BETTER AT HEART

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 216, 12 September 1944, Page 4

BETTER AT HEART

PEOPLE AND THE WAR

CHURCH LOOKS TO FUTURE

"The approach of victory demands the intensification of spiritual effort, a more stern and unflinching dedication of the nation's life to the service of mankind and, through that service, to the service of God," said the Bishop of Auckland the Rt. Rev. W. J. Simkin, in addressing the Synod of the Diocese to-day. Superficially there was much in the manner of life of the people to-day which was disquieting and seemed to suggest that the nation had not turned to God, added the bishop. But when the measure of the sacrifices made, the fortitude exhibited and the indomitable courage displayed could be truly estimated, he thought it would be found, despite superficial indications to the contrary, that at heart the nation had emerged from the struggle a better people. The task before the nation, when victory was won, was to dedicate the soul which it had found to the service of God, so that, having found it, it might not lose it by forgetting the significance of the struggle through which it had passed and the principles for which it had fought. Upon church people rested the responsibility to strengthen the power of the church in the post-war days, declared Bishop Simkin. The need was for men of strong spirit and of dedicated life. They must rise above all the things that during the war had been so shaken to those things which had abided unshaken. The experiences of the years of war had shown the immutability of the fundamental truths.