Preacher’s Maxims

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 362, 24 May 1928, Page 16

Preacher’s Maxims

MISS ROYDEN PHILOSOPHIC f + From “ Sow Can We Put the World In Order? ” a lecture delivered last evening by the English preacher, Miss Maude Royden. Drink as a medicine?—l don’t think it’s worth a button. ... The League of Nations is the one hope of the civilised world. Nature punishes the fool because God! demands that we should use our higher faculties, * * * Scientists and theologians have both made blunders; but the scientists are readier to admit their mistakes. A law on a statute book can be broken, but a law of nature cannot be broken. We cannot dodge it, or find a day on which it won’t work. ... Life for some is only a miserable effort to escape from poverty and unemployment. I am not asking for champagne and oysters; but I am pleading for daily bread. ... No thinking person in the 20th century can fail to see the difference between the power of science, and the pathetic impotence of statesmen, social reformers and diviners. The difference between a happy and an unhappy life is this: In the happy life we do the work that we have a liking for; in the unhappy we work as we are forced to work. Everybody wants to he intoxicated sometimes. Saints and prophets are God-intoxicated, and some people are intoxicated by beauty, but we all want taking out of ourselves. We should though, find gladness in the higher forms of escape. The more showy parts in the drama of life will always be cast for men. The first claim on vitality, love and care of women, must always be childbearing. The coming of women into New Zealand public life has not resulted in any spectacular legislation.