RATIONALISM AND SUNDAY JOYFULNESS.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17976, 22 March 1930, Page 9

RATIONALISM AND SUNDAY JOYFULNESS.

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —"Rationalist" is certainly not afraid to have an opinion, and that augurs well for him. He is not in the predicament of those Jews who, upon being asked where John's baptism had oome from, had not got it in them to say anything. Nothing could be done with them. It is possible that personal conviction would make a useful Christian missionary of “Rationalist.” I would like to point out that science does .many of us a good turn when it makes us doubt a pseudo faith from which we derive little, but a false security. But the faith which lives by personal conviction from the Eternal Father is a different thing altogether. The Christian living in this faith speaks with authority; he is the Christian gnostic, the knower. To the gnostic this world, in which the personality functions through bodily senses, higher senses and intellect, is a husk. He, however, has been granted the privilege of admission through the merits of another by an open door into a channel leading to the reality behind this husk of externals. Now “Rationalist,” I am sure, will get his opportunity of persoal conviction in due time. He well get to know for himself what the Holy Bible is, where to begin reading it and how to read it, and he will find it a well-ordered system of spiritual truth which unveiLs itself to him with a matchless logic. When from this point of vantage it is his turn to read the letters of rationalists yet to be, he will smile but know’ that it is all in order.—-I am, etc., S. HOOPER. Russell, March 19.