WORSHIP OF "CULTURE."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 138, 20 September 1910, Page 2

WORSHIP OF "CULTURE."

DENOUNCED BY A ?ISHOP. At the first ceremony ,in connection with the Anglican mission held in St. Mary's Cathedral, Auckland, in the course of a sermon, the Bishop of Auckland (Dr. Neligan) said that on one side saw phenomenal success and on the other phenomenal failure. Why was it, he asked, that there was not a single place of worship in New Zealand, including the' Church of England, Roman Catholic, and non-Episcopalian Churches, that was habitually filled with worshippers? It was ,because of the dreadful poison that was, ,in our life. The devil was an educated gentleman to-day. There was the devil. There was no mistake about .it, he was ,real. The devil had got us somehow or other to substitute another word instead /)f religion—the word "culture." All sorts of devices', stratagems,-and inducements were used to induce people to enter the places of worship, and at times the vulgarity of the advertisements used .made one iblush. We were a dangerously prosperous community. Probably the Anglicans in the country owned the greater percentage of its wealth. It had been estimated by the ex-Bishop of Waiapu that if the Anglicans in New Zealand (41 per cent, of the population) gave only one-fiftieth of their income to God's Church, .the income of the Church of the Province of New Zealand would be £200,000 per annum. As a matter of amount was infinitesimal. Under "the various subdivisions of "mortality""they got horse-racingi—that was called sport, but on the confession of many of its supporters, it existed only through, the totalisator, and sport for sport's sake c was neither popular nor prevalent. Steadily; and surely increased facilities were being given for divorce, and these being* taken advantage of. In to our population and standard of living, we hod an alarming and disgraceful num--ber of rescue and maternity homes and other institutions, places which "culture" made necessary, and which the "god of culture" demanded should be filled.