LIVING STATUARY.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LIII, Issue 9417, 16 August 1907, Page 2

LIVING STATUARY.

Father Ignatius, preaching at Queen's Hall, London, on Jane 2, or. "Living Statuary,"- said theivr grandmothers would have been 1 shocked at the very question as to wether ,pe(ople should deliberately take off their clothes in public. Their grandmothers 'w**e concerned not to show their , ankles, but; now we. wore gjoang back to I barbarism. Christianity made savages put on clothed. 'The n&w movement towards nudity was pagan, and he would cut the throat of pagan art. England had become a pagan country, and our art in oui morals, in our statues, in our pibtuires, was being re-paganised. So pagan wiexe we that he 1 began to doubt whether Christians had a right to fbn-ca their Christianity on a pagan people. The nude in ait was diabolical and pagan, and it was the duty of the Church to protest. LivHng statuary was oniy the result of thie degradation o£ the Ten Commandments, e^en by the Church, of the disappearance of the personal Gpd fitom the minds and hearts even of the c'eTgy, and the depreciation of the Bibfle. Sabbath-breaking was one of the signs and the Bishops had stepped in too late with their protest against it. The Higher Criticism was stopping the birth rate. There was no high art in stripping clothes off. Christian asrt which had superseded pagan art was cllothed. Nude art ought fco ba swept away from the walls of tho Academy; it ought to ba swept out of tlhie country It was unlawful, improper, and wrong. It was not true tihat living statuary was the same thfing ias a marble statue. If theore were any living statue !in th© congregation he would like to take., her by the hand and put her in the right way. Father Ignatius interrupted his sermon to ask th© congregation how many of them were ready to drive away this nude in art fotam thlis country. Nearly the.who{.e 'congregation (mainly ladies) stood v.p.