SEXUAL IMMORALITY.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 November 1922, Page 9

SEXUAL IMMORALITY.

BARRIER TO RELIGION. AUSTRALIAN BISHOP’S VIEWS. Sydney, October 18. shocking growth of sexual immorality is one of the groat obstacles to the spread of the gospel in Australia,” said the Bishop of Willochra, Dr. Gilbert White, in an address to the South Australian Synod. “Tn my opinion this widespread immorality is before all things the cause of our halfempty. churches, and the gehcral indifference to religion. It creates a barrier between the soul and God, and poisons the moral and social life. It is the real cause of many other evils, of drunkenness and extravagance, of lying and deceit, of unhappy homes and miserable lives. To shut our eyes to an evil so wide-spread is sheer folly. “The particular reason why f reier to it here is that the Commonwealth statistics show dearly that the evil begins to a large extent with our boys and girls, and in my opinion, this is often the case because the parents have been either too earfless, too cowardly, or, not seldom, too conscious stricken, to warn their children of the moral dangers to which their sox exposes them, and their, children are in consequence ruined in body and soul simply as the result of their parents’ neglect. It is difficult to exaggerate the guilt of parents who thus betray their child’s future to save themselves a difficult or unpleasant tWk.”