IN GRIP OF MATERIALISM.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18833, 23 March 1931, Page 4

IN GRIP OF MATERIALISM.

SPIRITUAL AWAKENING NEEDED. By Telegraph—Press Association NELSON, March 21. Mrs T. E. Taylor in her presidential address at the conference of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, said the coming year sounded a challenge to all that was highest in Christiant womanhood. Could they only hope that the billions of pounds wasted in drink and gambling by the nations would be transferred to healthful reproductive channels. A large number of young women entering the Union’s ranks was a matter for deep thankfulness, for mothers were given the tremendous privilege and responsibility of shaping the future of the nation through chilhood. To some extent a truer move to simpler living had been shouldered out to make room for business interests. The material wellbeing of the youth of both sexes had been thrown overboard, the restraint and self-suppression that often accompanied parental control and the economic needs of the home. Youth in ignorance had thrown off also most of the moral and social restraints : —those restraints and loyalties without which no nation and no individual could rise to the highest they were capable of. Freedom and good independence meant life growth, but moral and spiritual development necessitated tremendous limitations in the field of individual liberty. Freedom that interfered with the happiness and development of society as a whole was not true freedom, and would lead only to chaos and destruction. In spite of many dangerous trends, young people on the whole were very splendid in their newlyfound emancipation, but the perilous fact remained that they had largely overlooked the true and deep meaning of life and liberty. Many never realised the conditions and loyalties that made possible life in the fullest and most satisfying experience. The spiritual foundation was not there, and for two generations it had been lacking. Was it any wonder that they found themselves in the grip of dense materialism, unrelieved by the idealism which alone could conquer in man’s upward struggle towards light. Nothing less than a spiritual awakening from one end of the country to the other would avail to rouse them to a sense of what they owed to themselves, and to those around them. This meant awakening to the necessity for loyalty and service, if not to old ideals, then at least to new valuations and conceptions of man’s life in the highest plane, and man's life measured by the standard of Christ himself.