I read Bishop Curtis's letter to) the Editor last Monday with very' considerable interest, as T read the Archbishop of Canterbury's "Recall to Religion". I read them both with much uneasiness. Why? That is what I will endeavour to explain. I am not s0 old as the two representatives of the Church referred to, nor young enough to be still of the present day youth. Old enough: to go back to the later Vielorian; days; young enough, I believe, still to be able to catch something of this new modernity, My ex perience, such as it is, leads me to think that if there is' much wrong! with humanity in these days, it is the duty of the Church to examine: itself and endeavour to discover in what way it might have contributed to that lamentable state of affairs.
T do not say that it has so contributed, but what T do insist upon. is that\ unless the Church is doing all that it can to full its proper functions, it is not yet in a position to administer the patent and implied rebukes which are contained In the Archbishop's exhorta~ tion and the Bishop's letter. If it has not attained that position then it has to some degree failed in its Jocks at the Bible, the Church and its Prayer Book from an entirely different standpoint. May T again emphasize that point? The Archbishop is quoted as saying:—"Consider the influence of the new scientific outlook......which seems to see no place for a personal God," ele. I know the Church preaches such, and such was preached to me, and yet in the Thirty-nine Articles found a description of God which was wholly impersonal, a being without person, parts of passions. Tt is not easy to conceive such an entity, but if youth finds so wide a divergence between the axiomatic @escription contained in the Article, and the practice of the Church, can it be wondered that it is not only uneasy and suspicious, but frankly disbelieving? Has the Church sought fo meet that difficulty? Perhhaps it has; have never run across the attempt. Sooner or later mankind will want to know what the Church is asking it to believe, Or again, youth is asked as we all have. been asked to believe that marriage is a sacrament of the CChureh, and yet it is being, and we have been asked to drone that "in sin hath my mother conceived me. Can you leave humanity perched between two so completely opposing propositions? If you do the result inevitable. purpose.
I think that last sentence i dicates at least one of the factors bringing about conditions so pet plexing to the ecclesiastical mind, Thus in the very description of the Archbishop's discourse, "The Recall to Religion", is to be found one indication of what 1 mean, Recall to religion? It is true the Master said "Come unto Me", but did he not tell his disciples to go out unto all the world, to take religion to humanity, and, by implication; to Keep on taking it to them? T'am sure so far ay it is humanly possible to be sure, that He did not contemplate a' religion, organized like a chain of retail stores, to which the faithful could yo for spiritual guidance and consolation, but an organization taking religion to them, in every walla of life, a sort of spiritual visitation of the sick. May not then the argument be established that it is not mankind who needs to be recalled to religion, but religion which should be brought "to. humanity? And by being brought, mean that its teachings should be: brought nearer to present-day needs, that the fact that mankind has progressed a long way along. the paths of science, of philosophy, of knowledge, places upon the Church an imperative demand that she should face those facts and s0 adapt her practice as to meet the now and ever-changing situation.
Talking of marriage, the Church's attitude with regard to divorce likewise gives youth somewhat of a shock. Let us look at marriage as they see it and how they think the Church should. Two people people think they love each other and desire to be married, The Church gives the union its blessing. The young couple might be completely mistaken as {0 their love reach other, and youth asks:
Did God actually join them, or did the Church, the very human Church, merely bless a very human error? And: if it were an error, shall it not be rectified by divorce rather than sin ensue?" To reply that in the whole matter God is merely fulfilling his inscrutable ways, may be Church doctrine. Modern' faith docs not require the circumscribed logic of something akin to the Euclidean propositions, but something wider and more nearly comprehending the needs of humanity. Again youth will ask how many are! living in sin, because the Church obstructs the way to emerge from it by denying the right to divorce? 'The Church would probably phrase the question differently and in doing so provide its own reply, but it is youth asking the question, critically, perhaps, with a desire to find a solution' of its difficulties, but nevertheless suspicious of the present religious ideology.
There are people who are doing that, Men like Dick Sheppard, "Tubby" Clayton, Mr. Elliott whose short midweek services over the radio, and simple, direct, com-nonsense addresses prove popular in Britain, the missions which take religion' to the beaches of holiday resorts, and those fine men who take their faith to Hyde Park and Tower Hill, they seem to bbe carrying out the ideal T have in mind—taking the faith to the people, not asking them to come and get it, or felling them it is their duty to acquire it, The Christianity of Christ was the Christianity of the streets, the market places, the Christianity of the common people, and I have read somewhere or other that when Christianity becomes the Christianity of the slums and not of palaces, it will again regain its appeal to humanity. It is the duty of the Church to see that God is not crowded out.
How that is to be done I, frankly do not know, but if humanity is outstripping the church as conceived by Henry VIII and his advisers, that is a matier for* the Church; it is useless to ask humanity to slacken its progress; it is for the Church to keep pace. Modern youth believes that the Church is asking it to stand still, to seek to go no further than the limits understood in, say, the time of James Yet it knows that the world has progressed far beyond those times, that much which was then sealed from the eyes of man has been revealed, and mankind of to-day And again it will ask:—"Are we really so bad as we are painted? Are our morals so deplorable that they are so appreciably worse than those of our grandparents?" I know what my own answer {s:—that there is no appreciable difference, that immorality was just as bad in the Victorian era, though not so easily perceived because of the voluminous skirts of hypocrisy thrown about it."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.