He believed the reason was that we were engaged in trying to build up a material tower of Babel reaching up to some heaven. Germany had gone much further than any other nation in the pursuit of material aims, it had brought about the great war, but Germany was not alone responsible for the present state of affairs.
Many people thought they were going to make the world ideal by a mere change in social conditions. Materialism, as they were aware, had invaded even the churches. This was a lay league to impress upon people the fact that people must give service, and that religion is service. This materialism was very seriously invading our educational system, which made little provision for spiritual progress.
Now we were in the second generation of those who had had secular education, and too many parents were either indifferent or incompetent to give religious teaching. The objects of the league were first to arouse the public conscience, to galvanize existing welfare institutions, and to establish clubs where necessary.
Ex-bishop’s condition hailed
The proceedings of the first session of the nineteenth Synod of the Diocese of Dunedin were continued in St Paul’s Schoolroom yesterday afternoon. Bishop Richards presided.
The Rev Fynes-Clinton said he had been commissioned by Bishop Nevill to express his thanks for the kindly message of sympathy conveyed to him from the Synod. When he left Bishop Nevill that morning his condition was practically unchanged, but he was expecting in the course of an hour or so to get out and sit in the sun.
(Applause.) On his own initiative he suggested that his lordship’s many friends would be doing a kindness if they would refrain from ringing up Bishopsgrove more often than was absolutely necessary.
Aiming for prohibition
The 49th anniversary of the Order of Good Templars in New Zealand was celebrated last night by a social gathering at Kroon’s Hall, Moray Place. Bro T.H. Dalton GCT occupied the chair, associated with him being Bro South CT. In his opening remarks Mr Dalton mentioned that the first lodge was opened in Invercargill in 1872, and the second in Dunedin exactly 49 years ago last night. It was instituted in America in 1852, and the platform drawn up was total abstinence for the individual and prohibition for the state.
It had never been found necessary to alter that platform.
Equality of sex was also recognised from the first, the membership being open to all. Since the order was established in New Zealand a total of 100,000 members had undergone initiation. A jubilee celebration would be held next year, and in the meantime as many lodges as possible would be opened.
He expressed a fervent hope that the jubilee year would also prove the year of the introduction of prohibition into the dominion. — ODT, 27.10.1921.
