THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16546, 22 September 1919, Page 3

THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

SUNDAY EVENING LECTURE AT

WHITELEY

A large congregation gathered at Whiteley Memorial Church on Sunday evening for the monthly lecture. Under the direction of Mr. R. Laurie Cooper a special musical programme was rendered both before and during the service. An augmented choir and orchestra led the singing. Dealing with the subject, "The i troubled waters of the world; are they | for the healing of the nations f” the j Rev. J. Napier Milne said that the mood of the man who went through the American Civil War was on many today—they would be glad to join an everlasting peace society. Weary of strife it would be good to return to settled conditions, to the undisturbed pursuit of the interests and activities with which we were occupied prior to August, 1914. But the war that was to have made us better had in some respects made us worse. Peace had indeed come, but it was a peace with discontent, a peace with bitterness, a peace with strikes and rioting and class hatred. Unrest was the dominant note everywhere; the world was one vast troubled sea. Yet what else could have been expected after the most gigantic convulsion that had ever shaken the eartli ? We had had a manquake, and there must be many rumblings and mutterings and waterspouts before .we could know once more the comparative calm of ordinary life. The Napoleonic wars were followed by 30 years of unrest. We were just emerging from the effects of the South African War when the new- Armageddon was sprung upon unsuspecting peoples. Unrest w-as inevitable, and unrest w-as not'necessarily a bad thing. Long ago at certain seasons an angel disturbed the Syrian pool and the invalid who first stepped in was restored to health no matter what disease he had been afflicted with. There was an unrest that indicated life. Discontent might be a sign of health not disease. The troubled w aters of the world wore going to do something towards the healing of the nations.

Por the world art it was to-day was a libel on Jesus Christ. There were multitudes of things in it that were not according fo the will of God. It was impossible to maintain the mockery—whatever is is right. There was much in our modern social arrangements which could not be reconciled with the elementary principles of justice. The earth was the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, but neither the earth nor its fulness was being used in strictest accordance with the wish of its real owner.

All over the world there was a passionate outcry for housing reform. Ih England there were over three million people who wer® living more than two in .a single room, and on the West Coast of New Zealand miners were pigging it, by all accounts, in a worse way in some respects than the dwellers-in the London slums. “What was the good?’’ asked one of the preacher’s friends the other day, “of telling people to consider the lilies. They were more concerned with their leaky lodgings and the lack of lavatories,” Decency and morality withered in ■the foetid air of crowded and insanitary conditions.

Charles Kingsley, bom just over a hundred years ago, had put the matter very bluntly: “We quarrelled like brutes and who wonders. What self-respect could we keep?

“Our daughters with base-bom babies, Have wandered away in their shame, If your misses bad slept where ours did, Your misses had done the same.” Tho world needed renewing, reorganising, reconstructing. It would have to be born again. The conception of industry as a selfish- competitive system would have to go. It could not bo right that a few men should wallow in wealth while the majority were obliged to live a hand-to-mouth existence. It could not he right that some men should bo able to travel, live in luxurious houses, eat the best of food, wear the most expensive clothes, have motors and books and all tho delights of the sons of men, while others, equally deserving, and equally endowed with capacity for enjoyment, were doomed to spend their lives in a drab weary struggle to keep the wolf from the door. In a world of men so diversely gifted there were bound to be certain inequalities in service and reward, but there were some inequalities that were iniquitous. We might object to some of the planks in the programme of socialism, but wo should hardly be as wise as Solomon if we allowed ourselves to indulge the delusion that all was well and made no attempt to grapple with the evils with which socialism was nurtured. Let us not think we had done handsomely by our neighbour because we had not killed him or robbed him of his property, his honour or his good name. Did anyone imagine it was to perpetuate the world' as we knew it that the Son of God poured out His soul unto death? He did not believe it. And therefore it was that he welcomed some of the elements in the social discontent of tho time, believing that out of thorn would come healing for the nations, better and more wholesome conditions, progress towards the great dream of an earth wherein dwelt righteousness. Bui, proceeded the preacher, there was also peril in the troubled waters. Thole wore features about the presentday unrest that gave us serious pause. Civilisation was in danger of being swamped. Abroad, anarchy reigned where autocracy once held sway. Czardom and Kaiserism had fallen only to be replaced by something more horrible and hateful still, namely Bolshevism.

At Home there was a growing contempt of Cabinets and Parliaments. Trivial grievances were being allowed to throw the whole machinery of labour out of gear. Capitalists were literally at bay everywhere. An American paper told of a hosiery manufacturer who was so hazed and harried by demands for higher wages that he took drastic, measures to protect himself. Calling a meeting of his employees he said to them, “I have no time to be bothered with these incessant demands; you arc going too far and you must give mo a square deal. I propose that you elect a wage committee and fix your own wipges. Adjust them, raise them, lower' them to suit yourselves; but remember if you make my wagecosts so high that you wipe out my profits, I’ll close the factory,” The very worst friends of labour were the extremists. Their grotesque claims on behalf of the workers only tended to alienate sympathy. Extremists wore often the result of years of grinding pain 1 and poverty and need. The iron had entered their souls and their hand was against all mankind. But we must see that wiser counsels, prevailed. The world must get back to work, to reason and to efficiency* or

the troubled waters would overwhelm us all. According to the ancient story there were many ills that were never cured by the perturbed pool, and we read- of one disappointed soul who found, after long agony and waiting, the healing virtue he sought in the delivering word of Jesus Christ. The story is a parable. Out of the profound unrest of, our age might indeed come some good thing for the life of the people, but in the final analysis Christ alone could supply the healing balm for the wounds, and the cordial for the fears of this distressful world. Only with Him and all that Ho stood for could the grievous social problems of our time be solved. Socialism could not save us. They might nationalise their mines and their butter factories and thenfreezing works, and everything, down to their hutton-hook or their shavingbrush, but if they left the heart of man untouened, they would still be worlds away from the millennial. Gerand Karl Marx, its greatest modern apostle, was ; a German Jew. Russia was being described to-day as the first socialistic republic, and Russia, at this horn-, was imprisoning and putting to death those who dared to speak a word against the Government/ Democracy needed to be made safe for the world. There was ho hope for the social movement until once more it became aflame with religious faith. The more serious and fai--seeing of our statesmen * wera beginning to believe that back of all the surface causes of our social disorders and industrial depressions lay war, intemperance, greed, lust, hate, selfishness, the policy of grab, the neglect of God, “Men would have to look to another Power,” said Mr. H. G. Wells in one of his latest books. “They might very well look to Him now—instead of looking across the Atlantic. They had but to look hip and they would see Him. . And until they did look up and see Him, this world was no better than a rat-pit.” “Would you work,” said Lamennais, for the extermination of poverty ? Then work for the extermination of sin, first of all in yourself, then in others.” - ; lb was a true word. The renovated State could only coipe with a renewed people. AlLhope of the adequate solution of our social problems centred at last in Jesus Christ. He never said that the end of life was to be comfortable ; He never taught that money and well-appointed houses, sanitation, and recreation, shorter hours of labour and bigger wages constituted the sum of all good. But as men grew in purity, nobility, kindliness, there should follow as the night the day, corresponding refinements and alleviations in their surroundings. ' ' '