Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 1905.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXII, Issue 42779, 16 September 1905, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 1905.

2his above all—tothme own self be true, And it must follow as the night the dag Ihou cansi not then be false to any man Shakespeare.

In the religious world, this month has been somewhat remarkable for what may be described as the Waihi Revival sensation. Such revivals have repeatedly occurred at different periods in the world’s history; the Reformation, the Methodist stir, the Great Awakening in North Ameiica, the Oalvinistic revival, and the Moody and Sankey mission of ithirty years ago, are a few of them and the most recent, the Great Welsh Revival, of which Mr Evan Roberts, was the central figure, is the one to which the Waihi revival may be most likened, for Waihi is a mining town, and the Welsh revival took place in the mining districts of Wales, the chapels being crowded on week-day evenings with thousands of rough miners with their women folk who listened with rapt attention to simple preaching and joined with enthusiasm in the singing which appealed so powerfully to them. There were many “ sudden conversions.” Men of careless or evil lives stood up to “testify” to their faith in higher things. In some places the public houses were almost deserted, the police magistrates found their work materially reduced, and colliery managers were surprised at the steadier work and absence of the usual blasphemies from the pit galleries. The lives of many thousands were, for the time being, entirely changed. Is this going to be the case at Waihi ? It would seem that these revivals were the reactionary result of a prolonged peiiod of religious laxity in a community, and must do a ceitain amount of good, even if their duration is only brief, for the human mind that can be lifted temporarily —even though it should rapidly slide back into its former ways —is of far greater worth than the mind which is utterly incapable of inspiration or self-im provement. The eyes of the whole country will be turned to Waihi, in the hopes perhaps, that this movement, be it a permanent or a fleeting one, may grow, for the fact that such movements do take place from time to time, to some extent improves the world, and renders it a better place even for those who are not personallyinterested in such drastic changes.