"MAKING MEN."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 290, 11 May 1914, Page 4

"MAKING MEN."

ADDRESS AT THE BROTHERHOODS, Despite the boisterous weather, thcrt' was a good attendance at the meeting of the New Plymouth Brotherhood yesterday, when an interesting address on "Making Men," was delivered by the Rev. WT F. White, a Baptist missionary lately returned from the Indian neld: At the outset the speaker congratu- ' , lated New Plymouth on the possession of a body like the Brotherhood, and ex- '. pressed his pleasure at b<;ing asked toaddress one of its meetings. He agreed with the chairman (Mr. Hirst) that a heart to heart talk to a body of men was likely to bring out the best in the ( speaker, freed from the shackles which bound him in addressing an ordinary gathering. i In dealing with the nany pha3eg of Indian life, Mr. White dealt forcibly '• with many matters whbh could not have been presented to a iui::ed audience. Mission work in India was, he said, the work of making nwn and making the race. He had always found thj principle true that unless a man's relations with his God were right, there must be something wrong with his relations with hia felloH'im'ii. Before his spiritual relations could be properly iixul, he must be sure that his God was right. The gods of the riindus were not immaculate beings like Him whom the Christians worshipped, hut one whose worship admitted all sorts of moral laxities. The Hindu himself was no man, but a grovelling, weak-kneed cringer, with no backbone. That was the effect of the laxity of his religion. The Hindu and the Miihommcdan had had the life knocked out of them. He told some stories of the difficulties of mission J work, going intimately into the subject, and drove home the contention that India's only hope lay in nrn~ mHrtrri 1 towards Christianity. 7* Mr. vv'hite, at the conclusion of his address, answered several questions on Indian life. He said he could not express an opinion a3 to whether it was advisable to allow the present influx of Hindus into New Zealand to continue, because he was not satisfied on that ' point himself. While he" admitted/ that under the principles of brotherhood the Hindus had a right to live, and to enter Now Zealand, there was a big economic' question to be considered. He was of opinion that India was not ripe for self government, as the people as a whole were illiterate, and no thought that the concessions which the British Government had made satisfied all but the extremists. Missionaries of all denominations in. India, worked shoulder to shoulder, and ' there was no over-lapping.