A GRAVE DANGER

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 41, 18 February 1937, Page 10

A GRAVE DANGER

MORAL STANDARDS

REFERENCE BY BISHOP

The \danger of the Christian and moral standards of New Zealand being lowered N>was stressed by the Bishop of Wellington (the Rt. Hon. H. St. Barbe Holland), when speaking today at the luncheon of the Optimists' Club.

His Lordship quoted the following passage from a. recent utterance by the Archbishop of Canterbury: "There is nothing, literally nothing—and I think there 'is scarcely a thoughtful person ■who denies it —that can save civilisation but the incoming of the rule of the unseen and eternal Kingdom of God."

His Lordship said: "If civilisation is going to proceed to try to save itself without an incoming of the unseen and eternal Kingdom of God, tendencies which are appearing here and there would suggest that the whole moral standard of the nation will be perceptibly lowered".

"Even here in New Zealand there are disquieting suggestions that our public life, on the Christian foundation of which we pride ourselves, is being undermined. Events within the last few weeks have suggested it. We have seen the failure of the juries of ouv land to express the conviction of the nation that the abominable crime of abortion must not be allowed within its borders. lam encoursged by ths words of the Chief Justice at the conclusion of the fourth trial to express my own very strong conviction that a nation that cannot agree that this crime should not escape without punishment is untrue to the fundamental Christian tradition of the British Commonwealth of-Nations."