ADVENTURE IN FELLOWSHIP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 April 1941, Page 7

ADVENTURE IN FELLOWSHIP

THE ORDINARY MAN'S ROLE. “The common man. the ordinary man, the average man —how willing he has been to fight when ordered, how patient in enduring hardship, how brave in facing loss and suffering, and death." said the Bishop of Norwich in a recent address. “Will the ordinary man at last, turn these native capacities to other uses? Will he make an entirely new adventure in neighbourliness? Will he look out on the world with new eyes? Will he see himself and his nation fitting in to a new kind of world-wide family? Will he —and this is vital—compel his rulers to obey his vision and translate it into effective action? Mankind is waiting, with a lingering hopefulness, for such an adventure. I do not myself see how it can come unless, on the big scale, men will make that other adventure of believing in God. When at last you can see other men as God’s children, when you look at them not just as they are, but as they may be, when you —to speak quite bluntly—know that they and you are fellow-sinners for whom Christ died, then your whole attitude toward them is completely transformed, and you are ready and eager to make with them a mighty adventure in fellowship. Without faith like that, faith in God and faith in men, the new world 1 am glimpsing may seem to some people impossibly idealistic. But with that burning faith all things become possible,”