The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. MONDAY, APRIL 18, 1927. THE HEART OF GAY AUCKLAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 22, 18 April 1927, Page 6

The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. MONDAY, APRIL 18, 1927. THE HEART OF GAY AUCKLAND

{T is good to have the evidence of responsible churchmen that life in Auckland is not all pleasure and pursuit of easy money. They attest firmly that at the heart of this gay city, the most care-free community in the Dominion, there is a quick sense of spirituality and an increasing appreciation of the things that count in the final sum of human experience. Scoffers may say that these religious a\ itnesses are prejudiced and thus prone to exaggerate the better side of everyday life. And, against their welcome testimony, it would be easy to present a superficial case proving outwardly at least that the community has been more eager to make Eastertide a carnival of sport and .merriment than a solemn festival of meditation and prayer. But it is never safe and hardly ever right to base judgment on superficialities. “The best Holy Week services in seven years"; that, briefly, is the testimony of Canon Pereival James who is not given to palaver or pretence. And the vicar of St. Mary’s Cathedral has added that “there has been a great deepening of the spiritual life, and very largely among the young people.” That, apart from weighty evidence from other sources, as to the’ active promise of a religious revival, is in itself an excellent answer to the assertion and widespread belief that Auckland is a centre of low commercial morality, gambling-, carousal, and pagan gaieties. It has been satirically observed in England that it is becoming more and more common to meet a man who has lately been to church. We may all hope that the satire will give way soon to satisfaction over the marked improvement in the quality of the spirit of English life. As Lord Esher recently pointed out the lesson of this fretful age “is the blindness of us all to the symptoms of social disease, our proneness to respectable optimism. . . . For the struggle between a half-educated Communism and a gross capitalism foretells a menace to our English social system.” And what is true of Great Britain is equally true of New Zealand. There is danger in national indifference to everything except pleasure and prosperity. It is essential to readjust values and get nearer to the sources of real happiness, which are not to be found- in the counting-house or in the haunts of carnival. Happily, the ehurehes are alert to the needs of the modern world and, without fuss or foolish compulsion, are making progress backward to a simpler life and an honest fellowship in things spiritual. And by far the greatest need of the times is a greater measure of individual character and responsibility. We need that in politics and local government, in commerce, in industry, and in everyday life. While the exercise and advancement of religion may safely be left to the care of the church, the common creed should be more discipline, harder work, less selfishness, and a wider practice of social justice.