LOOSE THINKING

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 704, 2 July 1929, Page 9

LOOSE THINKING

CHRISTIANITY “GAS-LIT AND GAS-INSPIRED” “Never in history has there been more loose thinking and more loose talking than today,” declared Canon Percival James, who was inducted vicar of St. Paul’s parish, Wellington, on Sunday. “During the war,” continued Canon James, “those who were fighting in the army were told by those who were not engaged in the struggle that they were making the world safe for democracy. Anyone who was with the soldiers in the line would smile to themselves when they realised how such a phrase was received by the men at the front. These young men —the best in the Empire—who went to the war, did not go there on account of any high-sounding phrases like that. Lord Kitchener knew better. He told them; “Your King and country need you!”

“The task of today,” said Canon James, “is not to make the world safe for democracy, but to make it safe from democracy. None of these phrases that we hear will make a better world, and I believe that the present time, to a great many, is a time of great disillusionment. The only way of creating a better world is to make better men and women tc live in the world—that is, to provide more Christians and better Christians.”

Canon James said that Christ, as presented today, was simply not good enough to he true. Christianity today was the thing that Ruskin called “our gas-lit and gas-inspired Christianity.”