Religious Beliefs

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 154, 27 March 1937, Page I (Supplement)

Religious Beliefs

“Dogmatic ami convinced belief counts for a great, deal. We no longer hear so much of the facile argument that “it does not matter what a man believes so long as he is honest about it.’ Religion is also what man does with his corporateness. Russia, Germany. Italy, Japan, each demonstrates the dangerous power of beliefs sincerely held in common, even when they fall so far short of the truth as to be patently irrational. “Life that lacks a single unifying ideal is afflicted by a paralysing impotence, and belief, to be effective, must be mobilised in a corporate society. Mankind needs not only the spirit of Christ as an ideal existing in the rarefied region of private devotion and of intellectual ideas, it needs the Body of Christ, the blessed company of faithful people in whom it may see His Spirit living, breathing, and acting, manifesting to the world the power and the love of God. “The major problems of to-day are more than matters of individualisticethics, thej’ are questions of ethics as applied to social life —the limits of the proper domination of the State over its citizens, justice in economics, and in the distribution of wealth between class and class, the protection not only of the weaker brother but the weaker nation, the extension of the kingdom of our God and of His Christ over the kingdoms of the world.”