DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 249, 11 January 1928, Page 5

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

YOUTH AND RELIGION ' (Copyright, 1928) the Religious Education Congress held at the Los Angeles Chamber ot Commerce, several speakers voiced their praise of the youth of to-day. ascribing to him qualities of mind and morals and courage that compare favourably with the youth of the past. Dr. Lewis, president of George Washington University, held that this is the most interesting and most misinterpreted generation in history. “The cry that this is a ‘jazz-mad’ age,” he said, “goes out from church and college. Yet we may well ask what are we doing to give the youth the right ideas? Give them a religion that ties up with life, and don’t expect them to sit and mull over abstractions,” he added. It is quite popular to say that the youth of to-day is jazz-mad, that it is flippant and that it has departed from the standaidsof religion. There never was a greater mistake. There are as many serious-minded youth a 3 there ever were. In fact, the questions of conscience and of God and the like, bear harder upon the mind of the youth than it does upon the interest of old age. Statistics show that most young people who are "converted” undergo this experience about the time of puberty. We all know from our own experience that youth takes great moral questions more seriously than he ever does later. The questions ot right and wrong are eternal, and somehow in the West--ern mind these questions are linked up with their attitude toward the Infinite. Youth is serious enough and anxious enough, and it is for us to give them the kind of religion that finds exemplification in right living.