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Hokitika Guardian, 16 August 1937, Page 4

“Thkre is no more pathetic spectacle than that of an age which is bored with life.” said' Dr. van der Leemv,” addressing the New Education fellowship Conference! in South Africa. ‘‘Materially our modern world is richer than perhaps any preceding age; spiritually we are paupers. Not all our truly wonderful physical accomplishments, not all our abundance of amusements, and sensations, can hide the fact that we are poor within. In fact, the task of the latter is but to hide the poverty within. When our inner life is arid, we must needs create artificial, stimuli from without to provide a substitute, or at least cause such an unbroken succession of evervarying sensations that we have no time to notice tiie absence ol life from within. There are but few who can hear either solitude or silence and find a wealth of life arising in themselves even when there is naught from without to stimulate. Yet such alone are happy, such alone truly live; where we find the craving for amusement and sensation from without we >see an abject confession of inner lifelessness. There lies the difference between the quick and the dead : some are dead even in life, others can never die since they are life. We all seek life, since life is happiness and life is reality. Rut it is only when we have the courage to cease from sensationalism and outer stimulants that we may ho successful in our quest. A man is alive only to the extent to which he is the centre of movements and his acts, lie is dead to the extent to which he is passive and inert. To be alive is not as easy as it sounds. It is a gift which

lias to be gained in order to be supremely possessed/ To tiie measure in which we are truly alive we are independent of outer circumstances, and if we lose the gift of life, whateve our outer circumstances are, life will lose its glamour.”