For the Sabbath

Waikato Times, Volume 94, Issue 14776, 15 October 1921, Page 10 (Supplement)

For the Sabbath

"HE IS THY PRAISE."

Praise, always praise; amid the changing years He cliangeth not; away with doubts and fears.

Praise, always pralise; if dark thy present way, ft leads straight on "unto the perfect day."

Praise, always praise; for every answered prayer When cast on Him thy trouble, sorrow, care.

Praise, always praise; though heavy trials press. Then most of all He proves His faithfulness.

Praise, always praise; though moved wfith tears to say, "Lord, dost Thou only give to take away'".'

Praise, always praise; in seeming loneliness. His presence goelh with thee none the less. Fraise, always praise; till at His throne ascend 11-. y smiles, tearless praises without end. —Alice Jane Home. MORAL TEMPER OF THE NATION. Mr Hsrold Begbie, writing in the Sunday Pictorial on the moral temper of the nation, says: "Our national salvation lies in individual salvation. Let every person, reminding himself of ail those alroiig and lender thugs that the great name of England has meant to mankind, address himself to his own heart and ask himself whether he does not find there the cause of his country's calamity. "Let the employer ask himself whether there is no greed and hardness in his heart. Let the worker ask himself whether 'going slow' for eight hours a day is not eating into the fabric of his moral life. "Let the people of leisure ask themselves whether they are using their gifts and opportunities for the good and glory of this country or merely for the soul-destroying excitements of a false and transitory world. THE STORY OF THE SOUL. "We are all psychologists nowadays. On no other hypothesis can one account for the mass of literature whien pours from the press on the subject; for presumably the publishers do not issue books which nobody reads. It is in some sort a new religion, a sign that we are anxious about our soul, when we spend such paiins lo discover its mechanism; and it must be rather disconcerting to the novice in these inquiries to discover that none of the professors will use the word 'soul' if by any chance they can avoid ti. Frankly that is a mistake, but there is no exlisting current fashion. St. Paul and St. Augustine—who, as Mr Brett reminds us, were excellent psychologists—Wcre not afraid of the word. Nor has David Hume, who still has some reputation as a philosopher. But William James avoiided it by every means in his power. The contemporary psychoanalyst would rather die than use it. "This phase, which involves writers and students tin clumsy circumlocutions, will pass. For the psychologist to deny the existence of a soul, when he spends his days in probing ami analysing it, is an oddity of the limes; even if it is no more than a chemical reaction, it should have an appropriate formula, Ike a rare gas." # —x\ reviewer of a batch of books on Psychology in The Outlook. MORAL SERIOUSNESS. -We should do well to titter and to giggle no longer. This matter, if love for England can no longer move us, is one of our own daily bread. We shall perish of starvation, fighting like beasts among ourselves, unless a new spirit manifests itself in the national fife. That spirit can come only from moral seriousness in the individual. Moral seriousness in the individual can come only from rigorous and ruthless self-examinatiion. "The cause of all unhappiness, the spring of all confusion, is sin. Twist and writhe as we may, this is the historic fact, of man's whole history in the world. And from the beginning of time until now the way of escape from the merciless destroyer has been the way of self-sacrifice. "And that, way, for nearly two Ihousand years, has been irradiated by the Light of Divine Love. "If Britain would be Britain still her citizens must believe in God and in Heir own deep personal responsibility for all their words and for all their acts. Only men with this profound and abiding faith in their hearts make honourable employers, honesl workmen, kind neighbours, and parents whose children can both respect and love them." Stealing Universal. "Who will not stake his life that we arc a thousand times more dishonest than our fathers .'—dishonest, 100, without the smallest sense of shame. Now, dishonesty is the least dramatic, but the \wsl destructive of all moral disorders. Its poison creeps into every cell of the brain and into every drop of the blood. "Wherever I go through industrial England I am told thai stealing is now universal. The 'item called Pilferage is a heavy reckoning on every railway, in everv dock and warehouse, and in every' factory and mill throughout the country. For want of the individual conscience we are fast becomiing a nation of thieves. Honesty, the very jedroek of English character, j K i-3-garded merely as a social convention. "A nation in litis condition of moral confusion, to whom the most primitive idea of right and wrong has come lo mean merely a mailer of circumstance, 'an be saved, as 1 have su'id, i nly by a miracle. "Wlint is Hi" miracle? "I am convinced that it is the miracle known to the psychologist of religion as 'conversion'; thai 'is to say. .-.p. entirely different attitude towards the universe. "Dishonesty is the work of a vani moral declension. We are becoming more brutal- as witness I lie daily repurl oi' murder)-' ami mileage.-, which would have been incredible In our I'alliers. We are shamelessly Ki'lllsll as wilness the ostentation of luxiry and fashion at a' lime, when hospitals arc closing I heir doors. We are utterly indiliferent lo the perilous condition of hi r e< unl ry- as wilness our iiliunsl ludicrous devotion lo games and spurts al a time of unparalleled crisis. We are even immoral mi ,ti ' Iri*allsin--Hs witness the unblushing (Wonrp of ea' canny and deliberate shirking which appear? in honk-, on racialism, written by men of high character.' concludes Mr Bogbi"