CHALLENGE TO THE WORLD

Taranaki Daily News, 19 July 1933, Page 6

CHALLENGE TO THE WORLD

NEEDS OF THE PRESENT DAY COMPANIONSHIP, CREATIVE TASK. ADDRESS BY REV. E. P- BLAMIRES. New aspects of to-day’s economic problems and a scathing denunciation of th* inequality of the world’s wealth were given by the Rev. E. P. Blamires, director of Methodist youth work in New Zealand, at Stratford last night. Christianity had a social and national challenge to make, he said, in advocating a doctrine of companionship and creative work. To-day, said Mr. Blamires, people held that sex and “the new morality” was one of the largest questions confronting the world. Mr. Blamires stressed that what the world needed in the present day was companionship and a creative task. If marriage were viewed as a means to this end and if the children were to be educated to believe in the creative task as having a spiritual Value far above anything else and not to stoop to bluff there would no longer be a problem. , „ The division of the world’s wealth was a far more difficult problem. In India, a recent arrival from that country had -•> told him—in India, a British country, 80,009,000 Indians had only one meal a day and lay down at night on a mud floor. That was all they had. Meanwhile there were 48 princes of India, who had incomes of up to £87,000,000 per annum—and hoarded it. That was a criminal thing. =-■; ■ Similarly, he added, there was something wrong that an actor or actress in. . Hollywood could receive as much in a week as the Prime Minister of England in a year. There was too sharp a distinction between wealth and poverty. ’lt had been estimated that since 1914 the standard of living throughout the world had doubled, and it had been forecast, said Mr. Blamires, that by the end of the century it would have increased eight times, and that work would occupy but two hours a day. That was the effect of machinery, and if industry without a soul took command the world was heading for suicide. The remedy lay in seeing carefully that the longer hours of recreation that were coming were not used selfishly. • If the need for God and the unselfish aims of doing things for others, of “companionship and the creative task” weu kept in view, all would be well. . -