SMALL FAMILIES.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1303, 5 December 1911, Page 5

SMALL FAMILIES.

BJ.SHOI' OF LON DON'S*WAR NIXG. In his animal charge to flip clergy of (hi! diocese of Ixuidon, delivered in October (it. St, Paul's Cathedral, the Bishop of Loudon spoke of the troubles tlirougu which the country-,had'passed during the Into summer., ,'i'ho possibility 'of. what' looked like it civil war,, Ikv said, allowed them on what insecure foundations our boasted civilisation' really rested. ■ When they looked abroad who could tell what might- be the limits of tho conflagration already kindled on the shores of tho .Mediterranean 'i Healing with Church mutters, Ilia Bishop denied that llio policy of priest') Inking ilie oath of canonical obedience to their Bishop on. questions of order and ceremonial had "sent people over to lionie." To his knowledge no person <J any standing in orders or out of orders ,had gone over to Homo during the la-'.; ten years in the diocese o) London. If men held Unman doctrines they had far better go to Rome. The Bishop looked with favour on, an experiment: with a 'guild of sponsors who might, provide poor neglected children with godparents who would stand by them through life. He quoted tiie warning he uttered si.t years ago ou the declining birth rate, and slating that tlio birth rates for thoso six years hud been, commencing in IMS, 27 'i per 'thousand, 27.1, 2ti.11, and IM.S, he asked whether the warning had been unnecessary. Tlio Ijambcth Conference spoke out on the matter with 110 u»certain voice, and foi himself ho could only repeat his words ol 1 six years ago: "it is as completely proved as anything can Ixi that the eausu of all this is deliberate limitation of families." To use the word? of Professor layloiv "This which was fhst encouraged in England some tTi voars ago lias gradually spread like wildlire..among the middleclass population of the land, and tile Irun v.ijaltli of the. nation, 'tils full-hoalthed bright-eyed and happy-hearted children, have more or less gone doun'boiorc it. ( "Now it is to stem this gigantic evil, •aid tho. bishop, "that I Simmon thtt, forcwrof llio Church! to-day._. -J he Iranian Church, all honour, to it, lias/never, wavered in eondenming such practices as a sin. and it would ill-bccomo the (litireli of England to condemn less clearly tug ■ practice which, if continued, must eat.' awav the heart and dram away the lmblood of our country. Let teacniug then be given in suitable wnyft awl _at suitable times on the responsibility which, married life -entail?, .on the glory ™ motherhood, and the growing telfishuess .which thinks first of creature comtorls, oi' social pleasure'-,' and then ol the pnmarv duties and joys of life. , , "It is all part of. tho miserable gospel of comfort which is the curso of the present (lav, and we must live ourselves ami teach others to livo-the simpler, harder life our forefathers lived when they, made Britain what', it.is to-day, and. handed down a glorious horitagn which,: unless we amend our ways, surely, slip from our nerveless flußcrs.'