A CALL TO PRAYER

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 151, 5 September 1941, Page 4

A CALL TO PRAYER

AT the instigation of His Majesty the King, Sunday next (September 7th) has been set aside as a Day of National Prayer. The call is to the peoples of the British Empire to iSaise their thoughts and voices to the Divine creator in supplication for guidance and deliverance in the face of continued cVinger and the threat- of invasion. From all corners of the earth the caU will be answered, for it is to England's lasting credit that whatever her faults in the past her people have never forgotten how to pray. This art of quiet contemplation upon higher and more spiritual things has run like a thread of gold through our storied history. Ever since the visit of St. Augustine, and the convertion of our barbaric ancestors from the Saxon Gods, the course of English history has been largely set by the church. Lapses in the past have occurred more than once, and the church has passed through its own stages of artificial tawdriness. We are no exception to deeds; of persecution and violence committed in the;name of the peace-loving Nazarene. Blots have occurred more than once in our spiritual history, yet to-day we are proud to see the essence of the Christian teaching welded deeply into our social system. The vast public hospitals are monuments to the humble teaching of the greatest instructor of all time; the pension, system which gives independence to old age, hope to the widow, and faith to the deserted are all born of words of the Master. Into the fabric of our communal life they have crept, one by one, since Great Britain, first became ashamed of the slave trade and the child labour which stained the early eighteenth century. High above these almost unconscious achievements stands the great work of the British and Foreign Bible Society and. the noble labour of a hundred kindred religious organisations in the mission fields throughout the world. It is with pride that we remember that from the Empire seventy-five per cent of the Christian missionaries are drawn. Thus though to many we may appear to becoming more and more hard-headed and sceptical the fact remains that we as a race have a record to be proud of- Freedom of worship has given us an open mind and the full recognition, of broad religion by the State is borne out by the slogans on the National Crest and Coat-cf-Arms and indeed upon the Imperial coinage of the Realm. Led by King George VI. the nation will on Sunday next be bowed in prayer. As it was with the Israelites of old "'They cried unto the Lord in their trouble; and\He delivered them out of their distress." May these prophetic words from the Psalms of David be borne out to-day as they were in the Biblical days.