BE THE MASTERS.

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17409, 23 May 1928, Page 7

BE THE MASTERS.

ILLS OF THE WORLD. CAN WE PUT IT IN ORDER. MAUDE HOYDEN'S REMEDY. —, Every available seat was occupied at Lhe Hamilton Theatre Royal last night to hear an address by the world renowned lecturer, Miss Maude Royden, who look as her subject, "Can We Put the World in Order?" Many people journeyed in from long distances in order lo avail themselves of the opportunity of hearing her, Hamilton being specially privileged in ' that It is tho only inland town in NewZealand included in her tour. In introducing the speaker,' His Worship the Mayor described Miss Royrten as an international figure. That immense audience, he said. Was proof that the people of this district had paid heed to the reports of her progress through New Zealand. Miss Hoyden was a prominent figure in many activities in Britain, and Hamilton was indeed privileged to be the only inland town in the Dominion to hear an address from so eminent a lecturer. (Applause ) Miss Collinson, secretary to the British Commonwealth League of Women, explained that Miss Royden had come out under the auspices of the League, and had genuinely put herself out in order that the poorer people might hear the message she had to deliver. She paid a tribute to the work of the local committee. N Miss Royden, who received an ovai tion, possesses a magnetic personality, a charm of manner, a fluency of speech and a fine sense of humour, which immediately makes her audience her friends, while her deep sincerity and strong intellectual reasoning wins their earnest sympathy. Approaching the subject of her lecture, " Can We Set the World in Order?" Miss Roydpn said that they would say it was a' tremendous proposition and so it was, but it was one the# would have to face. It was their duty to undertake the work after the world had been put irito such a mess. It seemed strange lo come across the world to find that there was the same desire here as in the old land to put the world in order again. "If I asked you," she said, "what would you desire in order to regulate the world? I think we all have a common vision of feeling well. We would like to have work —even hard work—but work that we like and work that we can do best and not work that is thrust upon us—still less unemploy- ' inent. We would -want a home, not a mere house, with the love of a home and freedom from the lonely irrinding anxiety of to-morrow." She was not asking for anything extraordinary, not asking for Buckingham Palace, oysters and champagne. She was merely asking, 'Give us [his day our daily bread.' The Reeling that there was so much goodwill in the world towards peace and progress filled her with hope. It was not a lack of good will that prevented people from putting the world in order. Most people mean.t pretty well, but it was the lack of |.pwcr that prevented them from putin- tho world in order. No reforms . mid be effected in New Zealand, ivithout affecting people on the other j .vie' Of the world. The instinctive] ■ :>.raiment'of the Englishman when any j . eform was proposed, was, however, ; na« it been done before." "I often ..under," added Miss Hpl'dcn amidst lighter, "how we began. Possibly it was by some Scotchman giving us a . love.'-' New Zealand women were ..he first in the Empire to be enfranchised and when the women of Eng;.:nd sought enfranchisement, they 'were met'with the question "has it been done before?" (Laughter.) And .Vcw Zealand was always pointed lo us lhe example: The Power Lacking. In striving to put the world in order'lhe difficulty to be surmounted was not 111-will, but a sense of help- ,. ssness. "You have," she continued, •■ idling leaders in politics and religion who are doing their utmost to attain / this object, but they have not the power to do it; everything is so complicated in the world that something done in even a small country affects the world generally."As an instance of this Miss Royden quoted the murder in Serbia, which ipflung four-llfths of the world into Arar, so closely was the world linked jp. When the Great War broke out it was felt that no one could stop it. Those who loved their country and would give their l?ves for it, could not direct the great forces let loose —no one could ride the storm and the world was swept away in a flood of hatred, love, and heroic sacrifice. Then when peace was declared and an attempt made to reorganise the world's affairs and to do justice to all, including the small countries, there was a sense of impotency. Ever since, things were in a turmoil and, while thirsting for peace, preparations were being made for the next war. If one looked for leaders one would find thousands with good will, but no one with the power to control the position. " In the scientists' laboratory were proceeding the greatest conquests of the Twentieth Century," continued Miss Royden. Climates were being changed, pests were being destroyed, health was .being established against disease and wealth to replace poverty and all efforts were being made for 'the advancement of humanity. If success was not attained to-day it would be achieved to-morrow, or in a hundred years or in a thousand years, but it would be attained. She was not she said, so much alluding to aeroplanes or to diving under the sea, or the broadcasting of our voices over the universe, as to our faith in their exact opposite to the parliamentary the religious, and the social movements of the world. Adapt the World to Ourselves. The triumph of the white peoples over the coloured races and other species of being, was that they did not adapt themselves to tho world, but I hat they adapted the world to them- • selves. That »was, she believed, the real significance and meaning of our scientific habit of mind. It would not be aeroplanes or radio that would mark the present age as epoch making, it would be our determination to make the world what we wonted, instead of patiently trying to adapt ourselves to the world. She gave as an amusing illustration lhe case of the diplodochus, the huge prehistoric roplile with a body 76 feet long and a little head with practically no brain. This huge animal had disappeared from the face of the earth,, while I lie more insignificant human bring had survived. Why was this? Because the diplodochus bad nol endeavoured lo adapt itself to .some altered condition of life; because il. had said, "1 have always been 76 feet, long, as was my father and my grandfather: and what was- good for them ii ' good for me"; that was why it had failed to „ **BYive. "Mi" *!ie acldQd, uni&tt teh-

ter "you came across somebody who tells you that what was good enough for his grandfather is good enough for him, you may be justified in believing that he has a strain of the diplodochus somewhere in> his family tree.

