SPIRITUAL LETHARGY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 227, 23 August 1935, Page 9

SPIRITUAL LETHARGY

NEW ZEALAND THOUGHT. SOCIAL WORKER’S VIEW. “I do feel that there is a great deal of lethargy in spiritual thought in New Zealand, that non-eliurchgoing is very prevalent, and that the old standards of the pioneers in this respect have disappeared to a large extent. It makes the work of the Church very card under the present conditions. I cannot tell the underlying reasons but it is there. 1 think that tins country, like every other, needs a new breath of God's spirit.” This comment was made to a “Standard ’ representative, to-day by Mrs Motfatt Clow, of Belfast (Ireland)" a widely travelled member of both the ’’ omen s Christian Temperance movenient and the League of Nations Union. White-haired, with a bloom in her cheeks, and speaking with charming richness of accent, Mrs Clow is a striking personality. She has been travelling constantly since she left her home country a year ago, having visited India and spent six months in Australia before commencing a tour of New Zealand on June 10. It is her intention to return home in leisurely fashion through Canada. “I have not been in any of your schools,” said Mrs Clow, “but I thought the children looked bright and healthy, and spoke out well — with self-assurance and confidence—which I like.”

“People who think, deeply realise that the League of Nations is the only thing between the world and barbarism. If we cannot secure a better method of settling disputes than by warfare we are not civilised,” added Mrs Clow, who has four times been to Geneva in an unofficial capacity while the League of Nations has been in assembly. Lor the last thirty years, too, she has been associated with the work of the Christian Endeavour Movement, a world-wide organisation. She is a member of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union, to which she said every keen Presbyterian ciiurchwoman could not fail to belong. “My life has been very largely given to community service for the betterment of humanity ever since I reached the years of discretion,” said Mrs Clow. Stating that she had been in America and Canada, she added that there was not a year in which she had not visited Continental countries in order to watch the trend of events. This, said Mrs Clow, was her first visit to New Zealand, and though tho weather had been rainy aiyi wintry nearly all the time, she considered it very like the Home Country. It had been very nice to find the people so British, and endowed with the best national, qualities of hard work and thrift. She admired New Zealand’s farm homesteads and comfortable homes, even though there was to much talk of depression. Women’s organisations in New Zealand made the country life bigger and broader, she commented. The lot of the farmer’s wife in Ireland was hard work with little variation, except for a visit to town on market day. There •were no country women’s organisations in Northern Ireland, and only a few Women’s Institutes in Southern Ireland. “There was every evidence, when I left Ireland, that the tide had definitely turned for prosperity ” said Mrs Clow. “We in Northern Ireland had climlred uphill to better days. There were more ships on the stacks than there had been for years and the linen industry was improving. These are our two most important industries.”