IN DEFENCE OF THE FAITH.
Your correspondent " Z," who writes on the series of Spectator articles under the above heading in the Spectator of June 29th, deserves the gratitude of your readers, for is not the crying need of to-day just that for which " Z " pleads ? Much is said and written about the decay of institutional religion and the drift of the nation towards paganism. May not a contributory cause of this be found in the fact that the old theological ideas of " original sin " and retributive punish- ment, of substitutionary and propitiatory theories of Atone- ment ;—untenable with the conception of God as our Lord portrays Him in the Parable of the Prodigal Son—are yet constantly implied by the expressions used and the hymns sung in our church services ? It is, surely, a healthy sign that young life to-day should rebel against the perverted ideas of God, and of humanity, on which so much of the old theological teaching' is based, and should regard the language of the Anima Christi, to which your correspondent C refers, as unreal and repellent.—S.
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