“SHALLOW MENTALITY”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 846, 14 December 1929, Page 5

“SHALLOW MENTALITY”

EVANGELIST’S CRITICISM OF KRISHNAMURTI THEOSOPHICAL LEADER “Krishnamurti is pathetic. He is a little bit of a fellow with no personality, and an exceedingly shallow mentality. Any 12-year-old New Zealand boy would fare better on a public platform. I would say that if Krishnamurti were tested it would be found he had only the mind of a youpg lad.” j rpHIS opinion of the young Indian I sponsored by the Theosophical I Society as the incarnation of a World | Teacher, was expressed by Dr. French E. Oliver, a noted American Bible j teacher, lecturer and evangelist, who j arrived in Auckland yesterday morning. He is in the course of a world tour, and is a Presbyterian minister in the United States and president of the International Evangelisation Society. This is his second visit to New Zealand, his first being paid about six years ago. “Krishnamurti was brought on the stage by Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant,” Dr. Oliver told The Sun man. “Theosophy began as a protest against spiritism, and Blavatsky and Besant threatened that they would fodnd a better religion. I have judged Krishnamurti by the addresses he gave in America.” Asked what was his opinion of Sinclair Lewis, the noted American writer who attacked American preachers in his book, “Elmer Gantry,” Dr. Oliver said he was a scandalmonger. “HIS OWN RASCALITY” “He is a fellow who has made a shipwreck of his own life,” he said, “and has written his own rascality into the book. He is not taken seriously by the public of America. He is nothing but a literary mediocrity and a scandalmonger.” Dr. Oliver had some hard things to say about modernist preachers, whom he said were more rampant in New Zealand than in any other country he knew of, due, he thought, to the training in the theological colleges of this country. “The departure from the old faith in the errancy and divine inspiration of the Bible accounts for most of the loose living of modern times,” he said. “The attitude of these so-called preachers has a big effect on young people. From the Genesis cosmogony to the evolutionary hypothesis there is a big jump. There is a vast difference between connecting oneself with God, as one’s creator and an anthropoid ape, as one’s creator. There is no evidence to show that species have undergone any changes except by human contact. Deft to themselves they revert to the original type.” If modernists continued to preach as at the present time, they would preach themselves out of a job. “People will close the churches up. If the Bible is only A myth, why have churches at all? I say that modernists are driving people from church and Christianity to paganism!” In his own experience of about 30 years of evangelical work, he had seen more than 100,000 people converted, Dr. Oliver continued. “I have seen even anarchists and Bolsheviks converted,” he said. The immoralities of the present time were swinging back to the time of Sodom and Gomorrah. There was a big difference in the attitude of New Zealanders toward horse racing. It would not be tolerated in the United States, where the refusal of permits had driven the “horsey” element over into Mexico, where conditions were less stringent. Dr. Oliver will open a “Back to the Bible” campaign at Scots Hall tomorrow, continuing until the following Sunday, when he will leave for the South, paying a farewell visit to Auckland early next year before leaving for New Tork by way of Australia, Tasmania, India, Egypt and Great Britain.