WORLD'S PASSOVER

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 29, 4 February 1937, Page 6

WORLD'S PASSOVER

USHERING IN THE REIGN

OF PEACE

Mr. Theo. Queree lectured last Sunday evening in the Wellington Theosophical Hall, taking as his subject "The World's Passover," the title being descriptive of the period of stress through which the world is passing at present, and which the lecturer interpreted as the literal passing over from one world cycle to another, which is said to recur at approximately 2000----year intervals. Reverting to the previous cycle, Mr. Queree outlined ttie salient features o.'. its passover perjod—the wars and rumours of wars, tin? making of a new civilisation, discarding the outworn pacts of the old pagan era and establishing Christianity in the Western World. In the 2000 years since that happened, much had been done; a culture that had given unimagined beauty of art and architecture and music had been built; difficulties that seemed insuperable had been overcome: man had learned to co-operate with Nature, and had contacted worlds undreamed of 2000 years ago—and yet was this real progress? For parallel with this marvellous development was fear, suspicion, and hate so relentless that today the world bristled with armaments! and was ready to plunge into war. Two thousand years in a world dedicated to the "Prince of Peace" saw its nations unable to partake'of the fruits of their own labour; taxed to bankruptcy to pay for the last war and prepare for the next. Throughout the world was a spirit of intense nationalism that raised insuperable barriers to universal friendship and understanding and made war almost inevitable between nations so closely akin racially that they should live as one family.

The people who haa lived through the horror of the Great War and its aftermath had difficulty in seeing any way out of •■the present threatening situation. They had lived through one war to end war and knew it for the illusion it proved to be. Peace —when ft came—would be the outcome of love and understanding; never the outcome of hate and destruction.

The hope lay in the youth of the world —which is self-reliant, strong, and clear-sighted to a degree that was amazing. In evvry country there were thousands of young people banded together, some inside the churches, some outside, not as pacifists or anti-war crusaders, but as human beings whose, birthright was peace and happiness and who were prepared to question the authority of those who would deny them this. The things those young people asked of life would be theirs now if there _ were no armaments to pay for. They knew it, and the women of the world, tooi knew it, and the churches also, and this knowledge recognised no frontiers. Where they had organised, they were a force for right and it was not too much to hope that one day those three great factors might co-operate in action as they already did in aspiration, and. if and when the day came and they saw the gods of war discarded as were the pagan gods of old, and peace and good will reigning on earth, they would know that for them was finished another "World's Passover."