THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE.

Southland Times, Issue 599, 3 December 1866, Page 3

THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE.

The Newcastle Chronicle gives the following summary of a Lecture on Religious Toleration, delivered h\ the As-sembly-rooms of that city on Sunday, the 14th ultimo, by the Rev. J. Pillars, 8.A., of Sydney : — " Standing in advance of Protestantism itself, there is a rapidly-in-creasing church of devout thinkers, who aee plainly enough that the whole structure of popular Christianity — Protestant and Catholic— is fast crumbling into ruins. The religion of this church knows nothing of a human infallible book, nothing of the distinction between reason and Revelation ; it acknowledges no services but the good, no creed but all truth, no sacrament but a manly life : it bids each man to do his duty, and takes what comes of it — grief or greatness ; it does good for goodness sake, and asks no pardon for its sins, it bows down to God only ; it takes all help it can get, counts no good word profane, no lie sacred, though the greatest prophet said the words ; it falls back on tbe absolute religion, its watchword is — ' Be as perfect as God ;' it derives strength and eacouragement from Jesus, but its only aaviour is within ; it makes each man his own priest, but gladly accepts him who speaks the holy word ; its temple is all space, and its church that of all holy souls, called by whatever name. To the members of such a church it might be that Galvanism, with its doctrines of human depravity, inherited sin, vicarious satisfaction, a vengeance-loving God, and eternal damnation, is just as false and offensive as Romanism itself. Is it, therefore, stigmatized as Antichrist ? Certainly not ! Why ? Because it is regarded in common with all other forms of religion as belonging to that one gospel in many dialects by which the prayer of faith, ascending in the idoms of every latitude, converges into one in heaven, and by which God's truth, reflected as light through a prism on its entrance into human nature breaks into all the moulds of impression native to our race. In view of those and other facts, he not only justified the divisions of Christains, but even ceased to wish that they should disappear. Unity, no doubt, there must be, and is. God is one ; truth" is one. But from our watch-tower we can only look through one window at a time ; the blind walls of our mental vision shut out all the rest. No man could, he said, believe in and practice the principle of religious toleration until he was prepared to admit that his own faith was only one of many. Sink deep into the inner life of any man's faith, and the ground on which all creeds stand would be fouad. Although different sects called Jesus by different names, the truth underlying all creeds was, that God has made a revelation of himself to man through Jesus of Nazareth. On this common ground the Catholic and Quaker, and Caivanist and Unitarian, are all agreed. In conclusion, the reverend gentlemen said he was not an over-sanguine man, but he was much mistaken if he could not see, and that, too, in spite of the pernicious bigotry which continues to disgrace the theory of Christianity and the practice of so many of its professors, elements are at work among us which will ultimately Bubaerve the ecclesiastical to the moral, creed to character, and, sooner or later, inaugurate the reign of a Church where all who are personally virtuous may find an altar and a home. We are fast learning — as we shall all have to learn — that right creeds are but means of becoming better men, and the true union between man and man, in the religious sense, turns on a reciprocal trust in, and reverence for one another's welfare. When this growing church becomes strong enough in influential action, how much will we then banish from society over which the soul can now but regret and weep. But he would have them take courage, for the present, as all things show, is not a time of despondency, but of hopefulness. Tea, the dawn already glitters, and our children will see it rise."