MORE SAINT THAN TIGER IN MANKIND.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 52, 2 March 1929, Page 11 (Supplement)

MORE SAINT THAN TIGER IN MANKIND.

FAMOUS SURGEON'S FAITH. "CHILDREN ARE BORN PURE." Sir Berkeley Movnihan, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, London, made a striking declaration last month of his belief in the essential goodness of human nature. "It is not often that I differ from the Prima Minister," he said, '"but in one of his recent speeches I did find cause to quarrel with him. He spoke of the tiger instincts and the tiger impulses which are a part of our nature. "I do not believe that at all. Ido not believe that- vice is in the smallest degree an inherited quality. "I believe that children are born the purest tilings that the world knows, and that whatever vice creeps into the life of a child is something that creeps in from outside. I believe there is far more of the saint than of the tiger in mankind.

"I meet people, as every surgeon does, in the great crises of their lives, the great testing time of their characters, and I am sure that when people under my own eyes are put into the crucible of affliction it is solid gold that most often comes out. That is my consistent experience of mankind. "J think we are all, from the Prime Minister downward, a little apt to disparage our fellow creatures. There is the nugget of pure gold in the heart of every one of us. "Men and women are also far too prone to belittle their God. My quarrel with theologians—l speak as a man of science—is very seriou?. There have been published innumerable tracts on religion against science. That is all the most utter nonsense. Churches Belittle God. "My quarrel with theologians is that they make their God such a shrimp. The man of science has a God far bigger than the (Jod that can be contained within the four walls of any creed. I would ask you never to measure your God with a foot rule. "The cross Christ is bearing to-day is made by the ignorance, stupidity, apathy and superstitions of mankind, and 1 am

not sure that the fetters that bind Christ are not the fetters of the doctrines of many of the Churches. "I think that where science in the end will come in will be to set Christ free from that cross and to undo those chains that tether him."