PREACHERS AND PLATITUDES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21537, 8 January 1932, Page 4

PREACHERS AND PLATITUDES

INCOMPETENT POLITICIANS ATTACKED A challenging address on Economic Law and the Christian Gospel, in which the speaker did not hesitate to attack doctrines to which prominence has been given lately by some churchmen (observes the Melbourne Age) was delivered by the Rev. P, Evans recently under the auspices ot the National Christian Churches. There could be no Christian solution to an economic problem, was the speaker s first arresting contention. No man could preach a motor car into movement when the engine was wrong. Equally misleading was it to say that what was morally ,wron<* could not be economically right. The Christian duffer could fail in business; a thief might run a stolen motor car more intelligently than the owner. J-'JjS" lish magazine readers had proclaimed the sentence “What the world needs is Christ ” as the “ most platitudinous platitude ” possible, which meant that the sentence had been rendered innocuous by loose application and ceaseless iteration. What did it convey to the man in the street, this easy so-called solution of ins 1)1 Mr Cl Evans then spoke of the feelings of the student of economics who, after long grappling with his immensely complicated and difficult problem, heard trite remarks like the foregoing bandied about. No wonder experts, resenting the shallow thinking that permitted such platitudes, charged those who gave them utterance with doing positive harm by encouraging the public in its mental apathy. It was of no use to look to politicians, who had no knowledge of finance and economics, who could not run a fried fish shop in a back street, to help us out. Only able men, men with knowledge, could help ns, and those such who refused to enter politics did not understand their duty to Australia. Economic law was the law ot God. To-day we were living in defiance of that law, and the return could be complished only through Christianity. Eeonomic truth was waiting to save us; but what chance did we give it considering—to mention only a few economic ills—the vast amounts spent on drink, gambling, and the kinema? If, instead of going to the picture theatre so often we bought clothes we should be giving work to Australians, instead of making rich people in Hollywood richer still. Capital and Labour must unite and seek economic truth. His message could he expressed in one prayer: “Thy will he done on earth as it is in heaven.”