EMPIRE'S SPIRITUAL NEEDS.

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 9, 11 January 1923, Page 7

EMPIRE'S SPIRITUAL NEEDS.

Mr. L. S. Amery, First LorS of the Adimalty, at a Colonial and Continental Church Society exhibition: "The spread of the British race all the world over is perhaps the most important political and economical factor in the history of the last two centurieß. It is the greatest moral factor in Tecent years, because our race has carried with it all over the world its ideals, its institutions, its love of liberty, its love of justice, tolerance of fair play—of all those things which make English life aB we know it, and which also make for the uplifting of all other races with which our race comes into contact. These qualities are, in one sense* peculiarly English, but it is also equally true that that are essentially Christian qualities. In the outlying parts of the Empire, where everything is new, there are few churches; only homesteads in the wilderness, where the forests have been cleared or the prairie opened up. The difficulty there is not to induce people to take what the Church offers, but to find clergy and churches and teachers for those longing to have them, and denied the money or. the organising ability to get the churches themselves. There is a large call for generosity in England to meet the needs of brothers and kinsmen who have gone out into the wilderness to reproduce there not merely the material wealth of the Old Country, but its spirit, its ideals, and its traditions, which centre so much round the Church. Be generous to these young and struggling communities over the seas which need so much of that which you have already supplied to you in such full measure here nt home. They are wonderful communities, with hope for the future, liberty for their children, and the opportunity for self-reliance and manhood. The Dominions and colonies present a great field for our people. It is the women out there who ays the real makers of the homes of these countries. iCheeri.) The enthusiasm with .which

the Prince of Wales was greeted every, where he went in the Dominions was for himself, but it was also an expression of that love for the Crown, for the traditions of the Old Country, and all that stood for a united Empire, not merely in a political sense, but in spirit and ideals. (Cheers.) The men whom the Church has sent out have been men very worthy of her, capable of entering into the lives of the pioneers, facing their difficulties, and conveying to them the'lessons of the .Church through manliness and power of understanding by which alone those lessons can be conveyed. The Church of England has always been proud that it has not been a Church aloof from the real, practical, and everyday needs of men.".