GOAL OF MANKIND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 April 1940, Page 9

GOAL OF MANKIND

—— HOPES AND ASPIRATIONS. "Even supposing that natural science were optimistic about man's ultimate destiny upon this earth, would not such a doctrine be profoundly pessimistic about humanity as a whole?” asked Dr J. S. Whale in a recent address. "If the goal of the whole world process is a world of pleasant garden cities—with tyranny and poverty, disease and war wiped right out—the plodding, pathetic multitudes through thousands of years will have been sacrificed, generation after generation, for the sake of the lucky generations who are to reach and enjoy this fardistant Utopia. The toiling generations of the present end of the long past will have had no eternal value in themselves. Their citizenship is not in heaven. For them to seek an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away is utterly vain. They arc like locusts, filling the ravine with millions innumerable of their dead bodies, only to make a useful road for those fortunate enough to be bringing up the rear. If we may not seek the city that hath foundations whose builder and maker is God; if Babel is still the symbol of our doom; if there be no truth in the transcendent affirmations of our faith that sinful man is not surrounded by an abyss of nothingness, but that lie comes from God. is redeemed by God. and will be raised up beyond time and death in God's new creation at the last; if there be no truth hero but only the wishful thinking of a dwindling minority of men—then all the rhetoric about living on as a remembered influence in the minds and pulses of those who come after us is only rhetoric —audacious but empty. 'lt is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ Has God said anything to 'us? Is there any living Word pointing beyond time and death and the fashion of this world, and bringing life and immortality to light? Those whom God has called into the fellowship of His Son believe that there is. They believe that the Creator is also the Redeemer. The victory of the Man called Christ transcends this world.”