The Daily News TUESDAY, JULY 17. THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8158, 17 July 1906, Page 2

The Daily News TUESDAY, JULY 17. THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE.

We notice from 'the Wellington papers that the Anglican Diocesan Synod is facing what from their point of view is one of the most depressing problems of the day. " A strong tendency towards materialism," " a sluggish cowardly indifference" towards spiritual things, a preference for pleasure and comfort to the neglect of higher things, were denounced as characteristic of the oommunity, for which the Church must provide a remedy. # * * *

Theee is no doubt that the churches do n great deal of good to the people they are able to approach, but there is also no doubt that the churches could do more than they are doing in approaching the people who need physical and material help most. It would, for instance, savor of the farcical for the uneir ployed or the sick or the poor to attend Church and listen to the gospel of the brotherhood of man. It would not be farcical, however, for the people who attended church to go outside and preach and practice (particularly practice) the gospel of good health and a good job to them. If you want to reach the people you've got to go where the people do most congregate, and not insist that the people shall come to you and do exactly as you expect them to do. The Creator made the air of Heaven and the blue dome, and His Son, the carpenter, thought | it good enough to use as a church.

There is creeping into the life of the people a broad conception of religious duties and responsibilities. The man who, like Mr Bligb, the lecturer, preaches social purity, preaches the gospel; the expert who delivers lectures on the cause and cure of bodily disease, preaches the gospel; the man who advocates clean, healthy, manly sport —aye, even boxing - preaches the gospel; and the health officer who seen s out a pestilential back-yard and puts an end to it is a good preacher. A man is not necesearily a Christian because he wears black cloth and goes to church regularly. It is his everyday life that counts. If he live up to the tenets of his n, be he Anglican, Catholic, or Nonconformist, or Anything el e, he is a good man; but if he attend chu.ch regularly, and the.'i at proclaims his religious convictions, and is shady in his business tiai.sactions, he is a being compared to whom the man who never seas the inside of a church, but lives a clean life, is a saint.

Professions of religion do not count, in this age of enlightenment, Tie living diameter tells. Andrew Carnegie, under whose misplaced bounty several New Zealand towns have iibinry buildings, if one may believe the words of Mr VV. J. Napier, an exmember of the New Zealand House of Representatives, is still a terrible sweater of his people at Pittsburg; that pious million-lire, R ickufpller, is cxtiouiely fond of giving dollars to chu.-ches, but just a while ago he wiped out the homos of lmndielsof people, having bought the properties, which he wanted for a park! You cannot gauge the size of a man's heart by the size of his charities, and because you read this year that £ - 40,000 has been spent in building London churches, you don't expect to hear next year that poverty in London has decreased, or that the unemployed have obtained work, or that Wbitechapel is wiped out.

* * » * George Montifiouk, of Berlin, left £ICO,ODO n few days ago towards the battlo-fund for the lighting of the disease that is as bad, if not worse, than sin - consumption. A mentally and physically sound man is seldom a rascal, but a man can be sound mentally and physically and still be a hypocrite. Starvation is an unnatural condition. It is a disease, and it cannot be cured simply by preaching at it. If a preacher fights abnormality he fights sin. Give us practical religion, less pomp and show; more of the social aivl humanitarian, less of the sacerdotal ; more grappling with the conditions of the present, less of the past; more earnestness, less of the superficial; more work of upliftment amongst the people, less pandering to the upper ten ; more knowledge of human nature and human failings on the part of religionists, less doctrinal teaching. Then we can hope for higher things spiritually, and better conditions all round.