NEW AGE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 October 1942, Page 2

NEW AGE

STRUGGLING TO BE BORN NEW SPIRIT ESSENTIAL. CAMPAIGN FOR CHRISTIAN ORDER. “A new age is struggling to be born, and its shape would be determined by what happens now. Nothing worth while was ever achieved without effort, and the perfect order would only come when men were prepared to pay the cost of it.” said the Ven. Archdeacon E. J. Rich in an address at today’s meeting of the Masterton Rotary Club, when speaking on the Campaign for Christian Order. “To show what that price is was the purpose of the Campaign for Christian Order,” said the Archdeacon. “A new spirit must be created and Christian principles alone could create it. A perfectly designed system would yet fail if there was a failure of the will to operate it. After all the ultimate cause of evil was found in the evil instincts of evil men.”

Human nature, he said, was capable of rising to great heights. The efforts of social reformers showed that. True in the last century, men had been concerned with the eradication of particular evils. Now the deep-seated causes must be tackled. Every individual had a part to play. The church was concerned to lay down principles which were fundamental. The application of these principles to particular issues could only be done effectively by men of character. The church might denounce violation of principle—anything, for example, which tended to degrade human personality violated something which was of the very heart of the Christian philosophy. In the campaign, the great principles of Christianity and their relevance to the present situation were being proclaimed with united voice. Many of the best in the United Nations were giving their lives that those principles might be preserved for future generations. In the face of their sacrifice, those at home could find in the spreading of these principles a motive for worth-while life, and by restoring. the sense of vocation to human labour and by examining all schemes in the light of the human factor, the Christian Order’ provided a strong foundation on which civilisation would be rebuilt.