HUMAN DESTINY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 716, 2 April 1953, Page 5

HUMAN DESTINY

Sir-In your leading article of March 13 you express the view that few people can be hopeful of the future of mankind. The opinion is by no means an isolated one, and in this materialistic and mechanised age there is only too much warrant for its currency. Nevertheless, in spite of appearances, it’ is the hopes of the few that will prevail. The world must and will emerge, from its en-/ compassing conditions of torture, torment and terror into a social and political environment of sanity, security, stability, prosperity and peace. In a recent volume entitled Human Destiny, the past ages of the race, back to its almost incredibly remote animal origin, are etched by a master craftsman. Its author, Lecomte du Noiiy, who died in 1947, was that unusual combination, a brilliant scientist, and a firm believer in the divine revelation, in the witness of the Scriptures, and in what

he calls the incomparable beauty of the Christian ethic: He was firmly convinced of the existence of a definite purpose running like an invisible thread through human life and development, and believed that eventually man’s moral and spiritual instincts would overcome and subdue his lower inherited characters from his animal ancestors. His interpretation of the first and second chapters of Genesis are a revelation, and the following are the closing words of this most remarkable work: "And let (man) never forget that the divine spark is in him, and him alone, and that he is free to disregard it, to kill it, or to come closer to God by showing his eagerness to work with Him and for Him."

W. T.

MORPETH

(New Plymouth).