POUNDER OF THE "NEW THEOLOGY."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9042, 7 March 1908, Page 3

POUNDER OF THE "NEW THEOLOGY."

AN APPRECIATION OP REV, R. J. CAMPBELL.

An interesting appreciation of Rev. R. J. Campbell, of the City Temple, appears in the "Daily News," and is evidently from the pen of the editor, Mr A. G. Gardiner, "Whether to friend or foe, the Rev. R. J. Campbell is one of the two most arresting personalities in the London of our time," he say?. "He is the voice of disquiet and tf challenge. He is the disturber of our comfortable peace. He hurries with breathless eagerness from point to point, the lighted torch ever in his hand, the trail of conflagration ever in his wake. He follows no lead, except that of his own urgent, unquiet spirit. He is indifferent to consequences, will brook no interference, drives straight forward, deaf to appeals from the right hand or the left. Friends cannot persuade him; parties cannot hold him; creeds cannot limit him. He is like the wind that bloweth where it listeth. THE VISION IS BEFORE HIM. "If stagnation is death and discontent divine the:: he is one of the best of our time. He flings his bombs into the stagnant parlours of our thought, and thrills the air with the spirit of unrest. Acquiescence and content vanish at his challenge. The sleeper rubs his eyes. He is awake. The vision is before him. The air is filled with the murmur of many voices. He, too, must be up and doing. "Mr Campbell is the 'knocker-up' in the dawn of the twentieth century. The chimes of the great cathedral surge dreamful music on our slumbers; but across from the City Temple comes the sound of a bell, violent, clangorous, insistent, that shatters sleep, and awakes the City. You may not like it. You may find it harsh and discordant. But at least it makes you leap to your feet if only to up its challenge. "Nonconformity does not .know what to make of this apparition that has suddenly burs': into its midst. It finds its throne, as it were, in the hands of the revolutionary. It finds the old flag that waved from the keep hauled down, and the twin flag of the 'New Theology' and Socialism flying defiantly in the breeze. It finds doctrines vaporised into thin air, diffused into a kind of purple mist, beautiful but intangible. It finds itself indicted in its .own cathedral for the sin cf Pharisaism, pictured to the world as Mrs Oliphant loved to picture it —as a system of smug content, caricatured in the' bitter sneer of Swift:— We are God's chosen few; Ail others will be damned. There is no place in heaven for you; We can't have heaven crammed. "It is the irritation with his environment that gives him the touch of perversity which is so noticeable in him. Nonconformity is definite; he is ir.ystical. Nonconformity is individualistic; he is a member of the I.L.P. The I.L.P. is for Free Trade; le, I gather from a conversation 1 . had with him, is for Tariff Reform. He conforms to no system, accepts no shibooleth either spiritual or temporal. ... When . Sir David Baird's mother heard that her son was captured in India, and chained to natives, she remarked, placidly, 'I pity the puir laddies that are chained to oor Dauvit.' She knew the imperious waywardness ,pf her son. The way of one chained intellectually to Mr Campbell would be not 1e33 trying. A SYMBOL OF THE WORLDS' YEARNING. "When men reflect upon Mr Campbell's astonishing career one question rises to their hpa. Whither? There is no answer. I question whether Mr Campbell himself has an answer. He belongs to no planetary system. He is a lonely wanderer through space--a trail of fire burning at white heat, and flashing through the inscrutable night to its unknown goal. His head grey in his youth, his eyes eloquent with some nameless lr.inger, his face thin and pallid. his physique frail as that of an ascetic of the desert, he stands before us a figure of singular fascination and disquiet, a symbol of the world's passionate yearning after the dirnly—apprenended idea', of its unquenchable revolt against the agonies of men." /