MODERN CIVILISATION.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Volume 2, Issue 74, 1 March 1879, Page 2

MODERN CIVILISATION.

The Rev. J. King, formerly a missionary in Samoa, now resident in Sandhurst, preached to the volunteers on Hospital Sunday, and the following Ls a portion of his discourse. Civilisation and poverty seem to bo inseparable. To find a social paradise, where poverty is unknown, we must direct our steps not to the most highly civilised nations, but to people whom we are accustomed to describe as barbarians. Circumnavigate the globe and where will you find a state of society in which there are no poor men. You will find it where nature, with a lavish hand, provides a superabundance of food; you will find it in such tropical islands where the breadfruit treejtpringsj spontaneously from the soil, and the plants of the primeval forest yield more than enough for the wants of man. Amongst the patriarchal tribes of Polynesia you will find a state of social life in which poverty is absolutely unknown. But when we leave the primitive simplicity of such people and follow in the wake of civilisation wc are immediately surrounded by the cries of temporal distress. When civilisation dawns poverty takes its rise, and all along tho march the two keep pace together. In tho most highly civilised countries we find the most abject poverty. Look at the capital of our own Empire. The west-eud and east-end of London are terms which represent the wealth and poverty of a great nation ; unbounded affluence and helpless destitution dwell side by side. London is one of the great cities in which modern civilisation holds its Court, aud yet in the same city poverty finds a natural home. Whatever advantages may belong to the high state of civilisation and social refinement we enjoy at tho present time, a chronic state of poverty is part of our inheritance. This is not only true of old countries ami large cities; it is not only true ut tho heart of our great Empire that this chronic disease is felt; in every new country where we settle it makes its appearance. God has given us a rich possession in this land—we have untold acres of territory capable of raising food for a vast Empire—wu hnve undeveloped mineral wealth beneath our feet—we havo tho precious metals—we have the useful metals—we have coal—we have magnificent harbours for our shipping—we have a climate unsurpassed in its capabilities —and wo have only been in possession of this splendid inheritance for a few years, and yet poverty is already so common that in the very midst of our goldfields we cannot do without a Benevolent Asylum. When I was a boy in England I remember people used to sing abot.t Australia as a paradise of plenty, whore poverty was unknown. That the description uo longer applies to this laud is abundantly demonstrated. We havo expatriated ourselves from our Fatherland because there was not room for us there, but in this broad country poverty like a plague still clings to us—we cannot shako it off. Settle wherever wo may, so long as we follow the instincts and habits and customs of modern civilisation, and feel tho pressure of its artificial wants, so long mtJst we 1)0 prepared to face tho sad phenomena. Civilisation is sometimes spoken of as the regenerator of human society ; but regenerate as it may it cannot get rid of poor men and women and destitute children. Instead of doing this, it. seems to have the effect of creating them. It is in the palm groves of the Pacific that you will find social communes from which poverty is excluded, but along the track of enlightened nations you will everywhere see a demonstration of the fact we are assorting. Schemes havo been devised to alter this, but the most promising of these schemes have failed. Heedless of social reformers, the wheels of society havo continued to revolve raising one man to affluence, and carrying another down to penury and want. The poor have sometimes attempted by force to equalise the distribution of property. In Paris a few years ago, murder and pillage stalked forth, declaring that poverty and social inequalities should oome to an end. Are there no poor men in Paris to-day ? Hid the baptism of blood introduce a social millennium, which line given to the Parisians all things in common P Nothing of tho kind was accomplished. The reign of the commune was as short as it was hideous and to day wealth parades the parks, and destitution bides itself in the hack streets of the city. Whatever the future may do for us, so far, neither peaceful effort nor bloodshed havo been able to effect tho reform. In the light of this great historical fact listen again to our text—" For the poor shall never ceaso out of the land, therefore I command thee saying, thou shalt open thy hand wide, unto the brother, to thy poor and to thy needy in thy land." Those are tho words of Moses, the Jewish lawgiver and they are echoed by a greater than Moses. " For yo have the poor with you always and whensoever ye will ye may do them good." Tho truth uttered by 51oses WM

thus continued by Christ, and although it is now more than 3,000 yean since our text was written it describes a state of society which is existing in Sandhurst and throughout the civilised world to-day. The poor have not yet ceased out of the land, and there seems no immediate prospect of their doing so. We may lament the fact, but is poverty after all an unmixed evil P We have spoken of the social communes of Polynesia where the cry of the poor is never heard. Some may be inclined to envy such a condition of social life. I confess that those scenes of patriarchal simplicity are not without their fascination. But to imagine that exemption from poverty is the greatest of all blessings, is bad logic. There may bo a fascination about such a state of life, but it is not the school in which great and good men are educated. Show me a community who know nothing of poverty, and I will show you an indolent jieople without enterprise or ambition, a people who have risen only a little higher than the brutes, and who have done nothing either for their own elevation or the olevation of mankind.