The Daily News. SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 1922. CHURCH UNION.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 April 1922, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 1922. CHURCH UNION.

The desire to promote a union of the Christian churches is most praiseworthy, but the difficulties to be overcome are such as cannot readily be adjusted. There have been so many disruptions since the first Christian church was formed, and so many fierce and bitter dissensions, that even Time, the healer of most things, has failed to draw Christian believers into a united and cohesive body. Though the great moral principle which Christianity reveals and teaches, and the main doctrines of the Gospel have been preserved without interruption, the genius of the different nations and ages have materially colored its character. During the spread of Christianity in the first three centuries of its growth, many heretical branches sprang from the main trunk, while in the eighth century there came the great severance of the Eastern and Western Churches; then, in the thirteenth century the Western reformation commenced, and ended with the establishment of Protestantism in the sixteenth century. No only was the original body of Christians ent up into three main and distinct churches —the Roman Catholic, the Greek, and the Protestant—but the last named was in course of time split tip into numerous separate churches and sects, so that at the present time the number of religious bodies professing Christianity is considerable. The movement for Church union that has been in evidence for some years past deals only with the Protestant communities, and has no reference to the Greek and Roman Catholic churches. At. the latest Lambeth Conference the subject of Church union was earnestly discussed, and some general principles accepted, but there was a considerable divergence of views on points that are likely to need the most careful handling if any success is to be attained in the desired direction. The conference of Church delegates at Sydney appears to have been much exercised over the episcopal principle. This is not surprising, as what may be termed the non-conform-ist group of churches—the Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists and Baptists—are anti-epis-copal, and have no use for bishops. At the same time, in the desire for approaching unity, a modus vivendi was proposed in the nature of altering the method of episcopal appointments by allowing both clergy and laity to share in the selection of bishops, and by making the latter responsible to a representative assembly, synod or conference. The really important point, of this compromise is the reservation that the acceptance of episcopacy -“does not necessarily imply that ministerial authority cannot otherwise be obtained, or that episcopacy is the only channel of Divine grace.” Prcatieally this provision means that those who re-unite with the Catholic (universal) Church shall be at liberty to recognise or ignore bishops as they please, and probably it is only on such terms that even the semblance of unity can be attained. This view gains an inferential confirmation from the decision of the Lambeth Conference that each group will be at liberty to retain its own characteristic method of worship and service, “so long as it is not inconsistent with the whole.” The recognition of the appropriateness of the Nieene Creed as a common standard precedent to union certainly paves the way to union, yet there are many points of doctrine and usage that will have to undergo the process of,give and take before any definite progress is made. The conference wisely, we think, appointed a committee to go thoroughly into the main questions on which the various churches of the group hold deeply rooted convictions, and it is only by approaching these subjects with a pre-deter-mined will to find a common basis of agreement that unity can be reached. It would be an achievement far surpassing any that history has recorded if a universal Christian Church could he re-es-tablished. The term Catholic, as applied in the present day, is a misnomer, but that is a matter of little account compared with such a union as is now being discussed.

At the annual meeting of the Stratford Chamber of Commerce the other evening a speaker referred to the expenditure of £72,000 on the Mt. Egmont railway and quarry as “a scandalous waste of money”. There can hardly be any other description. The Governments —for both the present and the Ward Governments are to blame—undertook the work without first making sure of the suitability of the metal, the cost of delivering it to local bodies, and the availability of other metal deposits. Now the Government finds the overhead costs too heavy to economically work the quarries, and the quality of the metal far from suitable for the requirements of local bodies; also that it can obtain metal, which Mr. R. Masters, M.P., describes “as good as can be desired”, at Te Wera, practically on the railway line. So £72,000 more of the taxpayers’ hard-earned money goes bang. It is a striking instance of waste, and ineptitude, but, unfortunately, it is by no means singular. The cry to-day is “production and more production 1”; yet how are the men who are trying to produce more being treated? The most deserving, it will be admitted, are the men —and women, too — who have gone into the backblocks and carved out homes for themselves under the promise that they would receive in a year or two adequate communications. In the case of the Taranaki back-blockers we know they are little, if any, better off than when they took up their sections nineteen years ago. They have been left to their own resources by callous Governments, who, despite their protestations of shortage of funds, find plenty of money to indulge in wild-cat schemes like the Mt. Egmont railway, unremunerative and totally unhecessary works like the Waiuku railway, and ornate buildings like the present Parliamentary buildings, the total cost of which will, from all accounts, be staggering. Even to-day, when money is short, the Government allows the Public Trust Department to erect in Wellington a building which will cost the best part of £lOO,OOO. Just think what the expenditure of this huge sum on communications with the back-blocks would mean. It would pay the cost of metalling the Tangarakau Gorge Road, thereby giving the Ohura settlers access to other parts of the province; it would metal the Waitewhena Road, giving all the year communications with the north; it would finish the Lower Awakino Road, doing away with the terrible Taumatamaire hill; it would pay for the Mokau bridge; and it would generally provide the settlers in the back-blocks with outlets for their produce and make like out back worth tie living. The Government should put “first things first” always, and the first thing in the country’s present requirements is to help the producers of the back-blocks. Unfortunately they have comparatively little voting power; hence their just and deserving claims are ignored in favor of the clamorous, highly-indulged multitudes of the cities. Some day a strong man will come on the scene and demand, and secure, redress for the most deserving —namely, the men and women out back.