“KNEE-DEEP RELIGION”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 437, 20 August 1928, Page 14

“KNEE-DEEP RELIGION”

SUMMONS TO LOVE MISSIONER’S PLEA “Knee-deep Christianity is a joyless business, yet thousands paddle in its miserable depths,” said the Rev. C. G. Scrimgeour, Methodist City Missioner, in a vigorous sermon preached last evening. “The knee-deep Christians,” he said, “are those to whom religion • is a creed; they go to church; they sing and play, yet their religion is anaemic —it is a form without meaning because the great dynamic love is lacking. I don’t mean love in the sloppy sentimental sense—l mean the passion, and men’s lives are governed by their passions.” He went on to say that laws were made and restrictions imposed; but it was not possible by these means to conquer such things as hatred, jealousy, lust, and greed for gold. These were passions, and the only way to kill them was to supplant them with a stronger passion. “Religion is not a creed or a ‘way,* ” he said, “but the master passion for God. Thousands of people are standing knee-deep in religion, dissatisfied and doubtful—swayed this way and that by the passions of life. They expect a creed or crude belief to conquer where only a ruling passion can win.”