SALVE SOLVE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 560, 12 January 1929, Page 6

SALVE SOLVE

THE QUIET CORNER.

(Written for THE SUN by the Rev. Charles Chandler. Assistant City Missioner.) Bernard Shaw, in one of his famous prefaces, refers to a certain world-wide philanthropic institution as being the ointment of modern society. Its business was 'to salve rather than to solve. It is undoubtedly necessary that temporary relief should be available forthose who fall by the -wayside, on the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Jericho, but let us beware lest in easing the smart, we remove the goad which drives the sufferer on toward a permanent solution of his difficulties. A great many people set out to go to the dentist, but directly they catch sight of his name-plate the toothache vanishes. The desire for a stopping or an extraction consequently disappears, and the visit is postponed. Nature, however, does not postpone her icork. The process of decay continues, and the ultimate cost of having matters righted is greatly increased because of the delay. To raise one loan in order to pay the interest on a previous loan may postpone the day of final reckoning, but that day of final reckoning must come. We must change the A into an O, and seek rather to solve than to salve our problems. We must aim at extirpating the canker rather than at easing the smart. Our religious problems are merely salved when we endow a Church, or build an orphanage; but they are solved directly we strive to get into a personal relationship with God. When Pilate washed his hands he salved the problem of his relationship with Christ,' but when Dismas, the penitent thief upon the cross, prayed to be remembered of Jesus in paradise, he solved in the twinkling of an eye the problem of Ms eternal salvation. The trend of modern politics seems to be in the direction of salving rather than solving. In the direction of doles and temporary relief, rather than in the direction of social reconstruction. Herein lies the main difference between a politician and a statesman. The former would by all manner of compromise and expediency ward off the day of final solution, while the latter, with courage in both hands, will seek to right the wrong upon the spot, and so save the nation from, the expense of endless postponement, which, in the final analysis is the policy of cowardice. NEXT WEEK: TIN HARES.