N.Z. LAGS BEHIND IN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 533, 10 December 1928, Page 14

N.Z. LAGS BEHIND IN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT

HERITAGE OF FREEDOM THE REV. A. THORNHILL’S SERMON “It came as a shock to me to discover that religious thought in New Zealand is where it was in England 50 or more years ago,” said the Rev. Albert Thornhill in his farewell sermon in the Unitarian Church, Ponsonby Road, last evening. • I had expected to find it ahead of British thought," he continued. "One is, however, faced with these conditions: One finds that truths like evolution, facts like the findings of critical research into the Scriptures, truths and facts universally accepted by educated people in Europe, are doubted and questioned by all but a few. And so it seems necessary to concentrate upon teaching those truths, when one would have preferred to take them for granted. I trust the emphasis 1 have had to lay on these achievements of science and scholarship has not misled anyone to confuse these things with religion. "There are times when the world is in dire need of being turned upside down, and this is such a time, preeminently so, I believe. 1 need not indicate in detail the need of this revolution and reconstruction. I have done that so frequently during my ministry that I gather from numerous correspondents that some have come to look upon me as a. sort of pioneer in religious and philosophical thought. "I think my friends exaggerate. Nevertheless, this must be claimed. I could not have been true to my religious principles and my spiritual inheritance if I had not borne testimony to the urgent need in New Zealand of a more open and enlightened outlook upon these matters.” “Probably,” Mr. Thornhill went on, “the most mischievous belief that ever thoubled the human mind was'*' the belief 'that there was some religious merit in accepting the statement that the earth and the heavens were finished in six days, simply because someone thought and said so 25 centuries or so ago. Of course, it was equally mischievous to assert that there was religious merit in denying that statement or in supporting the Darwinian or other theory of evolution. The only value that cithe* course of action possessed was that one followed that which one believed to be true. "I was thought to be a dreadful sinner,” the preacher continued, "because I revealed the truth about the text of the Bible, pointing out the thousands of discrepancies in the manuscript, and showing, therefore, the folly of the assumption that it was literally inspired. There is no religious merit in believing that the Bible is literally inspired. In most cases that belief seems merely an excuse for intellectual laziness—refusal to make an effort to learn the facts. Equally, it must be confessed, there was no religious merit in exposing the discrepancies and errors in the Bible, unless one was impelled to the task by a pure zeal for truth. "1 am even more convinced than when I entered upon my ministry here," Mr. Thornhill concluded, "that our most precious and notable contribution to the religious thought and life of New Zealand would be not our doctrine, but our heritage of freedom.”