“OUTWARD BOUND”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 413, 23 July 1928, Page 14

“OUTWARD BOUND”

LESSONS FROM PLAY DRAMATIST AS TEACHER Basing a sermon on Sutton Vane’s play, “Outward Bound,” the Rev. L. Hunt, at the Mount Eden Presbyterian Church last evening, commented on the fact that the drama was once again becoming a medium for teachers and moralists. Mr. Hunt said that ‘ Outward Bound” was a strikingly original play containing lessons much neglected at the present time. It was not necessary to endorse the whole play, for some of it was not in accord with orthodox Christianity, but its main lessons were sound.

“The first lesson,” he said, “is that death has no power to change character. Some people imagine that burial means beatification, and that death has the strange power to make bad men good. No man will get to Heaven unless he takes some good with him.”

Mr. Hunt went on to say that the second truth of the play lay in the assurance that all would receive absolute justice in the end. Sutton Vane introduced as the judge a normal, healthy-minded man, capable of making correct assessments of character. Fie corresponded to the human Jesus of the Scriptures. “Absence of reference to the subject of repentance,” said Mr. Hunt, “is the principal weakness of the play, and in general outline it tends more toward the Roman Catholic view of purgatory than to the pure Protestant view.” Concluding, Mr. Hunt said that every soul was outward bound. “We are all sailing on the sea of life,” he added, “and we will all pass to the ethereal shores.”