GUIDING THE YOUNG

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Volume 59, Issue 229, 30 October 1930, Page 6

GUIDING THE YOUNG

Per Press Association.

LORD BLEDISLOE ON MORALS. SUNDAT SCHOOL RALLY ADDRESSED.

WELLINGTON, Last night. Statistics published recently dealing with immorality in New Zealand were , referred- to by the Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, in the course of his remarks at the Wellington Sunday Scliool Union's rally. "Are we as pure in heart and action as we desire to be?" asked His Excellency. "Are we as pure in heart and action as the country and the Empire would like us to be? Don't let us deceive ourselves. Here in the Dominion, dislike it as _we may, we have in an official publication certain statistics wkich are not to the credit of New Zealand. Possibly, sometimes exaggerated dedu.ctions may be made from tliem. There can be no doubt that' those statistics suggest that many young people, wlien they enjoy the greater freedom of after life in the difficult period of adolescence, wlien temptation is so severe and we require all the courage we can find to l-esist it, are led into paths whicli all riglit-

minded people deplore, and whicli very often affect tlieir lives for many years after. " 'Blessed are the pure in heart.' Blessed still rnore, perhaps, are tlie pure in action. "Before we leave New Zealand we want to see those unfortunate statistics altered. 3Ve want to see them bettered. We look to you, who are in oharge of the Sunday Scliools, to take this blot off the escutcheon of New Zealand. "Let me suggest one way wliich will help to do it. If we want our young people to be refined, clean and pure, it is a very good thing to surrouud ourselves with things that make for refinement, cleanliness and purity, and not pictures, photograplis and other things that tend to demoralise. T cannot heJp tliinking, sometimes, wlien I go into scliools, that if we could put on the walls of onr scliools and our homes pictures and illust'rations -feilding to raise our minds to heautiful things, it would enable us to heautify our minds and make them more worthy of the great Empire to wliich we belong. "The Bihle will not do its best work amongst us uiiless it can make us happy. Let us do all in our power through the medium of our Sunday schools and afterwards to make this country c-lean, pure and happy."