Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News. SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 1908. THE WHITE MAN’S RELIGION.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43365, 29 August 1908, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 1908. THE WHITE MAN’S RELIGION.

This above all—to thine own self be true, And it must follow as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man Shakespeare ;

As we have before stated in another connection, it is not the policy of this journal to pick holes but rather to commend what is commendable. And though we do not profess to agree with everything to which His Grace the Bishop of Auckland has given utterance, we do agree with him when he says, as they New Zealand Herald informs us he has said, that the white man must be kept Christian, that the permanence of the British Empire rests upon this.

Anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of English history will recollect at how great personal cost of life and property the religious leaders of the British nation have wrung concession after concession from blind and persecuting governments and municipalities.

The principle of religious freedom of which we are so proud, (to which we are so largely indifferent,) is a heritage crimsoned with the lifeblood, baptized with the tears of men and women whose very names are a sacrament for all time. But the unfortunate feature of our modern liberty, the feature that not exalts but degrades it, is that it is become to us largely an irreligious liberty.

If the crueller forms of persecution are not now glaringly in evidence, nci'hcr is the spirit loyalty to religion so conspicuous as it once was. In fact so broad is become our toleration that we appear almost afraid to declare ourselves a Christian people lest therefore we might offend the sensibililies of (hose in our midst who prefer the various forms of witchcraft, or perhaps that intellectual heathenism which masquerades under the name of Christianity. On one point we are agreed, namely that one man may not attempt to impose upon another either his own religious creed, or his own forms of religious observance. Eor that reason we admit the impractibility of retaining Ihe old-world systems of bible reading in the state schools, on the ground that the schools are supported by those who do not wish the bible read therein, as well as by those who do.

At the same time it is one of the gravest signs of our time that we are generally so indifferent to the practice of religious observance that it can be asked of us, has actually been asked in all seriousness “ Are we becoming pagan ?.” Whether or no we are becoming pagan, one thing is certain, we cannot afford to do so. Let those who doubt this statement contrast for one moment the influence exerted by Christianity upon the career of the British people with the failure of the other professed systems of religion to redeem childhood from cruelty and womanhood from degradation. Look at India to-day, with its unspeakable temple rites, its infant widows, its k’ish, pauperising system of oblations to unnamable demons! Somehow or other that vast country seems to exert a sc rt of facination upon the Western mind. But it is time someone, whether bishop or layman, arose and told the whole truth about India, all the fascination would rapidly evaporate. Look at China 1 She has her characteristic virtues, there is an honesty in her merchants which might put some of our merchants to school again ; but who that gee? table-rapping in our midst, and conjuring up the spirits of departed friends, would care to live where men worship their dead, and know nothing of the Resurrection and all it has conferred upon the human race.

There are not wanting to-day clergymen who will name the Supreme Name together with that of Buddha and Confucius, and hence it is all the more refreshing to hear a voice raised in the uncompromising declaration that the white man must be kept Christian if he is not to become the mere memory of a vanished power.