LIVING CLEANLY

Hokitika Guardian, 8 October 1929, Page 6

LIVING CLEANLY

BRIGHT ADDRESS TO CHILDREN

MR STALLWORTHY IN THE

PULPIT

CHRISTCHURCH, October 7

The Minister of Health (the Hon. A. J. Stallworthy) conducted a Sunday School anniversary service in the Durham Street Methodist Church yesterday afternoon. His talk to the children on matters of physical, mental and spiritual health was bright and interesting. The service was one of three held during the day in celebra tion of the seventy-sixth anniversary of the Durham Street Methodist Sunday School. All the singing was by the scholars, who were grouped in front of the organ and behind the preacher. Portions of Scripture were recited by the juveniles, who, with many adults, witnessed a baptismal ceremony. One of the infants christened was a grandchild of Mr Stallworthy.

Mr Stallworthy thanked the hoys and girls for their invitation for him to speak to them, and also for the privilege of seeing his granddaughter christened. His text, “Unless the Lord build the house they labour, in vain that build it,” had thirteen words in it, which . might be considered unlucky. However, it was pluck, and not luck, which was worth believing in. Each boy and girl was building a house in which he or she would have to live all their life. They would want that house to be sturdy and beautiful. The house would be either a palace or a prison. One did not hurt other people as much by one’s evil deeds as one hurt oneself, and _spitefulness should be avoided. The house of which he spoke was in three parts—the body, mind and soul. The body should he well cared for. The most wonderful camera in the world was the human eye, and the greatest telephone the human ear. The most wonderful river in the world was not the Thames, on which the village of London was situated, nor even the Avon. (Laughter.) The greatest river was that of the blood coursing through the veins.

“SHANKS’S PONY” BEST

“What is the most wonderful horse in the world?” asked the speaker “Some might say that it was Stardancer, or some other horse well-known in certain circles. The most wonderful horse is Shanks’s pony. We live in a great age of invention, but nothing can rival Shanks’s pony. “If I wcTre to ask you what was the most wonderful machine, the boys would probably say an and the girls a sewing machine. The human body is the most wonderful machin, and I will prove it to you. All the machinery ever thought of or made was made by the human body and the maker must be greater than the thing made.

“I trust that during next week, or this week to be correct, you will learn a great deal about the body part. St. Paul said that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost. The human body is a sacred vessel through which God may express Himself in this great throbbing world of ours. Some boys think that the body is meant to be a chinmey—a dirty sooty chimney—for I have seen boys, and girls too, puffing at cigarettes. There is enought nicotine in one cigar, if rightly administered, to kill a full-grown man. If our bodies were meant to be chimneys there would he a hole in the top of the head to let the smoke out, and on washing day mother would stuff you full of paper and set out alight to help her with the washing.

“Other boys, as they get older think their body is a barrel, to be filled with beer. It gets into the shape of a barrel after a bit. Some boys—and girls too, for I must be candid with you—think their body is a totalisator, for they are continually saying: ‘ I bet you that such is so-and-so.’ The Bible says Let your yes be yes and your no be no. That is all that is needed to tell the truth. This ‘I bet you’ is the way in which this great national habit of gambling begins. “If you will recognise that the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, there would not be half the illness in the world. You are urged to keep your city clean. I will give you a motto: Be Clean.”

Mr Stallworthy continued that the mind part of the body was the library and picture gallery, in which pictures were hung. The children should fill their .minds with the glorious literature of the Bible and other books, and so make the mental part of their body glorious and beautiful. People lived on memories more than on food, and bad memories were poor companions The spiritual house was being built for time and eternity, and God was the --aster Builder.