NOTES IN PASSING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 125, 28 May 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

NOTES IN PASSING.

The endeavour of the Y.M.C.A. to raise 30,000 shillings for its pressing needs resulted in some £230 being collected on the first three days. $o one, says Dickens, is useless in the world who lightens the burdens of it for anyone else. A day wasted on others is not a day wasted on oneself. We must stop flattering our young people, and begin to make demands on them, says a Sunday school expert. That's the note to strike to-day. Youth wants to feel the load, not to be carefully and continually protected from it. The Presbytery of Auckland entertained at luncheon on Thursday Dr. Lauchlan Mac Lean Watt, of the Glasgow Cathedral, in the course of his homeward journey from Australia, where he has been on a special church visit. There is a congregation that has the following admirable rules: That we pray for one another; that we guard one another's reputation; that wo watch over one another in love; that we serve one another, and so fulfil the law of Christ. It is just over 200 years since the birth of Haydn, the great composer. He paid several visits to England, and was so imprcesed by our National Anthem "God Save the King" that, on leaving England in 1795, he composed tho tune for° the Austrian National Anthem to which it is sung to this day. It is to the same tune that we sing one of our most popular hymns about the Church.

The "Christian World" celebrated last month its 75th birthday. Writing about it in one of the April numbers, the veteran, scholarly mid saintly Congregational minister, Dr. E. F. Horton, says that it lias l>y its Influence weakened the virus of denominationalism and encouraged Christian people to sec the Church as a whole, taking as its motto, "In things essential, unity; in things doubtful, liberty; in all things, charity."

"Tho African people arc not so barbarous as they are said to be," said an African professor at a luncheon in his honour in New York. "We are more responsive to obedience, law and order than many primitive Wo are mindful of our social obligations. We nre not burdened with an excess of rich people. We have a certain general level of possessions. None are rich, none starve. Those who havo share with those who have nothing. If an individual has moro cattle than he needs he sends his excess live stock to his needy neighbour. Nor is there any interest charged for this service." The professor's kinsfolk have evidently something to offer us in the philosophy and practice of i neighbourliness.

The annual report of the National Bible Society of Scotland says that the advances that mankind has made through modern invention and discovery are well known everywhere. Telegraphs, telephones, television, telephotography, radios, aeroplanes, and a thousand other marvels have permeated our daily life so intimately that we have almost lost the sense of wonder at the amazing achievements of research, mind and skill which they represent, and these modern inventions are being used, it says, to circulate the Scriptures, and to make them "run swiftly," and with an immensity of geographical radius never before reached. During tho past year the society has circulated over 4,500,000 copies of the Scriptures, including over a thousand copies in New Zealand. This is, however, fully a million less than in 193 a