THE MORAL STANDARD

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 13, 18 July 1928, Page 10

THE MORAL STANDARD

(To the Editor.) Sir,—l feel sure that on further consideration the liev. Mr. Blaniires will acknowledge that he has treated His Grace the Anglican Archbishop with scant courtesy in intervening in the discussion between the Archbishop and myself. Did his Grace ask for or require the Rev. Mr. Blamires's intervention to explain his address? He has in his communion many able scholars who, it' he had called for or required assistance to explain his position would have been glad to come to his rescue. There seems to be only two points on which his intervene!- requires explanation His Grace was not dealing with the Bible-in-schools question. He considered there was much apathy amongst New Zealand people on a moral issue, and the addresses some of the Auckland clergy. He must have assumed they were apathetic, and one of the clergy present at his address said it was of a rousing or "shaking" character, ilis Grace did not address a mixed audience, and secularists were not invited to be present. Must it not therefore he assumed that his Grace had considered well those that needed his message If for example, one found fault with the attitude of secularists one would "not spend his time in addressing Methodists." Mr. Blamires again refers to statistics. I had thought that after his previous blunders last year about figures he would not have again ventured to seek the aid of statistics. He says I did not quote the growth of serious crime in New Zealand. That is true, because there has been no such growth. Has he not read our New Zealand Year Book? Let me direct his attention to the 1928 Year Book. At page 257 he will find this record: Supreme Court summary of offences:— 1922, 601 persons. . :- 1923, 625 persons. 1924, 555 persons. * 1925, 511 persons. 1926, 569 persons. And previous Year Books have shown that the New Zealand natives have a lower percentage of convictions than persons born elsewhere. I did not quote the alarming increase of crime in the Bible Schools State, New South Wales. I suppose Mr.-Blamires has read the evidence given recently before a Commission in Sydney about the alarming increase of crime there. The New South Wales Government hasl been compelled to increase the number of police by two hundred men. As for the influence of the new ritualism in -Mr. Isitt's proposed Bill, I suppose Mr. Blamires may not have read a recent essay by one of the most learned of American Professors of Philosophy—himself a clergyman—in which is stated:— Ritual ceremonial public observances are mere scaffoldings for the weak and less rational people-^they are temporary devices for the childhood of the race and tend to disappear as men reflect and mature. Certainly such exercises cannot be called moral teaching.—l am, etc., ■ ROBERT STOUT.