MOVING WITH THE TIMES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4571, 1 June 1923, Page 1

MOVING WITH THE TIMES.

“ DECAY OF MORAL FIBRE.” In his ” hot-point talk ” in the Vivian Street Baptist Church at Wellington last Sunday night, the Rev. F. E. Harry said it was never safe to raise Satan unless one could lay him again, before challenging him to mortal combat it was wise to refurbish one’s weapons. “This age,” he said..” is fast, foolish and frenzied. There is a very real sense in which we are compelled to move with the times. On a steamer, ploughing the ocean, or on a train rushing across the country, it makes little difference to your progress if you walk towards the stern of the ship or towards the end of the train. You advance willy-nilly. The important question is who steers the ship, or who controls the train? In other words, which way are we going? ” Morally, as a nation, we are deteriorating. We are being devitalised by luxury. The finer virtues are crumbling before the demands for sensual pleasure. We talk of returning prosperity, and we only mean the circulation and handling of more money: such is our low standard of national progress. Like the great wooden horse of Troy, which was brought into the city with shouts of joy, yet which was full of armed men for the city’s destruction, new pleasures and sensual delights are ushered into our community amid the plaudits of the crowd, only for our social undoing. The silly flirtations of modern life, the covert sneer at convention, chits of girls masquerading as men with their cigarettes and horsey talk, the consequent decay of chivalry among men, the delirium of the dance, the nasty suggestive story, and the utter inability of young people to find pleasure.in simple things, all point to a decay in moral fibre, and to the loosening of those bonds of honour and confidence which bind society together. As in a Japanese picture, there is no perspective, the near and the distant having equal prominence, so there is no background of eternity, no thought of God, in our life to-day. Let us eat and drink, let us dance and revel, let us enjoy to the full the present hour, for we shall be dead a long time, is the cynic’s cry. It is not for the preacher to assume an air of superiority and patronage after the manner of the poet, ‘The time is out of joint, O cursed spite That ever I was born to set it right.’ “ For the Christian is the happiest man on earth. He can laugh as heartily as the gayest roysteier, and his exhilaration brings no reaction of remorse. Mrs. Grundy, who was a mid-Victorian lady with a caustic tongue and clearly-defined ideas of propriety, is not dead any more than the medieval John Bull is dead, and she refuses to be everlastingly flouted or ignored, Public opinion is a strange nebulous thing, which is apt to condense at a great speed when some fool dares to challenge its might; and public opinion can be affected only by those who bring profound moral considerations to bear upon it. Herein lies the preacher’s task, so to influence public opinion that it will oppose what is evil and countenance what is good. The motto of the great city of Glasgow is : * Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Word,’ and if we want to boost our city, let us sedulously guard the Day of Rest from unnecessary toil and from the flouting of religion; let us cherish that Word of God which promotes national righteousness, and let us be vigilant against that frivolity, sensuality, and sin which will bring upon any land the Divine displeasure. If the times are going to the devil, be it ours, as lovers of God and our fellows, to get to the helm and to steer the vessel to another and a safer port.”