THOUGHTS FOR THE TIMES

Evening Star, Issue 23382, 27 September 1939, Page 10

THOUGHTS FOR THE TIMES

“The Europe of to-day is very far from the Europe which many of us had sincerely and earnestly hoped for 20 years ago. But the gospel of ‘the power of an indissoluble life ’ still remains for our comfort and our encouragement. “ There are—presumably there will be in the future as in the past—epochs of retrogression. Yet on the whole the advance is greater than the retrogression. If ground is for a while lost, it is in the end recovered, and further ground is added to it. The Kingdom of God spreads. . . . “ Do not let us in critical hours — and the hours are critical—show ourselves weaklings and cowards, half afraid to bear our witness,' more or less afraid to commit ourselves definitely to the highest idealism. Let us not enter upon the future as those whose lights are almost extinguished. Let us not look forward to its tasks and responsibilities and obligations, to ite strain and stress, to its controversies and conflict, as those who are so bruised and injured that they have little or no strength or vitality left in them. “ It is not for us to bo afraid of taunts about impossible loyalties or lost causes. Let us resolve that wc will respond wholeheartedly and unreservedly, without fear or faltering; to those calls to service which the coming months may bring with them.”—From a book of sermons by the late Rev. the Hon. W. E. Sevan, entitled ‘ln the Beginning.’