PLIGHT OF JEWS.

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

PLIGHT OF JEWS.

HISTORY REVIEWED.

SYMPATHY OF CHURCHES.

A united service of intercession for Jewish sufferers throughout the world will be held in St. Matthew's Church next Thursday evening at the invitation of the vicar of St. Matthew's and the chairman of the Council of Christian Congregations. In a number of churches yesterday reference was made to the sufferings of the Jews and intercession was offered for them.

Speaking on the glory and the tragedy of the heritage of Israel at St. David's Presbyterian Church yesterday morning, the Rev. W. Bower Black quoted the words which he thought the most dreadful in all literature, "His blood be on us -and our children." Complicated as the situation was, he said, it was quite certain that, apart from the Bible, there could be no possible explanation of the history of the Jews. Because they "knew not the day of their visitation" they had become homeless nomads through the centuries.

There was a bitter crisis in the story of the Jewish people to-day, he continued. There were four main sources of the hatred of the Jews. The first was religious hostility by the Christians, which bepran in the early persecutions of the Christians by the Jews. The second was economic hostility, due to the financial shrewdness and power of the Jew. The third was the cleavape in social customs and standards of living, and the fourth was the claim of the totalitarian State. The last was probably the main cause of Jewish suffering in Germany and Italy to-day. Though as a nation Israel had been marvellously equipped both to grasp and to teach the further knowledge of God that was in Jesus, they crucified Him because He took what the Jews had came to look upon as their own national treasure and made it a world heritage. Ever since, they had been reaping the inevitable consequences of their bitter and determined opposition to the will of God.

The Church now wae the instrument of God —not Jewish nor Gentile nor anyother race, but the Christian Church was the fulfilment of the glorious destiny, the only destiny of the great race which took its beginning in Abraham and which had its ending and its crown in Jesus Christ.