“BLOT ON ESCUTCHEON.”
UNjFCRTDNATE STATISTICS.
REMARKS BY LORD BLEDISLOE.
The statistics published recently dealing with immorality in New Zealand were referred to by His Excellency the Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, in the course of his remarks at the Wellington Sunday School Union’s rally at the Town Hall on Tuesday evening. One of tlie greatest of the Great Master’s sermons, said Ilis Excellency, was the Sermon on the Mount, ill which were to be found the following words: “Blessed are the inure in heart, for they shall see God.” “Are we as pure in heart and action as we shall desire to he?” asked His Excellency. “Are we as iiiu'C in heart and action as our country and the Empire would like us to be? Don’t let us deceive ourselves. Here, in this Dominion, dislike it as wo may, we have in an official publication certain statistics which are not to the credit of New Zealand. Possibly sometimes exaggerated deductions may he made from them, but there can be no doubt that those statistics suggest that many young people, some, no doubt, who have attended Sunday school, when they enjoy the greater freedom of afterlife in' that difficult period of adolescence when temptation is so severe and we require all the courage we can .find to resist it, are led into paths which all right-min-ded people deplore, and which very often affect their lives for many years after. “ ‘Blessed are the pure in heart,’ ” repeated His Excellency. “Blessed still more, perhaps, are the ipure in action. Before we leave New Zealand we want to see those unfortunate statistics altered. We want to see them bettered. We look to you in this hall who are in charge of the Sunday schools to take that blot off the escutcheon of New Zealand. Let me suggest one way which will help to do it. If we want the young people to he refined and clean and pure, it is a very good thing to surround ourselves with things that make for refinement, cleanliness, and purity, not pictures, photographs, and other things that tend to demoralise. I cannot help thinking sometimes when T go into the schools that- if we could put on the walls of our schools and our homes pictures illustrations tending to raise our minds to beautiful things it would enable us to beautify our minds and maJke them more worthy of the great Empire to which we belong. The Bible will not do its best work amongst 11s unless it can make us happy and beautify our lives. That can never he if we find ourselves tempted to do those things which, as British subjects and servants of God, we arc ashamed to do.
“One most encouraging text in the Good Book which lias been a source of strength to many of us who have suffered from temptation —young people, don’t suppose the older ones have not had similar temptations, because they have! — is that iu which we are told: ‘God will with the temptation also make a way to escape that ye may he able to bear it.’ Let us do all in our power, through the medium of our Sunday schools and afterwards, to make this country clean and pure and happy. If we do that we shall be doing- our work in the way that God Himself would want us to, and in a way worthy of this country and the great British Empire to. which we belong-.” (Applause) .
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Manawatu Herald, Volume LI, Issue 4525, 1 November 1930, Page 4
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580“BLOT ON ESCUTCHEON.” Manawatu Herald, Volume LI, Issue 4525, 1 November 1930, Page 4
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