BACK TO CHURCH CRUSADE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 April 1939, Page 11

BACK TO CHURCH CRUSADE

(To the Editor.) Sir,—In Masterton, as elsewhere, there are distinct signs of a revival in religion which presages a return to mid-Victorian times when it was considered good form, at least, for heads of families to attend Divine worship at least once every Sunday throughout the year, their children of those days still remembering them, best of all, for just these things. Taking sad lesson from the return to paganism in Germany, where united family worship and the singing of hymns in the home of an evening was once an established practice, men are accepting the challenge to stand firm to Christian precepts ere, even in nontotalitarian countries, a back to church and religious observance crusade is too late.

In these days of too great tolerance in all vital matters such as these, too much store is set by leaving to our teachers of Sabbath schools the only splendid examples of our fast diminishing adult Christian faith. Were every church and Sunday school in the British Empire closed tomorrow, and the dead buried without ritual of any kind, and the living left to their own devices in the matter of baptisms, confirmations and marriage ceremonies, it might well be brought home to even the most callous among its millions of more devout peoples that, after all, cur national wish to be considered a Christian people meant some sort of sacrifice (to uphold its transcending influence upon both family and national life) on our part, as well as those willing to sacrifice their time and leisure (in fighting against a subtle form of paganism peculiarly our own) to a much greater extent. Throughout our great Empire at the present moment, people of every creed are flecking to their own places of worship, praying for peace, but not knowing the moment the tumult of war will be heard, alas, in its place. Our Anzac Day services further bring home to us, as a Christian people, what in the name of supreme sacrifice is meant by the words “For God, and King and Empire—these died that others may live” seen on the many war memorials here in New Zealand, and elsewhere abroad. I arri, etc, “C.E.M.S.” Masterton, April 16. I