CHURCH LIFE AND ACTIVITY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10456, 21 October 1911, Page 6

CHURCH LIFE AND ACTIVITY.

(Conducted by the REV. A. HODGE, for the Wairarapa Ministers' Association.)

SPIRITUAL CONDITIONS IN ITALY.

The Rev. Stefano L. Testa, a Presbyterian minister, writing to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on August 25, 1911, says: — I came to Italy to study, especially the religious condition of the country and the influence of our work in America in shaping the destinies of the country. I find that the population is more and more alienating itself from the Roman Church. The educated masses are far from being irreligious and the blatant infidelity of ten years ago is a thing of the past. James' book on "The Varieties of Religious Experience," is a textbook in many universities, and a return to spiritualism is clearly evident. Modernism in sind out of the church is very strong and continually advancing, and even Socialism itself is undergoing a complete change in its philosophy, for it begins to distinguish religion from ecclesiastieism, and it respects the former while it continues to hate the latter. ..

As-to the Protestant work in Italy, though small apparently, still in all these years of religious liberty it has Saturated Italy with the Gospel. There are thousand of persons who call themselves Protestants, but are 'not identified with the Protestant Church. An instance is that of Riesi, Sicily, a town jof 18,000 inhabitants, two-thirds of ,whom, 12,000, declared themselves

;"evangelicals" in the last census, but .only 300 are members of the church. Everything is'preparing for the imminent spiritual revival for which we all pray. ,

The work which America has done in tho last twenty years in ameliorating the general conditions of Italians cannot be overestimated, and it is manifest everywhere, especially with the lower classes. Italians who return from iAmerica are not the same as they were when they left Italy, for they jparry with them that indescribable and indefinable something which is called f'the American spirit," and are missionaries of. a better civilisation. Italy to-dav is not what it was twenty years kgo.

I have been welcomed by ministers pf all churches, .especially the Waldenfian pastors. I have preached in the hurches of Naples, Rome, Florence, Jmd elsewhere, and in. my own native town I was welcomed by all classes of citizens, including Catholic priests.

TRUE RELIGION

"The test of true religion is what it can do for the average man. There have always been religions and philosophies in the world thj&t have said in effect: 'Give me of our best material and I will show you what we can do with it and for it.' But Christ found

the material for saints and heroes in ihe slums, in the streets and even in the gutters. 'Bring me your least promising and most ordinary material,' He said, 'and I will show you I can do with it.' " —Dr. C. Silvester Home.

CHRIST AND THE COMMON PEOPLE.

Dr. C. Silvester Home, preaching in Plymouth (England) Church recently on the above subject, said: — It is a great mistake to suppose that the man in the street is just a materialist, and no more. In point of fact, the religious teacher who undervalues his audience has no power over them. Jesus never addressed men and women as if they had no deeper need.s and no higher aspirations than could be met by material satisfactions. He never let his Mission down. He never lowered His ideals. He never cheapened and vulgarised His ministry. He never condescended to one unworthy artifice. Ho imitated no tricks of the rhetorician. But .I will tell you what He did. Ho assumed universal instincts and intuitions that demanded God for their daily food, redeeming love for their daily satisfaction. And ho was right. His knowledge of t'he common heart was just and unerring. The common-people heard Him gladly. I discover, then, the reason of Christ's attraction for the common people an his infinite and infallible knowledge of the common heart and its needs. He knew that the lowest needs tho-high-est, and He did not try to satisfy the hunger of a God heart with the liusks that the swine did eat. He offered heaven to the man in the street, and SHe succeeded. He offered God, who is a spirit, to the woman of Samaria, and she confessed that He had proved 'Himself her Messiah, her Christ. He aroused a sacred thirst in the souls of fisherman and tax collectors, representatives of ordinary humanity, and He was right. He lodged the eternities in the heart of time, and the common folk were tho first to recognise the gift and to rejoice. Above all he believed right through that the supreme need of man is God and that all the other Gospels are simply quack medicines', and Ho was right, He made no He put first things 111 the [ first place. Temporal necessities, He said, would bo added, '.but .God, and his righteousness must come first. Ho held this water of eternal life to the lips of common humanity, and the common people drank eagerly and found Life. The divinity of Christ is never more attested than in His knowledge 01" the human heart —his faith in man.