As a further illustration of what she meant, she instanced the case of the Panama Canal, which, when lhe cutting was first attempted, had to be abandoned, as white men could not work there because of the deadly yellow fever. The scientists however, would not accept defeat, and by patient experiment they discovered that that organism of the disease lay in the body of lhe mosquito and was transmitted to men in their bile, so they attacked the mosquito in its swamp breeding places and destroyed lhe disease at its source. They did not say "Yellow fever is the will of God and we must be resigned." They met the situation, and now the canal was completed and all the commerce of the world was changed. The scientists had set the world in order. Compare that with lhe attitude of politicians and divines which produced unemployment and war. If a youth was killed in war or a child met its death in a tragedy people were told to be resigned, but in the ease of a wholesale disaster it was asked what caused It, and the cause was attended to. To every effect there was a cause, and that was the basis of scientific research. It was an act of faith on the part of the scientist lhat governed the material law, and they proceeded to act on it, although they could not prove it. Chesterton had said: "A man may jump over a precipice but that does not disprove the law of gravitation—it illustrates it. (Laughter.) Laws of Nature. "You cannot break a law of nature without breaking yourself," said Miss Rovden. "Gas is useful as a servant, but one reads in the newspapers about the tragic death of Mrs .Juggins who went home and smelt gas. She lit a match, and it was gas (laughter), and Mrs Ji/sgins was blown to bits. Mrs auggins\vas probably a good religious woman, who had never smoked a cigarette in her life, but she disregarded the law governing gas, which would give useful service if the law was complied with, and was blown up just as if she were a perfectly wicked woman." There were, she said, laws in the spiritual world, made by the God who created the world. "Don't you know that if you cannot depend on* Nature's laws, the whole of vour command is gone, like a breath on the wind, as your power to keep the world depends wholly on the unchanging of the natural law and any change would endanger the lives ol the many instead of one. When you know and trust the law the power is vdurs to harness rivers, to rule the seas and to cause the lightning to render service, because you know they they are subject to unbreakable universal laws." . "We do not believe in spiritual law. I wonder what God you worship when you pray to/Him. Don't you try to change His mind when you ask Him to grant vour pleadings. Don t you think God is capricious and inscrutable'' When the war broke out thousands of people were praying that their sons might be spared and soon again their hearts were empty when the son pravpd for was killed, perhaps within a few weeks at the front, whilst the lonelv man, who had no one lo pray for him, "came through unscathed. Nothing can change the will of God. War comes not from God, but from the hatreds of man, who breaks the spiritual laws of God. I can't understand God, but 1 can apprehend Him and it we can't trust God as trustworthy then we arc a slave to His caprice. This should be the greatest age of the spirit since the coming of Christ, for now we have come to the point at which we should be able to understand and cooperate with the purpose of God. Stupid Material World. "This stupid material worlds says 'war will always be with us; the poor arc always with us.' People who know no other text in the Bible know that, but if God is trustworthy, and we obey His laws may we not achieve a mastery over human affairs as we have over the material world." The coming ol Christ was so great that it divided the history of the world in two—before and after His coming—and it was impossible to conceive His great moral stature. Christ told us that the laws of God were based on life and love, but people thought that love might act very i well in our own homes and amongst our friends, but not in business or national affairs. The truth of that was just as likely as that the law of gravitation acted on small but not on large things. Love was the foundation of life and if there existed hatreds between class and class, between nation and nation, or between individuals we could not make & world, because we were trying to confound the spiritual law. If something in the bodyhurt, the whole body hurt, the whole body suffered, and one country could not suffer in a war without the other suffering also. . In war we suffered, but there was something noble and brutally honest in sacrificing oneself for one's country in a war one could not prevent, but in peace it was otherwise. Christ's utterances were not the arbitrary commands of a despotic God, but were stating the law of life and one must not break those laws. If one disregarded them, then God was not angry with one, but one destroyed oneself. In the sermon on the Mount Christ did not threaten with anger one who disobeyed lhe law. He only said ••He is like unto the foolish man, who built his house on sand," and thousands of people thought now that to be christian indicated a certain mental deficiency. Since the coming of Christ there surely was not a generation on which such a flood of light fell as upon ours. "Pul all you can into religion," said Miss Royden: "You cannot put 100 much. Get a conception of God, whose laws are not capricious. Obey Ills laws and you will find yourselves masters of the spiritual power to put your house in order." Her Great Belief. In conclusion, Miss Royden said "if we break ourselves against these laws, we blasphemously cry aloud 'let us be resigned to the inscrutable will of God.' It is rny absolute belief that when the human race is spiritually grown up -enough lo get into its heart the idea of that trustworthiness which scientists have taughH us in nature, we will find we are the masters of the spiritual forces like those which changed the history of the world. I believe the time is coming when we will realise 'the truth of His words 'what works I do ye also shall do, and greater works.' I believe it is possible for us to become lhe masters of spiritual power to set our world in order, a power compared' with which that of the scientists is like a toy in a child's nursery." (Applause.) On the conclusion of her address Miss Hoyden answered several written questious. Miss Royden left for Auckland today.