“WHAT FOOLS!”

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 420, 6 August 1908, Page 2

“WHAT FOOLS!”

“ What fools ! ” That, accordiug to Dr. Tudor Jones, at the Unitarian meeting at Wellington on Sunday night, would be the first impression of Jesus if He came to Wellington at the present time. “What would He say?” queried the lecturer. If He walked down the main thoroughfares, and watched men in the grasp of a feverish and vapid commercialism, He would cry aloud to them to slacken their pace. For in Wellington, as in all the large centres of civilisation throughout the world, He would find that the spirit of commercialism had eaten into the heart of modern civilisation. Men carried it with them through the day, they bore it home with them at night, and it even disturbed their dreams. They had no time to pay any attention to the mind and the soul. They became hard and narrow and unspiritual. They lost all fine ideals, and no nation in that state could ever do anything worth talking about. If Jesus examined the social conditions, He would find that this country, which boasts of its democracy, was not democratic at all; He would find keener divisions, more coteries and cliques, than ever existed in England. He would find those most honoured who could give the best dinner parties, and the smartest afternoon teas. He would abominate the divisions and distinctions and social conditions ; He would spue them out of his mouth, and He would insist upon a revision of human valuations. If He entered any of the churches and sat and looked and listened, He would find that His teachings had become so overloaded with theology and supernaturalism that He could not recognise them as His; and He would find, only too often, that the churches were mantles merely to cover scoundrels and sneaks. The cure for all these evils would be found in a return to a simple and commousense mode of life. Men should have time to think and to read—to read, especially, the great book of Nature. They should have time to pursue literature and science and art, and if New Zealanders did not turn from absorption in commercialism to these higher things, there could be little hope for the future of the Dominion.