CRAVEN CREATURES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10535, 23 January 1912, Page 4

CRAVEN CREATURES.

The Rev. S. D. Yarrmgton,' secretary of the Anglican. Mission Zone Tund, preaching at St. Peter's Anglican Church, Wooloemooloo, List week, said;— "We hve in an age possessing the highest ethics and form of civic government. Yet in this fair city of Sydney, m spite of cducationa? progress," extending possibilities, and ! opportunities multiform, there prevails with all its brazen perfidy and conspicuity the abominable sin of .wife desertion. Has it come to pass that our community is losing its, magnanimity when w,e realise, as Christian people, that this sin,, execrable in the extreme, like some grim spectre, hideous and awful, is :issumJing vaster proportions every year? [Our population increases; but. «ad it lis to have to admiti and tiki* is no 'mere hyperbole, that this daa-ic; blot on our civilisation is ever assuming larger dimensions, is the fact realised that in New South Wales last year 700 wives were deserted by their liusbaiids, and had to seek pol/'.ce assistance to bring their husbands to a sense of their responsibility, or that, as any Mission Zone workerknows only too-well,-there were hundreds of other wive* deserted wlho preferred to suffer m silence, rather than let their great heart sorrow be known? What an outrageous tragedy in the sight of God and goodthinking men! WQiat more heart-' rending picture could be depicted than a deserted wuo in a wretched hovel, 'with helpless children endeavouring to keep the wolf from the door, fighting a most unequal battle, wlnile the pariah husband slinks away, a craven, despicable creature, his sacred duty to God, to tiome aiiid country. It is often said that these things exi&t in every city, hut few in New South Wales strongly . oppose such a preposterous statement, and ■ make the prediction- that these tilings must not be. Is it not j high time for the church to moro I fully endeavour to eliminate this wretched state of affairs?