OUTSPOKEN.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1619, 10 December 1912, Page 4

OUTSPOKEN.

9 : , 1 . MINISTERS ON SOCIAL EVILS. (By Taleeraph.—Press Association.) Masterton, December 9, The Rev. A, •T. Thompson, Presbyterian minister, of Masterton, in a powerful and outspoken sermon last night, challenged and condemned the silence of tho pulpit on the social problem of sexual vice, supporting his contention by the plain blunt treatment of these facts by Jesus, Paul, and-the Bible generally. The most hopeful beginning of reformation was tho plain recognition of blunt facts. The Church and religion ought to bring the impact of .their life and power the «vus of: society.. in-:order to assist m their healing. The Church needs to come to a new valuation of human life in its totality and as a unity with a new sense of regeneration of the race. Ignorance, silence, mock modesty, and genteel humbug in reference to human life_and its divinely-created functions are t bodv-de- ' vouring and soul-devouring devils of our • age, leading to corruption and abnormal--1 ity of one of the most important and most fundamental impulses placed by God in ■ us. The care of the adolescent is one or j the most crying obligations of parenthood i, and society. The neglect of the adolescent spells physical, mental,, and moral rum of the individual and society. Medical inspection of schools by wise men who ' are also proper adolescent-specialists should be compulsory, with individual instruction to adolescents to supplement the work of parents, which' is primary, but : hopelessly neglected or inefficiently done. Capture scholars and the parents of the 1 next generation are assured. What 18 needed throughout New Zealand most today is a new ethic of the sexes, a raising •of the moral tone, and the creation of a : wholesome atmosphere charged with ecieii« r tific knowledge of human life.