GOSPEL’S MESSAGE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 September 1941, Page 2

GOSPEL’S MESSAGE

INHERENT TRUTH AND POWER. “The Church —all Churches —often fail, but their message—the Gospel—remains. In times of excitement or stress it may be forgotten; but, because of its inherent truth and power, it continually renews its ascendancy,” said Bishop Barnes, preaching in Birmingham Cathedral. “I do not profess to foresee the outcome of the present war, but if, at its end, England lies in ruins, wo shall renew our country’s beauty and its strength if our people are bound together by Christ's trust in God and united in loyalty to Christ’s teaching. To my thinking, demoralisation is far more to be feared than defeat. If only the hardships of the present time can lead to Puritan self-discipline, if our sense of personal insecurity deepens our certainty of the life beyond the grave, neither the moralist nor the statesman need be unduly anxious. To my thinking, France collapsed a year ago because the greed of the rich and ‘the bourgeois went level with the recklessness of the miserable and envious. It was a moral downfall, the product of religious decadence. Our own social life is not without its ugly symptoms; and two great wars within 30 years must prove grave. But we need not abandon hope that latent reserves of moral strength, rooted and grounded in Christian conviction, will show themselves.”