CHURCH SERVICES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 193, 20 July 1925, Page 2

CHURCH SERVICES.

“There aro novels sold in Inigo numbers in our town,” said Rev. G. X. Brown, M.A.. at St. Andrew’s Church, yestorday, “the whole aim of which seems to be to glorify lust, to mock at marriage and decent homo life, and by the coarsest realism to appeal to gross animal passion. Even circulating libraries are not free from this befouling literature.” The speaker quoted from Canon Rownsley, who, speaking in Scotland, had said that he had often spoken with librarians and had found them most grateful for being told of any corrosive book; and that librarians had declared that the chief readers of these hooks were young, girls with their hair down their backs.

“A few days ago there appeared in a shop window,” said Mr G. T. Brown, “a figure about which there was no pretence at art or beauty, and its sole merit was its indecency, that several women, including representatives of our local W.C.T.U., went in and protested to the manageress, but it was allowed to remain until the police interfered and tile thing was withdrawn. The speaker urged the members of the congregation to act as a vigilance committee, and whenever they saw in a shop, literature, picture, image or anything of a revolting or disgusting nature to go in at onee and protest. If this were not sufficient they could invoke the aid of the police, who were always syne pathetic and helpful. But there was another weapon they could use and as a Christian community could cease to support business firms so dead to their moral responsibilities that they exposed these things for sale. Speaking of the degrading influence of vulgar and disgusting picture post-cards, of which there is such an enormous output, and. which are flaunted before the eyes of all jn shop windows, Mr Brown declared that the young people whom the State was labouring and spending money to educate to a. higher refinement, and to nobler thoughts, were being degraded, and their souls seared from early childhood by a debased type of what posed for comicality. These were foul pictures making a mock of sin and flaunting pure animalism before tho eyes of young and old.