FAITH BY THE MASSES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 September 1941, Page 6

FAITH BY THE MASSES

CHALLENGE OF THE HOUR. The warfare that is within us must be accepted as the fundamental condition of our growth in grace, and of the achievement of a goodness that is moral and spiritual, only because it is not automatic and natural, writes the Rev. H. J. S. Guntrip in the Congregational Quarterly. In this warfare of the flesh and the spirit'there will be no victory of the spirit unless and until we acknowledge and accept a higher law than that of our own will, a Divine Will, disclosed for Christians, not solely but fully, in Christ. There must be obedience. Man’s arrogant and proud heart must be reined in. In. so far as that is not done by a religious faith, it has to be done, and will always have to be done, by some form of force. It is done by the policeman and the law inside the State. Until it can be done in the international field by a World Law backed by a World Police it will have to be done by the concentration of superior force in the hands of relatively non-aggressive nations. But that is an unstable solution that will lead to repeated breakdowns. The only ultimate control of the aggressive human heart lies in a religious faith that makes man bow to God. To that, as the necessary spiritual basis for the rebuilding of European civilisation, history is forcing us back. It cafi only come as a revival of clear, strong, personal religion, the recovery of the Christian faith by the masses of the people of Europe. How to bring this about is the challenge of this hour.