SAINT OR TIGER?

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3892, 8 January 1929, Page 4

SAINT OR TIGER?

VICE NOT INHERITED. SCIENCE VERSUS THEOLOGY. London, November 15. ISIr Berkeley Moyniihan, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, made a striking declaration at Bees'ttone, Leeds, of his belief in the essential goodness of humjan nature.

Touching on the speech made by the jPrime Minister at the recent League of Nations’ Union anniversary, he said: —■ ‘it is not often that I .differ from ■the Prime Minister, but I did find cause to quarrel with him when he spoke o'f the tiger instibets and the tiger impulses aS»a part pf pur nature. Ido not believe that at .all. I do not Ibelieve .that vice is in the smallest degree an inherited quality. ’ “I believe that children (are born the purest things that the world knows, and that whatever vice creeps into the life of a child ’is something that creeps in from outside. I believe there is far more of the saint than of the tiger in mankind. “I meet people, as every surgeon idoes,' in the great crises of their lives, the great .testing time of their characters, and I ,am sure that when people under my own eyes are put into the crucible of affliction it is solid gold that m’ost often comes out. That is my consistent experience of m'ankdnd. “I think we are all, from the Prime Minister downwards, a little apt to disparage pur fellow-crea-tures. There is the nugget of pure gold in the heart of every one of ,us. “Men and women are also far too prone to belittle their God. My quarrel with theologians—l speak as a man of science—is very serious. There have been published innumerable tracts on religion against science. That is all the most utter Inonsense. “My quarrel with theologians is that they make their God such a shrimp. The man of science has a God far bigger than the God that can he contained within the four walls of any creed. I would ask you never Ito measure your God with :& foot rule. “The cross Christ is bearing today is made by ithe ignoi'ance, stupidity, apathy, and superstitions of mankind, and I am not sure that the fetters that bind Christ are not the fetters of the doctrines of imany of the churches. I think that where science in the end Avill come in will he to set Christ free from that cross and to undo those chain's ' that tether Him.”