GOD THE GREAT REALITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 147, 23 June 1934, Page 2 (Supplement)

GOD THE GREAT REALITY.

FACTOR IN HUMAN AFFAIRS. (Bv S.) These are not only hai'd times, in which unemployment, poverty and anxiety are ageing men, and still more women; tliey are also disquieting times. We are sometimes tempted to think that tho whole social fabric is losing its equilibrium, and that the world is going mad. And yet it is not the first occasion on which men have felt like that. To those who are acquainted with the trend of history it is part of a process that has been more or less in progress from tho beginning—part of a worldwide evolutionary movement. We talk of the age as a transition age, but as a matter of fact every age lias been a transition age. Tho trouble about the present age is that more movements are afoot than usual, and that they are on a much larger scale than usual. There have always been people who have been alarmed and have lost heart when they witnessed and suffered from the process, and who have cried out against it. But it went on all the same, and, as we look back along the course of history, we see that what appeared to them a revolutionary movement, because they saw it close at hand, was really part of a natural and necessary process. To take one example, the supersession of family and of tribal government by kings and emperors must have appeared to fathers, and later to chiefs, nothing short of a revolution and an unwarrantable usurpation of their rights. But we can see how necessary it was to prevent the isolation of men, and how necessary it was in the interests of their co-opera-tion and discipline, and in the interests of civilised life and art. What is the most disquieting feature of the times is the forgetfulness and ignoring of God that is characteristic of so many people. I was reading the other day a recently published novel dealing with two of the biggest problems, and one thing that struck mo about it was that the name of God was never once mentioned. The writer and his characters might all have been the most benighted heathens. The same thing is characteristic of much of the literature that is turned out to-day, as well as of much of our public speaking. It has become the fashion of writers and speakers alike to ignore the fact of God.

There is one reassuring feature, however, and that is that the best and most thoughtful minds are realising that God is the greatest of all realities and the most important factor in human affairs, and are reverently turning to Him in hope and trust. They see that "our little systems have their day and cease to be," and that the final working of human destiny rests not with us, but with Him. They see, too, that the only possible standard for society and for the individual is the Christian ethic. When people in general make the same discoveries, and act accordingly, the grey sky that lowers on us, and that seems to have no silver lining, will fade and disappear before the light of a happier and wiser era. •