NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS

Hokitika Guardian, 1 November 1929, Page 2

NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS

WEATHER STATIONS EOR

AIRCRAFT

“I think that in years to come aerolanes may he guided hy meteorological tations, and that in that respect things .lay hapen which at present are unIreaint of,” said Lord Thomson, the vir Minister, in a recent speech. “Air ships and aeroplanes may be under guidance just as ships on the sea are mvigated at present, but i cannot see low that is to be effected .without a very great improvement in our meteorilogical knowledge. I look forward to idle aircraft of the future being guided hy meteorological stations in exactly the same way as the mariner is now directed hy charts.”

REAL GREATNESS. “There is perhaps no word more abused by the general reviewer and more cautiously employed by the critic of lenrning and penetration than greatness,” says a writer in the “Saturday Review of Literature.” “Experience if nothing else has taught the latter that the marvels of to-day are not infrequently the curiosities of to-morrow and that time while it makes ever more apparent the actuality of real greatness, often leaves’ slightly ridiculous as well ns patently second-rate many a work that lias precipitately been announced to possess it. It is doubful Indeed, whether any age can properly judge •'of the achievements of its period Too much that is' extraneous to the actual merits of a production—passions, prejudices, beliefs, hopes, theories, ignorance—enter into its appraisal to permit of a just perspective upon its .qualities. ■We men and women are reasoning beings, to he sure, hut despite training and exhortation, we remain in the aggregate; and' probably will for aH'time remain, primarily feeling beings.”

A FRANK VIEW

“I am convinced that before we get through we shall go through a harder period than we have yet seen and one which will affect everyone to the point where, whether they like it or not, they will be forced to “realise that harder work, more of it and greater application to one’s job is an absolute necessity it the people of this country are going to live on a high plane and go in for a large amount of recreation,’ writes Sir Arthur Balfour in the ‘Times Trade and Engineering Supplement.” “In the end you can’t take more out of production that you can put into it, and in my opinion we have been trying to do this for some time. The facts have been hidden to some extent hy our large accumulation of capital at home and abroad. It am glad to see that- signs are not wanting that the younger generation who are Doming forward are likely to prove efficient if only they are given the chance early enough, before their am. bition is overgrown by monotony and too long waiting,”

CHURCH AND STATE. “We speak of Church and State, What is the real difference between Church and State? The same people make both. If a tree is known by its fruits, shall we not consider whether the British Parliament has not achieved, in the Providence of God, more for the English people ancl .for humanity than any Ecclesiastical Assembly that ever existed? Has not England taught the world,the art of good government which is Divine? Is not justice a Divine attribute, and therefore spiritual ? Is it not the State which administers justice through its judges and magistrates, who never think of themselves as ‘ spiritual persons ’ ? Consider what the British Parliament has accomplished. What of the abolition of slavery, the removal of tests limiting freedom of thought and worship, its concern for the sacredness of human life, factory legislation, provision 'for accidents in employment, and a score of other benefits secured by Parliament. What Church Council or Synod has achieved through ages one-tenth as much good for mankind as has been accomplished by the British Parliament. “ God forbid that I should deny that the Churches—societies of Christians—have taught us the religion of Christ, and so inspired the State and its Legislature. But when it is suggested that the Church is Divine and the State secular, that the Church is spiritual and the State not, I say, Look around.” —Rev. R. E. Hudley, in the “Hants Gazette.”

TO-MORROW AND CHRISTIANITY. “Itliink the first characteristic of the Christianity of to-morrow will he the recovery of a truer sense of proportion. It will concentrate on the essentials of the Faith, not on secondary matters that belong to the debris of our ecclesiastical past. I cannot believe that there is any future before an Evangelicalism that regards the particular place where the celebrant stands at Holy Communion as the ‘acid tost’ of the loyalty of its clergy; or for the Anglo-Catholicism that is prepared practically to excommunicato many thousand faithful men and women rather than relax the rigidity of its adherence to the ancient custom of fasting communion; or for the Fun damentalism that challenges all the conclusions of science in the interest of a preconceived theory as to the method of Divine revelation. A loss of the sense of proportion is one of the greatest dangers to which the ecclesiastical mind .is subject.”—Dr. Masterman, Bishop of Plymouth.