SUPERSTITION.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 November 1921, Page 4

SUPERSTITION.

FAITH THE CURK. AUCKLAND, Nov. 11. "Fortune Telling and the Future,” . was the subject of a'seimon delivered at St Andrew's Presbyterian Church last evening by the Rev Lamb Harvey. The preacher referred to the earthquake that destroyed Sail Francisco in 100(1. The day before the catastrophe, he said, the “San Francisco Chronicle” published eleven advertisements of chi i rvovants, palmists, and others, each of whom guaranteed for a consideration to tell people their future fortune of secrets of the unknown. One '“professor” announced that he was “permanently located” at a {liven address. Then came the earthquake, and the “permanent” location disappeared, and the professor with it.' The' men who proposed to foretell other people’s future could not even foretell their own. It was true enough, said Mr Harvey, that an acute reader of character, which was often written on the face, and even on the hands or at- | tire, mijjjit he able to tell people some general truths about themselves, but t!:e claims of fortune-tellers' went far beyond that, and their art was simply a compound of clover guesswork and trickery. The law rightly treated them as dangerous fraud*.

The danger of the so-called fortunetellers. .Mr Harvey continued, had been proved often enough. Nervous people had been made ill, some had been driven in sane by predictions of impending evil made to them by handreaders and others. A lady writer in the “British Weekly” had consulted for business purposes many of the chief palmists of London. They all told a different tal \ and the writer utilised the mischievous effects their “revelation-.” must have on some tem-

peraments. Let them consider this fact, added the preacher. In the (Beat War, millions of our young men were killed or wounded. Their hands, therefore or their horoscope's, should all have indicated that life was to he cut short, or that injury was to befall them. Did they? Did anybody believe that the catastrophe of the war whi eh came upon the world like a thunderclap, was written beforehand upon the palms of all those who suHerod in it, and upon the palms of all the mothers, wives, ami children who suifered also? But ii it was not. the bottom fell out of fortune'-tclliiig. Wbaf lay behind Ihe craving to know the future? It "as fear. Lear also lay behind all the popular superstitions about mascots, unlucky days, numbers. stones and whal-not. People who had discarded religion as out of date, believed in the e, unaware that such beliels were simply telics of savagery and heathenism. What was the Christian lieliet ? That we live in an ; ordered world governed by just and eijital laws expressing Nature and the will of the. good Cod. the Lather of all. 'I hat belief would kill superstition. The cure for fear was tnitb.