IDEALS OF ROTARY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21645, 16 May 1932, Page 12

IDEALS OF ROTARY

SERMON AT FIRST CHURCH ADDRESS BY THE REV. ALLEN STEVELY. A large number of delegates to the Rotary Conference attended First Church last night, when the Kcv. W. Alien Stcvcly conducted a special service for Kotarians. Taking as his subject “The Story ot Aladdin and His Lamp,” the preacher said that just recently the Halley Stewart lectures under the general title _ “ The Economic Crisis and the Way Out ” were delivered in the Memorial Hall, Loudon, by some of the leading economists ot Britain. Unusual interest was created, and large audiences attended the lectures. Sir William Beveridge, the last lecturer, fancifully imagined himself to be Aladdin with a miracle-working attendant. His task, he said, was to accomplish the economic reconstruction of the world in six days. He said: “The way of escape from the world crisis is barred and double barred. Only a world dictator can break his way through. I need to be more than a political dictator. I must be an Aladdin with a magical lamp with a spirit attendant who would work miracles tor me. We have got somehow to rebuild a world that will run freely, and we have to ask ourselves what miraculous changes must be brought about to bring back to ns an economic system that can be worked smoothly.” He continued: “ 1 am going to ask you, Sir Halley, to be a miracle-working spirit for igi l , able to do all that I think should bo done in the world to make economic life more stable. What task should I give you, and in what order? I have no doubt about the first two tasks. First, you would go and tell all the Governments to drop here and now the whole business of war debts and reparations which arc just the continuation of war. They block the way to international ro-operntion. Secondly, von would go and tell all the Governments that thev will have to abolish tariffs, not, of course, suddenly, for that would cause devastation, but under a scheme by which automatically, year by year, all tarui walls would sink back slowly into tlie ground. Those would be your first two tasks. Two days, if 1 may reckon in Biblical days. For your third day i would send you out to eet the nations to deal with insurance'against unemployment. They have one and all made a mess of that, although they have gone wrong in opposite directions. Some, like America, have done just nothing at all, and have not thought of insuring till their house was on fire. Others have spout a good scheme by weakness. Some provision for unemployment is as necessary as provision for sickness or old age. Those are your first three days of work as a miracle-working genie attending upon myself as world dictator. The first two tasks are easy. They need hardly any thought at all. The third task would take a little thinking out, but not much. There is no real difficulty about any ot them, given the will to put them through. When you come to the morning ot the fourth day you would find that we had to face a real problem, and had to solve an issue of tremendous difficulty. W e would have to decide between different ways of organising the work of the worm, and the only two ways we know do not work properly. I should not he ready on that fourth day .to tell you what to do next. I should have to make some arrangements for finding out. i should set up a commission of tour or nve wise and just persons that should draw upon the best economic brains ot a I tne world. To that commission I would give a double task. First, I would say: Work out for me a plan for stabilising the production of the world on a capitalistic basis, on the 1? resent basis of guiding production by prices. That is the first halt of the commission s task. The second halt is to give me a plan for stabilising production on a Socialistic basis; a plan tor guiding production directly by use and not througTi the intermediary of prices . . • and show that this can be reconciled with progress and with freedom. It would be the B end of the fifth day before those commissioners came back. On ,thf!®lXthem—.l would have to decide between them at least if they came back with two plans and if each of them seemed workable. If they came back and said ‘ there is only one of these plans that we are roe iv 1 work smoothly and progressively I would have to choose that one. But if they said that each plan seemed, equally workable, or each open to equal doubt ! would choose the capitalistic one and try it out. for if it did not work, at most we get another crisis like the present whereas if the Socialistic plan does not work wc may get the death of things of far more importance than economic welfare One way or another by noon of the sixth day I should decide, and in the afternoon you would carry onttbede cisiou. And the seventh day would bring a world remade.” This leading economist, the preacher pointed out, sought the best, and he told them it depended on an Aladduis lamp and the attendant miracle-working spirit of the lamp. Was there such a lanip. The answe/of the Bible and of Christian, experience was in the nffirmatne. y Word is a lamp” wrote one in olden days. And Jesus Christy said. 1 the light of the world. Ha\e we, h asked, “ lost the old, the only miracle-work-ing lamp? Have we not heard the cry m the streets of life: ‘ New lamps for And have not many yielded to that cr> and chosen the new and more fascinating lamp? Have we not all heard tbe voice which calls: “There is up God! Mans belief in His divine origin is delusion. He is descended from the starfish. .He is animal without soul, and this Me is all. Give up the old lamp, and take in exchange the new! . Have we not all heard the voice which cries: Give up the Bible, and prayer, and worship! These are the swaddling clothes of the worlds infancy, and take in exchange the emancipationof modern materialism! Exchange the old battered lamp for the fashionable iiew one?' Have we bartered one mothers God, and one fathers religion for the newer forms of atheism, and the plausible nostrum of self-culture and secularismIf so, we have made a bad bargain. One new lamp may be gaudy and glittering, but it cannot work the needed miracles. In the end of the old story, continued Mr Stevelv, Aladdin regained the wonderful miracle-working lamp. The task was long and difficult, and fufi of peril; it cos, blood and tears. The Hand that offoiea the old lamp (that alone would light the world to better days) was a pierced Hand. Rotary had learned that two of the miracle-working attendants ot tne Wonderful Lamp were fellowship and service. Under the inspiration of the Master of the Lamp there tv as nothing too wonderful for them to accomplish. During the days of last week one touch of the Divine Lamp brought men from all parts of this Dominion and constrained them, in the spirit of the Rotanan motto “ Service before self,” to confer on questions of national and international import. And Kotarians were present that evening because they realised that the soul of improvement was the improvement of the soul. Rotary realised that the spirit of the Lamp that would work the needed miracles was the spirit of Jesus Christ. That spirit would change social and national life out ot all recognition. That was the supreme miracle of Jesus Christ—to make each individual an organic part of the harmonious wheel of life. The old Lamp, ransomed by infinite sacrifice, He offered. Had they been overlooking the power of things spiritual. 'They needed the old lamp of the Gospel to put right each individual, said Mr Stevely in conclusion. Sin deteatea ideals,' but Jesus Christ died and rose again to defeat sin, and by His, Cross changed the heart, redeemed it. made it new and worked the miracle of grace in the'individnal. And then things began to happen. That miracle would work other miracles. Then brotherhood would appear not onlv as a new industrial order but as a new spirit—the spirit of Jesus Christ. “Heaven.” said Professor Henry Drummond. “Heaven lies within, in kindness, in humility, in unselfishness, in faith, in love, in service. To get these in. get Christ in.” He was knocking at each heart in the present crisis. He knocked in the vision of a better world, in the desire of each heart for nobler life. Let every man open the door to the King of Love and the Prince of Peace!