VIRILE CHRISTIANITY

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 110, 5 November 1925, Page 14

VIRILE CHRISTIANITY

AN APPEAL TO CHURCHMEN

COMPETITION AND ISTERNNEBa.

(FIOM 0(111 O»« OOUtVOR*(|CT.)

LONDON, 22nd September. Prebendary Gough, who is a very prominent member of tKe Navy League, amongst other things, made a strong appeal to churchfcen and church women to engage in tjie grave national fight which face* us. . "Some people," he said, in a sermon on Sunday, "regard Christianity as a soft thing. It is not. It is a vital thing. Life is either a thing of fqree or else it is oil. the way !to ' decay. Christianity is essentially a religion of life, and that is why it has a toughness which has enabled it to endure through the ages. The real spirit of Christianity ii Hot .reflected in the middle-claw hymns we sing, which are very remote from real Christianity. The hard vital Christianity is to be found in the Psalm*, which are too robust for most of our fiaccid people^ Some of,' the people of-to-day sing hymns to sigh for things they do not Tally • want fb »igh for. You cannot save life in. EngUnd by talking about peace, and pretending , that you can bring: together irfecpn-;' cilablc elements by a display ofainjabiJUy. " Life cannot endure withoiit a certain clement of competition and sternness. You must choose between competition and destruction.;..,- The thing ;thc revolutionaries fear, is-com-petition. !:'•■•■. ■■;. ■•'.-■■-•■:/•■: .■■■."/■-'■." :.;>' ■ . " J am sure -that if it; were -put .to; the wortting cjawiw *f they wbyld realise the f»ets,- lam suro that if it were put to' them tlkat the 'dole' was not to be P^peta*l. but that they mifht have to go through a bad time in order.to achieve.a grfeat' life, they would go it as they did it in the days ofthe Great War. ■ UNHEALTHY CONDITIONS "Why does that monstrosity, the\ Epstein panel, remain in- one of our parks f A*Tt critics say. that it is ugly. That is not all. It; is-evil. It is a proclamation of the feipected coming of the/hostile forces. Nine-ty-nine out of every hundred men and women who goe it wish:it were not there; but there is no courageous attempt to remove'it. ; .' i- <' We have » member of Parliairieiit whom the United, Statos. will not admit across their threshold,: Yet he is a awafrbw '& th« High t!ourt of Parliament of this realm 1, That is an indieitioii of th«.«iJl»e*lttiy. conditions in which we live. I hope that in the next feW weelcs we .shall i see a . correlating of our citizens in the cause of public service.- Yet even th»t is 1 not all.' OhTistianity in fcngland is below par. There is only one "way in which the threatened world catastrophe can'be averted, and that; is by England behaving in aecordanco with the divine laws. If we. dp that England will be safe.''^