indentified with the middle class or rich. The Church has done much for the poor, yet her officials are connected with the welFto-do. The attitude of the Church towards Labour movements in the past is a third cause of alienation, but at the present day we find in every branch of the Church a sincere sympathy with the aspirations of the masses, a pathetic eagerness to understand their problems, and a somewhat feverish enthusiasm in the righting of their wrongs. Lambeth conferences and convocations have urged the duty of studying social problems, and applying Christian principles to social life. Bishops, clergy, and laity are waking up to the fact that our present social system is not Christian, and that it is the duty of the Church to make it Christian.

Democracy has no future apart from Christianity. It needs the influence of religion, not only to supply motives for social service and improvements, b ut in order to correct and spiritualise the ideals of democracy. Material prosperity and comfort occupy a disproportionate place in oiir estimates of the value of life. No wonder, for we have few records of heroism. The one important event in our history is the discovery of gold. The records that feed our pride are the statistics of wealth production. Even where the ideals ot our time are higher, they seldom rise above the possession of rights. Christianity puts life and character before wealth, and duties before rights, and the sense of duty is likely to grow feeble if religion fails. But is Christianity the only force adequate for supplying high ideals and inspiring the sense of duty ? Other forms of religion have been effective. Great souls haAe found their inspiration in beliefs and ideals which were not avowedly Christian. “ Bushido ” has taken the place of religion amongst the Japanese. But Christianity is the only form of supernatural religion possible for Western nations. It has inspired what is best in substitutes proposed for it. It contains all that the best of them contains. And it contains more, for it is not only a religion of ideals and example, but of grace. This is the factor that historians forget. Becky and Kidd and others make no reference to it. But this is the point in which Christianity differs from every other form of religion, and in which it excels all it substitutes ; that it counteracts the anti-social tendencies of selfishness and vice, not merely by teaching, but directly by the gitt of grace.

Democracy can be satisfied with nothing less than Christianity in all its fulness. It must have a religion which is sincere, dogmatic, sacramental, and social. If a man aspires to be a Christian saint today, he cannot be content with a life of inner devotion. He must live as a saint in his public life. Christianity aims in making all men saints; but the Church is learning at last that a saint who is indifferent to the lives of his fel-low-men is probably an impostor.