“Sensual Devils!”

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 91, 8 April 1914, Page 5

“Sensual Devils!”

BISHOP SPEAKS VICE. THE NEED FOR COURAGE. jLPhe PaESM Association.] Auckland, April 7. “That most terrible vice, the one that leaves us lower than the brutes,” were the epithets applied to sensualism by Dr. Averill, Bishop or Auckland, to-day, in the course or one of ids mid-day addresses, which are attracting so much attention locally. “Are we not backward in teaching our children that great mystery, the origin of life?” he asked. “Are we not icttiug them go out into the world to learn it, probably from someone with a dirty mind, because we haven’t the courage to do our duty? “Then there is the evil of bad literature. Are we doing all we can to com bat it? And what about that most devilish tiling, the common saying that it is all right for a young man to sow his wild oats, so long as he settles down later? Do we allow our children to go two or three or more nights a week to picture theatres? 1 agree that such shows, if properly conducted, may do much good, but otherwise they may do an enormous amount of harm.

“Then, are we thinking of eugenics? Are we content to allow the venereally diseased person to go about poisoning cho community? Look at the mental hospitals and gaols. There you see the effects of all this. We see too much of the reaping and little of the sowing nowadays,” said the Bishop in conclusion.

“Sensuality is robbing man of his religion. It is killing Christianity; it is killing the spiritual sense.” The Bshop made a reference to the ivhite slave traffic. Speaking again of Herod, he said that some such sensual and devilish brutes are behind what we call nowadays the white slave traffic. They are continually searching after new sensations. “ ‘Sensual devils,’ I can only call them. Very well, you may say, we are not going to have this trade in New Zealand, but do not be too sure that it will not mine here. My brothers, if you are nen, careful of the purity of your wives and your daughters, you will keep watchful, for this trade is very likely to come to New Zealand.”