RELIGION'S GAGE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 171, 22 July 1941, Page 6

RELIGION'S GAGE

GOD IN BOMB PIT WORK OF CHURCHES SWORD OF THE SPIRIT _».-j Amfrican author of His rainny. Pulitzer prize-winner In 1918. -The Harboured other works. Mr. Poole has recently returned from England with his daughter. Mrs. Robert Lanchester. vhose husband, an R.A.F. pilot, was killed In » crash several weeks ago. " (By ERNEST POOLE) NEW YORK, June 14. On a noisy night in London last month I found people pouring down into the crypt beneath St. Martin.'s-in-the-Fields, the bomb-scarred old church on Trafalgar Square. At the entrance I read these words: "It all depends on me and I depend on God." I found no sign of Him at first. In the seven great stone vaults below were young people's clubs, ping pong and pool, a room full of dancers, an all-night canteen, and two dim chambers filled with sleepers in three-decker bunks. But then in the crypt chapel, on chairs and on blankets on the floor, I found some 200 people listening to a tall, grey old curate pray for "that inner serenity which shall lead us to beatall trials and accidents, even death, with high-hearted gallantry." The curate finished, and for a time moved about chatting and laughing with various groups. "For eight months," he told me later, "I have slept here every night and drawn close to these people; they are my- friends, and hundreds who had no religion before have come and asked me how to pray for the sword of the spirit they need to carry them through to victory." This was typical of what later I learned from the Church of England, the Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Salvation Army and Y.M.C.A. On the national days of prayer, in the life and service weeks of all the Protestant churches combined, and in the Catholic sword of the spirit campaign, which invites all Protestanfs in, the churches unite to preach to the people the spiritual issues in this crisis and in the building of a new world at the end. But not so much by their preaching as by their service to meet the war needs of the masses are the churches seizing their chance. On nights of the. blitz, both Catholic priests and Protestant clergy go each through his parish to bombed homes to help in rescue and comfort the dying, often at the risk of their lives. Here are notes from my talk with a lean young priest:— The Last Comfort " 'Where's that bloody parson?' I heard. 'Somebody dying?' I called upstairs. 'Yeah, and there's damned little time.' I ran up a teetering flight of stairs to a bedroom, where lay a gasping man. 'Father,' he panted, 'I have not been to confession in over 14 years. Is it too late to make me O.K.?' When he had 'made the short act of contrition, and I had absolved him, he lay back. "Thanks, father,' he said between gasps, 'now I can go comfortable.' "Mine is a bloody job on such nights. In a room in one house I ! found a young woman big with a J baby still unborn. I was too late to comfort her, for she had been torn (into halves. In the ruins of another I crawled through a hole toward the voice of a woman dying inside. The hole narrowed, but I wriggled in until with my flashlight I saw her hand. I was just able to reach it with mine. " 'Father,' she whispered, 'there is so little time.' 'Never mind a confession,' I said. 'The short act of contrition will suffice.' So she whispered. 'Oh. God. I'm so sorry that I J have so often sinned against Thee. I will sin no more. Forgive me and j take me into Thine arms.' Since I . could not reach her forehead, I anointed her hand instead and absolved her. Then I stayed a few moments till she died." In the great East End, where millions dwell and thousands of little homes have been bombed, I found the churches managing shelters and rest centres by the score, where Protestants and Catholics often worked together to serve men, women and children, who had never been to church before. j A Bit Nearer the Stars All over London. I've been sur- | prised to find so few men getting j drunk in this crisis, but here a young curate told me of one. "To my shelter," he said, "came a huge ! giant who worked in the sewers. He often came loud and wild with liquor. I told him to quit drinking or stay away. 'But, parson,' he argued, 'when you work all day in the stink and dark down in all these 'ere sewers bombed, the job gets so on top of you that a man just has to bust loose! I need the liquor! I need this place and a bit of religion! Foy the pity of Christ, don't shut me out!' I insisted that he come sober. He did. He's our best fire-fighter now, often on the roof all night, risking his life to smother the bombs. 'When you've been in the sewers all day,' he says, 'you can do with a job a bit nearer the stars.' "

But the best story of this kind I heard from the Rev. Mr. Sangster, who runs the great Methodist shelter in Central Hall and eight city shelters besides. "When the blitz began last fall." he said, "we had no food. So my wife and I brought all the tea we had stored, and with it made several hundred cups. I told the people. 'We have no food, and we're all one big family here. 1 hope each one will bring what he can.' The next night many brought sugar, tea, bread. The "Red" Cabbie "Then came a night cabbie. He was a Red. Revolution in England couldn t come too soon for him. and he had no use for churches", he said but so long as we were in this mess he wanted to chip in with the rest So he brought a can of tea. Then as we quickly organised our food supplies and dormitories, concerts, talks and dances and cinema shows for the people here, and in our eight shelters outside, the night cabbie offered to carry our movie projector about to all the other shelters at night. And since then, at the risk of his own life, he has carried it in his taxi through the blitz without any pay. And this he has done without any talk. But last month, at an evening 1 service when an orthodox brother declared that no one could go to heaven unless he were washed in the blood of the Lamb, up rose our Red taxi man. and it seemed to me that ( ne spoke for millions of non-church, people all over England when he cried: ' Ere! You can't shut us out like that. If there's auv heaven we want 10 go to. we've got a right to • 'lid you can't st«.p What's more we !]g„ in on.- uav:- ' iii," . ' V'' . an- men like 'uuu.— AuvKKukl .<UU" iui'.l .VAX,A.