Character the Test of Creed.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 380, 26 June 1889, Page 3

Character the Test of Creed.

Archdeacon Farrar, who is said to be a possible successor to Bishoo Barry in the See ot Sydney, contributes to the ' Christian World' last month an article on • Character the Test of Creed,' the closing passages of which are as follows : — ' Men say that they multiply ritual observances in order to glorify a sacrament. Were it not far better to glorify it in ways which Christ ordained and which the apostles practised ? Is the sacrament glorified by postures and vestments or by meek and pure and humble hearts ? Over half Europe men not only glorify but worship the saciamental elements—genuflect to them, gloat on them, pageant them about like a dreadful idol. Are those countries the better — in any single respect the better — for this coarse materialism, for this blank idolatry? Do we really understand Christ better by supposing that He is at certain times localised in bread 1 and wine in the hands of the priest, or rather when we feel His living spiritual ' presence in the heart of the worshipper ? One of the vilest and wretchedest of kings — Louis XV. of France — got out of his carriage and went on his knees in the mud before the Host, and the mob cheered him as a religious king for performing this act ; and yet he did it coming from the Caprere of hie loathly palace, and returning to the sty, of his habicual vice. Had the worship of the Sacrament done much for the kingdom in which such lives were unreproved ? Will England be saved by becoming Popish in all , but name, when France, which is Popish in name also, has sunk into her present depths, with her shiftlessness, her incessant revolutions, her flagrant infidelity, her diminishing population, her permeating immorality, and her leprous literature ? No ! Nations are saved by righteousness, and by manliness, and by self' denial, and by the preaching of simple Christ to simple men ; not by mitres and candles and chasubles, and such gewgaws fetched from Aaron's wardrobe or the Flamens' vestry. '