“ORTHODOXY AND ITS PRETENSIONS”

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 440, 25 January 1890, Page 4

“ORTHODOXY AND ITS PRETENSIONS”

Auckland, January 20. ATbheTemperanceHtilloii Sunday night Mr Gu liver resumed his address on this subject to a large audience. Refcring to recent letters in the Star and “ Herald,” he said that his indetatigable critic disclaimed anything personal in his letters and he (Mr (iulliver) wu- glad to hear it, but he thought that, likeMoiffire’scharucter who was surprised ‘o find that he had been talking “ piose” all his life vv : thout knowing it, so the writer of those letters showed t hat it was quite possible 10 be ‘ personal ’ without knowing it. He was charged with putting forward a f llacy with refe ence to the •* incarnation,” but the veal fallacy lay in the fact that the writer of the lette>B nieusured the Hindus by one rule, and the Jews by another, whereas it was absurd to make such a distinction. We inu.'t in fairness take the parallel phenomena as iodi ,- a'io»s of the tame need exi-ting in the hearts of men of different nations, and finding similar expression in each ca-e. There was a dish m <sb people had heard of, termed “ resurrection pie,” in which joints that had iigured on the table on a previous occ .sion appeared a second time in altered form ; it was not a popular style of dressing either joints or lectures, and he hoped they would make al owance if Ids remarks parto ik somewhat of that character. He hail already told them that lie had nob the lemobesb intention of sneering at those who can accept- what are teimed ‘'orthodox ” views. The world was wide enough and there was room enough fO'- al. They knew well thai many orthodox people live noble and honourable lives, » ut orthodoxy ma<le large claims, and they must inquire what ground those claims rested on. They c>>uld leadily admit that it had worked io some exrenb for good. When the H uns and Vandals swept down on the rotten civilisation of the Old World, Christianity was the force that checked and lamed and om-istd those savage—for savages bney were. But was oiinudoxy justified in claiming any such power for good to-day? Had it any exclusive claim to the high moral beaching of the golden rule, or the precepts which arc common to ad leligions? Was it true that we had to chouse between Christ and chaos ? lie denied it ltogether. Look al the world around us ! Did it bear out. the assertion ? In his famou- hook “The Old Faith and the New.” Strauss had one chapter headed ” Are we Chri-tiaii ?” and another, “ Have We a Rt-ligi.n?” and he concluded that he world cannot be called Christian. The Bishop o> Peterborough had told them that any nation that attempted in actual life to carryout the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount wou d not be aide to maintain it-elf for a sing e week. The fact was that Ihe world took what it called “ political economy ” for its guide in actual life, and never thought of applying the teaching ot either the Old or ttie New Testament; they were left io the Church and the Sunday school. Scientific men set the Bible entire y on one side ; they admit that it contains beautiful ideas and powerful language, but their work 1 es outside of it altogether. Ttius politics and science were equally outside of, and unaffected by, Christianity or the Bible, and how was their social life affected hy it ? lid they for one single in slant attempt to make it square with the Sermon on the Mount? No. The assertion that vve are a Cnristian people was a piece of pulpit oratory, nothing more. Christ taught the practice of utter unsdfishnem, but vve were firmly persuaded that selfishness was the only thing that would pay. We form our lives on that basis, under conditions of the bitterest and mot selfish competition, by which wearegovt rued from the cradle bo the grave. Selfishness is the very atmosphere we breathe, and is the only thing on which wc depend for success in life. Now if they could imagine some moral eartoquake, some sort of mental Tnrawera explo ion which should blow into oblivion the orthodox creed, did they suppose that the world would be altered one single atom? —it would not. F.xiept in a very few example-, the world woulu go on exactly as before ; its theories and practice would be unchanged. He had charged orthodoxy with teaching hypocrisy : be would give the disease another name an i call it “ insincerity. ’ People went to church Sunday after Sun ay and li-tened to things which, it they weie sincere, would make them rise from their seats and exclaim, “This thing is not true, and I do *’t believe it !” Let th-m nob think that they could go on week after W'eek, and year after year, blowing hot and co d with impunity. Their insincerity would Lave a sear that nothing would efface. Taking the .-econd partof his subject. “ Does heterodoxy involve ‘practical’ Go «les«ness?” the speaker said some would perhaps say that it did. They knew the stories about “ infidel death beds,” etc., bub the world was growing wiser, and they knew that these stories were in the main untrue or grossly exaggerated. Orthodoxy professed to model itself on Christ, yet Christ was as heterodox as a man could be, and his heterodoxy had produced the ortho doxy which had ruled the world so long—and so with Buddha, he was as heterodox as Christ, and yet one of the greatest of the religious leaders of the world. Heterodoxy was far from involving practical godlessness —on theeoutraty, if stirs men up and drives them to form higher ideals of God. In a'l ages the religious reformers and subsequent leaders of the world have been necessarily h terodox. It is heterodoxy which makes life worth living, and enables us to solve the problems which time in its flight sue ce a Mvely forces upon u*. Let them not fear tiiat those who dared bo think for themselves were forsaken of what was good and true. The was olten hard, and the inquirer was, even now, olten forsaken by his friends, and looked askance at by hi-* neighbours, as in former times the same pa'h had led to consequences still more formidable. We could not expect toleration to be ome speed i'y universal—it was a plant of slow growth—but not until we we e ptepared to weigh every pha*e and feature of life with a singe eye to actual “ fact,” could we be really said to be “seeking truth.”