WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS MOST.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 302, 28 September 1940, Page 4

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS MOST.

“The most obvious thing in the world to-day to the religious mind (and one might think' that even the worl :lly ra-m could see it) is that the world needs a moral and spiritual revival, and needs it more than it needs anything vise,” said Dr. Henry Bett in his presidential address to the Methodist Conference at Sheffield. “For what is wrong with humanity in this particular age? It is that man has gained a mastery over the world that he is not fit to use. In the modern period, through scientific achievements, man has been able to exploit the forces of the natural world as never before, and he is the master of the. world as he never was since time began. The great resources that arc now his may be used or abused; they may be employed for his benefit or for his destruction. His steel may build bridges or battleships; his chemicals may fertilise the earth, and help to feed those who live on it, or kill them abominably with poison gas; his explosives may blast a dangerous roof outside a harbour, or blast his fellow-men into bloody fragments in an air raid. All such things have enormous possibilities for good or for evil, and man lias not enough moral responsibility to use them for good. The plain fact is that man is not fit to be trusted with the vast powers that he possesses. Ho has not enough conscience and not enough soul. He is the lord of the earth and sea and sky, and he is not fit to exercise that dominion. And he will not he until there has been a great deepening of moral and spiritual life in humanity.”