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Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23176, 13 November 1940, Page 8

Faith in Future

“There are those who say that an awful catastrophe is enough to unsettle any belief in God, a heavenly Father, or a kingdom of heaven. Yet it is quite the opposite. For the moment, let us think upon the war. Think of Europe, of the world, our neglect of God and His righteousness, the carelessness and lightness even of the religious mind. Would not the unsettling thing be that there should be no catastrophe? Surely Christian people would be disquieted or ought to be, if there were no judgment on'materialist civilisations, on our shallow politics, our gorgeous getting on, our poor piety, and half-hearted worship. “If there were no surgery upon the deadly growth that gathers within the nations that forget God, we might well marvel. What happens among us, causing dismay, horror, fear, is all part of the act of judgment of the kingdom of grace, for which we pray. ‘Thy Kingdom come,’ we plead. Do wo, any of us, really know what we ask? ‘By terrible things in righteousness wilt Thou answer us, O, God, of our salvation.’

“It is a bold thing in the face of the aggressive, warlike, Satanic world, to believe in the love and grace of God. It needs the supernatural courage of the Cross to believe, in such a day as this, in the complete and final victory of Christ. Faith is far more than an individual calm. It is the Church’s collective confidence for the destiny of the world. The evil one failed at the only time when victory was really possible. He is vanquished, he can make tribulation, but never desolation. The Church has overcome the world.”