SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 83, 16 July 1910, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

MAN'S PLAIN DUTY.

THE SELFISH WIFE.

The Archbishop of York delivered a striking address at the annual meeting of the Sheffield Church Federation on April 25. He said that three of the most obviously anti-social sins at present at work in' our midst were lust, drink and gambling. There was no crime that a man could commit which was more deadlv to the race to which he belonged and to his country than undermining and sapping the strength of body and mind, which was meant to he used in honest labor. The primary duty of man was to keep his body clean and pure. Gambling, said his Grace, spread abroad among the people the idea that they could build up wealth without honest industry, and whether it was a man indulging in a ''rubber boom," or a man betting on the result of a footba.ll match; it was the same spirit of excitement, of trying to get money upon some other basis "than legitimate industry and honest work.

DIFFICULT IDEALS. Referring to some of the opinions elicited by the Divorce Commission, the Archbishop said it seemed to be taken for granted that once it was a hard thing to be true to an ideal the ideal must be given up; the people could not be expected to make a sacrifice to be true to it. That was at the root of the. whole matter. Take a case where it seemed almost intolerable to ask a man to go on living with his wife. Was it so hard that it demanded the changing of the law to provide relief for the individual? Communities, like individuals, must have their ideals. Was it this country's wish that the ideal of marriage should be as high as possible, as near the Christian ideal as it could be brought? If so, they must be prepared to say that the community must make sacrifices, even if they were hard sacrifices in the case of individuals, in order to be true to the ideals. SHRINKING FROM SACRIFICE.

President Roosevelt had addressed some powerful words to the people of France, and he (the Archbishop) thought they equally applied to the people of England. There was a general shrinKing from sacrifice. One of the greatest sacrifices a man could make was to overcome his own selfishness, to marry and set up a home, and bring into the world as many honorable gifts which he was entitled to —the children of his home—as he saw it was possible to support. A man, when he married, should see that he did not use the privilege God had given him for any other purpose. Sometimes it meant a man waiting longer than he wished before he married, and putting, away many comforts in order to support the children. Sometimes the women of these modern times shrank from the honorable pain which they were called upon to bear. The result was that methods were introduced to enable man to get pleasure out of marriage without discharging the primary responsibilities with which God had endowed him. It appeared to him that the source of this incapacity for sacrifice sprang from the fact that men were not trying to accept Christianity as the foundation of life.

"• HOXEST JOHX' BURXS." The greatest need of our English democracy was an improvement in the personal character of its citizens. Democracy was built upon the personal character of its citizens. The time was coming when they must ask those who were taking the lead among the working people to be a little more like one who of late they were beginning to belittle—honest John Burns—(loud applause; who called a spade a spade. Those who wished to be the friends of the working classes must be those who were prepared to wage war against the evils to which he had referred.

THE WORLD'S RELIGIOUS CENSUS. In a religious census of the world which he has just published, Dr. H. Zeller, director of the Statistical Bureau in Stuttgart, estimates that of the 1,544,510,000 people in the world, 534,940,000 are Christians, 175,290,000 are Mahomedans, 10,860,000 are Jews, and 823.420,000 are heathen. Of these 300,000.000 are Confucians, 214,000,000 are Brahmans, and 121,000,000 Buddhists, with other bodies of lesser numbers. In other words, out of every thousand of the earth's inhabitants, 346 are Christians, 114 are Mahomedans, 7 are Israelites, and 533 are of other religions. In 1885, in a table estimating the population of the world at 1.461,285,500kthe number of Christians was put at 130,284,500, of Jews at 7,000,000, of Mahomedans at 230,000.000, and of heathen at 794,000,000.

AN AWKWARD SITUATION. jgThe course of true love, running (poothly, has placed the rector and churchwardens of Widford, a rural village near the country town of Essex, in a somewhat unusual difficulty. It seems that courting couples are in the habit of walking from Chelmsford to Widford on Sunday evenings, and they flock into the church in suclTnumbers that the regular congregations are crowded out. In'consequence the church officials are at a loss to know what to do. They cannot very well exclude Edwin and Angelina as they arrive, arm in arm; yet, on the other hand, Widford parishioners find the pews occupied when they put in an appearance. Years ago it used to be the custom to separate the sexes in Widford Church, the men sitting on one side of the building and the women on the other. The re-adoption of this old plan has been hinted at.

CHINA MISSIONS. Lord William Cecil in his recent hook writes: "I am happy to be able to say that a splendid work is being carried on by the Presbyterian missions; they have shown to the Northern Chinese another form of courage than that which was shown by the warriors of Russia and Japan." One of the most valuable chapters of the book is that on Roman Catholic Missions. Of these he writes from personal knowledge. After examining the history of the Roman missions in the Chinese Empire, he says: "The Roman ChurcD is "rowing stronger, not weaker, now that she has los' the support of French diplomacy, and ; • missions have entered upon their tii,rd epoch, when they are preaching Christianity without any special support of a foreign Government, and are succeeding. For there are few bodies of people in this world who are more heroic and devoted than the Roman missionaries; they have died of fever, have been massacred, they live on a miserable pittance. I was told that one enlightened missionary, once a professor in the Paris University, lived on £l2 a year; and their heroism and self-denial reaps a large reward." The author speaks with hearty praise of the Roman Catholic orphanages, in which poor and outcast girls are trained with infinite care and kindness. "Many a life has been lai.l down <-o that these children might lie Christians.'''