OXFORD GROUP

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 84, 6 October 1938, Page 17

OXFORD GROUP

GREAT HOUSE PARTY

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

(By Air Mai!, from "The Post's" London

Representative.)

LONDON, September 8. i Two trains from London carried 600 members of the Oxford Group for the assembly at Interlaken, Switzerland, whither they were preceded a week ago by Dr. Frank Buchman, the leader, and 250 members. Some 45 nations are represented in the Interlaken gathering, with altogether about 5000 members. In his inaugural address Dr. Buchman said that a just and lasting peace in the world could only.be achieved by creating such a spirit throughout Europe that nations, even in times of decisive decisions, would be guided by qualities over and above those of human wisdom, which had so often failed. , To do this was to bridge a seemingly impossible and humanly hopeless situation. ' It meant giving satisfaction and security to all, and a sense of justice that would enable each to .See, not only his own difficulties, but the difficulties of others as well. Such qualities must range above party, class, and faction, and above nations. To drive away the clouds which were hanging over the whole of Europe it was, said Dr. Buchman, necessary, to reach a whole new level of thinking, willing, and living. The aim of the Oxford Group ever since the war had been to give a new pattern for statesmanship and a new level of responsible thinking. But this could orily.be given to those who were living under God's guidance, and whose spirit had been changed by daily contact with and obedience to God. LESSON OF HISTORY. The particular genius of the Group, which had made it effective in so many countries, was that it went to the root > of the problem—the need for a changel of heart. A wave of absolute unselfishness throughout the nations would be the end of war. Moral re-armament was a reality, and under it every nation would find its own prestige maintained because of the new responsibilities it would undertake. ' . The" Oxford Group had set itself the difficult task of trying to liquidate the cost of bitterness and fear, which mounted daily. The odds were seemingly against it, but in the past, history showed that nations had been delivered by one man. Nothing, then, was impossible to a group of people operating in every nation and giving a new level of thinking to.all. Such a group might well prove that man's extremity was God's opportunity. They could, and they would, generate a moral and spiritual force that was powerful enough to remake the world. Two huge belts, one through the Mediterranean Sea and the other through the Pacific Ocean, have 94 per cent, of the world's earthquakes within their zones.