TOO SLOW BUT TOO FAST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 October 1941, Page 6

TOO SLOW BUT TOO FAST

STEPS IN BUILDING NEW ORDER.

A thing is often slow —but too fast to get off! writes the Rev. W. E. Sangster. When I was with the Army of Occupation in Germany in 1919, I obtained a pass for a day’s holiday in Cologne. The journey of 30 kilometres was made in the cattle-trucks used for transporting troops, and called forth my usual sallies at their pitiful slowness and constants stops. My chums were long used to my caustic comments on the speed of the trains. But a strange thing happened as we were coming home. The hour was late, and the trucks did not stop at my station, but- kept steadily on for the terminus six kilometres ahead. I yelled out to the train to stop, but I was either unheard or ignored. The prospect of a long, dark walk back through an alien country was not to my taste, and when I expressed some wonder as to what I should do, my comrades reminded me of my opinion of the speed of the train and urged me to step off. I went to the door and, swung a leg over me abyss, but as I looked at the track it seemed to be rushing past. Once . . . twice . . . three times ... I nearly jumped, and then I gave up the idea and sat down on the floor of the truck amid a howl of laughter. As I walked home to my billet that night I had plenty of time to reflect on the fact that a thing may be slovz and yet.too fast to step off. would say that about the Church. I have known men complain bitterly of her sluggish social conscience, her failure to challenge wickedness in high places, and her somnolence while the poor were oppressed. God forgive ml! There is more than a little truth in this. But, slow as she is, she moves too fast to step off, if,’in stepping off, men fancy that they can travel faster alone. A new order will not be built quickly by the most impatient idealists working by themselves, and it will not be built at all by those who ignore Christ.