DAYS OF PRAYER

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2529, 2 August 1915, Page 2

DAYS OF PRAYER

WEDNESDAY AND SUNDAY NEXT

From tho pulpit of St. Paul's ProCathedral yesterday morning, the Rev. A. M. 'Johnson read the pastoral letter recently issued by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York calling upon tha nation to concentrate upon the successful prosecution of the war tho full power of its spiritual, moral, and material resources. Tho word's of the Archbishops are very appropriate to the present critical stage of the war. Tho Archbishops remind the nation that "tho spirit arrayed against us threatens the very foundations of civilised order in Christendom. It wields immense and ruthless power. It can only bo decisively rolled back if we, for our part, concentrate the whole strength of body, mind, and soul wliich our nation, our Empire, holds.

"After ten months of war we see more clearly than at. first the greatness and the severity of tho ordeal which is putting the spirit of our nation to tho tost. What is at stake is not only tho honour of our flighted word, but our safety and freedom, and the place entrusted to us among tho nations of tho earth. . . .We therefore look

with confidence to tho Government, deliberately chosen to represent us all, that it shall take, and take with courage, whatever steps it considers to be necessary to summon and control every possible resource which we have of body and brain, of wealth and industry. The letter proceeds to address the Church in particular. _ "It is the offics of the Church of Christ to quicken and to guido the spiritual forces on which the strength, the steadfastness, and the nobility of the national spirit depend. Are these forces as alert, as watchful, ■as persistent now as they ought to be? We have cause to fear that they liavo languished a little since (■lie earlier weeks of the war. A reaction comcs,, and it may be that the Whitsuntide message of the ' Holy Spirit's gift is. falling upon cars which have become less swift to hear. . . .