PROBLEMS AHEAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 209, 5 September 1938, Page 11

PROBLEMS AHEAD.

APPLYING CHRISTIANITY.

AMERICAN CHURCH'S ATTITUDE

The problems confronting the Christian Church to-day in ite struggle to make Christianity a real and tangible power in the life of the world were outlined last night by Professor Kalph Harlow, of Smith College, Massachusetts, during the course of a sermon at St. David's Presbyterian Church. Prot'eesor Harlow ie visiting New Zealand ae the holder of a> Carnegie Peace Endowment Fellowship.

On the night of the Armistice 20 years ego, said Professor Harlow, he nut preached to a great congregation of \ew Zea lenders in an old French barn that had been used as a German hoepir<ll. "I saw a new heaven and new ••nrth, for the first heaven and the first onrth were passed away," had been his vxt. "We believed then," he said, "that •he 10,000,000 young men who had lain town their lives had purchased with heir blood the right to a better world. Vβ know how disillusioned we have ■ I nee become. We know that thie is not t new world, but the old world with its -clilshnees and exploitation and greed .Hid hate."

When he was a missionary in Turkey, the preacher said, he need to say that while Mohammed came with the sword and battle, Jesus went to the Cross, and that great sacrificial love could alone redeem mankind from sin and shame and suffering and strife; but he was sometimes told to go back to hie own country and teach them the principles of Jesus.

Student* to-day would not accept the •uggestion that the Christian countries were example* of pure virtue. "They would not stand for it," said Professor flarlow. "They know that Chicago has gangsters and racketeers and that the land of Gandhi ia not all in Stygian darkness.

The Christian Churches of America believed that the world belonged to Christ, and they had a struggle on their hands, a task that called for all the utter devotion of the early Christians under persecution. The iseue was being raised as it . wa* in Germany whether God was supreme. Was the law supreme above all Christian conscience? Had the State the right to demand what they believed that only Qod had the right to?

Among the problems described by Professor Harlow were the refusal of the Government to grant citizenship to anyone who would not pledge himeelf unconditionally to support the country in war, the problem of the proper treatment of the negroes, and the social problem of the extremes of wealth and poverty. On such issues the churches were standing for the principles of the Kingdom of God.