CURRENT MOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 226, 24 September 1927, Page 22

CURRENT MOTES.

The service at the Auckland Unitarian Church will be broadcast on Sunday evening, October 2. The Rev. Albert Thornhill, M.A., will be the preacher, his subject being "God's World —and Man's."

After 36 years, the Salvation Army has purchased its first hall in Buenos Ayres. The motor vehicle has also been brought into use for army work in that country. The men's social department each Sunday takes a different route with a motor van to hold meetings in roadside villages, where people have not hitherto seen or heard the Salvationists.

"Do we wonder at the constant trek from country to town?" asked the Rev. Henry Parnaby, M.A., preaching at Buckland Church, Portsmouth. Answering the question, the preacher said: Think of the narrow parochialism of much village life. Listen to the talk by the parish pump and in the parish council. Consider the petty slander and the tyranny of local tradition. Compare them with the wider 0ut100.., the richer life and more significant service of the city and who would not seek the city? Many there are, of course, who go beyond the walls to build their homes—but they must be within easy reach of the city and all its manifold concerns."

In a sermon on "Preachers From the Dead," the Kev. A. H. Collins, of Taranaki states: "Religion is a matter of insight and conviction, and our Lord set Himself to kindle insight and awaken conscience. He refused to gain disciples by taking up the sword or granting 'a sign' from heaven, and He equally declined the use of meretricious eloquence and painted rhetoric. He would not enrol followers under the influence of sudden excitement. He had men sit down and count the cost. His appeal was never to external authority, whether in the form of a book or a church or a creed. You never find Christ carrying men away in a tempest of words, by well advertised campaigns, and the hynotism of highly organised revival."

The Rev. A. M. Chirgwin, M.A., in an article in the "Holborn Review,* , gives melancholy figures regarding the fatal effect on the indigenous races in the South Seas of contact with the white man. He states that in sixty years the native population of Fiji had declined from 200,000 to 87,000, while i" EL»S2? ridee ' the Population fell from 100*00 to 60,000 within a generaislanders' hold on life » .light; as all Mβ stated, however, that in tba xr««. Hebrides the fact of the native! h£iZ a- • rendered We meaningful and doable again. The people S achieved self-respect and hopefulness and, therewith, a sense of their own' importance in the world. At Taunt a new cheerfulness was apparent, aid the population was steadily growing