PREMATURE PEACE DEPLORED.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1573, 6 July 1916, Page 3

PREMATURE PEACE DEPLORED.

In the course of his presidential address at the opening of the third session of the twentieth Synod of the Diocese of Wellington on Tuesday, Bishop Sprott referred in the following terms to the war. “We meet again under the shadow of the great war. It might seem that anyone speaking from this chair, could give utterance to only one desire, viz., for the speedy restoration of peace. Doubtless all men have this desire, and if peace were forthwith declared a sigh of immense relief would pass through all the warring nations. And yet I think we are bound for the present to keep (hat desire in abeyance. If such an instant peace were inconclusive, if it did not secure the cuds for which the Allied nations are fighting, then I think that they are right who warn ns that it would necessarily he followed hy instantaneous preparation on a vast scale for a renewal of the war; all our sacrifices would have been fruitless, and our children he compelled to do the dreadful work over again. If such would he the piubahle issue of an inconclusive peace, then surely the most; pacific of ns must feel that it were better to light on. “It seems to me that the great need of our people at this hour is fortitude —the power to endure and to preserve at all costs and in spite of all diMii'tillies. In the New Testament, fortitude —disguised in our authorised version under the woefully inadequate rendering, ‘patience’ —is set forth as the indispensable pre-condition of all great and worthy life —‘In your patience, your fortitude, ye shall win your souls.’ One great service which Iho Christian people mm render their country is to set an example of high fortitude.”