WARTIME GAMBLING

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 165, 15 July 1941, Page 2

WARTIME GAMBLING

DEPLORED BY BISHOP

TASK FOR THE CHURCH (P.A.I WELLINGTON, this day. Reference to recourse to gambling in raising patriotic funds was made by the Bishop of Wellington, the Rt. Rev. H. St. Barbe-Holland, in addressing the Diocesan Synod which opened to-day. "My experience in the last few months makes me stronger than ever in my conviction that one of the great Objectives to which the churches must address themselves is the elimination of the gambling spirit from the heart of our people," he declared. "Isn't the real romance of money to be found far more truly in the widow's mite than in a bottle of whisky won in a raffle?" he asked. Speaking of the Church's leadership he said it must set itself to win the world around it back to God. To the Church was committed the immense responsibility of maintaining in a world in danger of losing them the imperishable truths which through its means God had planted in the souls of men. The Church must witness bravely and constantly to the great ideal of nature and destiny which the world would never have known but for the life and death of Our Lord. When war conditions ceased to exist the Church's voice on behalf of human souls must be heard above all competing voices. Meanwhile it should be the duty and glory of every Christian to refuse at any cost to allow the State to determine what was good and what was evil or to dominate its citizens by man-made formulas.