“Revelations Might Alter Whole Course Of World”

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28894, 14 May 1959, Page 23

“Revelations Might Alter Whole Course Of World”

/New ZeaUzna Press Association)

AUCKLAND, May 13. The world was on the edge of revelations of such tremendous significance that its whole course might be altered within the next 10 or 15. years, the GovernorGeneral (Lord Cobham) predicted when he opened the life and work conference of the National Council of Churches at Ardmore today. Lord Cobham said he realised that the enemy for 100 years—“the world, the flesh and the devil”—had been bluffing and that the weapon of knowledge and so-called proof could now be turned in his hand.

“Many eminent scientists have indeed been on the side of the angels and I think that the ministry has been partly to blame for not having long ago enlisted the help that they were capable of bringing to the battle.

‘‘For at least 30 years, men of the calibre of Jeans, Rutherford and Whitehead have scorned the idea of a purely materialistic universe. For too long the Church has been bluffed by purely materialistic science. She has remained content to sit in her own powerful citadel and let the arrows of the enemy rattle on the battlements. ‘‘Not long ago the bland voice of some tuppenny ha’penny I scientist smoothly uttered over the third programme network of the 8.8. C. the following stupifying words: ‘Within 50 years we shall be able to prove that God does not exist.’ ‘‘Numerous churchmen replied with acrimony and fury but

their case would have proved annihilating had these wellmeaning Christians sought the aid of the greatest atomic scientists of their generation who would have' assisted with proof that the exact reverse was the truth: that for the first time in the world’s long sad history we are on the edge of revelations of such tremendous significance that its whole course may be altered within the next 10 or 15 years.” Lord Cobham then went on to read a paper by the English scholar and thinker. W. B. Higgs, who, he said, had gathered from the works of the greatest scientists an overwhelming mass of evidence which could well put an end to the “materialistic rubbish that today torments mankind and which would enable the Christian churches to mount a counter-attack.”