The Scheme of Things

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 50, 27 August 1938, Page 19

The Scheme of Things

A comprehensive building-up of an ideal of social service on the life of Christ was given to an assemblage of Australian women by a Church minister recently. The speaker said: "While as a Church we can have nothing to do with party politics, I want to say that politics are a part of my religion. My Christianity includes the whole of life in all its relationships. I believe . with Principal J. S. Whale that if we keep politics out of religion,' as we are . often urged to do, we shall soon discover that we have kept religion out of politics and have built the City of Destruction instead of the City of God." He went on to say that politics is the science of living together, and, like every other science, should be the service of God and His children. He then built up the ideal of life from the story of Christ as told in the Bible. The Nativity had recently been celebrated, ' leading the thoughts to the mother and ■ child in the stable, with the little one ' laid in a manger for His bed, and to the fact that the care of. expectant mothers and the pre-natal care of children are deeply religious matters. Then followed the thought of the little stone house in Nazareth. He urged that, the . building of houses for the people, the eradication of slums, and the provision of playgrounds, sports fields, and bathing beaches, became, in their turn, religious questions. Later Christ was found sitting at the feet of the rabbi, of His village, repeating" His prayers and scriptures after him. The speaker said religion must be the basis of any true and satisfactory form of education. Christ's toil in the carpenter's shop came next. This brought to mind that there should be proper conditions as to wages, hours of work, holidays, leisure, and distribution of manufactured things, and knowing that prices and profits are very sacred things upon which God must have a very definite will. When Christ healed the sick, cleansed lepers, • and performed other good works, it .must be. realised that God. favours all measures taken for the physical and : mental welfare of the people. When the last and most touching scene of all was shown, and the dying Christ committed His widowed mother to the care and home of His most beloved disciple, they would appreciate that widows' pensions, superannuation, endowment of motherhood and wifehood, and those things- which relieved the needs of humanity, were steps towards the fulfilment of the will of \God and the best way to set up His Kingdom upon earth. It was pointed out that the cry for bread comes before the cry for forgiveness in the Lord's Prayer, bringing before people the fact that Christ was practical and realised that people must have food, clothing, and shelter. If the Gospels were read carefully it would be seen that Christ mentioned money on many occasions. The fault in the world's economy at present was not that there was not sufficient produced for the needs of the people, but that there was very faulty means of distribution, and that the world did not | 'iriake available ■■^ufftcientrs^.oney for .-people to have wiiat God gave and they needed. So the problem today was not, as in the past, one of scarcity, but rather an embarrassment of plenty There was no problem of production but only of distribution. Money was not real wealth, but rather the real life which Christ came to make possible for all. Money was just the ticket or

token system which should make possible the distribution of services and goods for the enrichment and development of life.

I The speaker declared that in the days of manual labour which obtained at the time of Christ poverty might have been inevitable, but in the machine world of today it was an anachronism. All these things were true enough, but what must be realised was that, while there was still poverty and misery in the world, it was too often not the fault of ignorance, nor of want of work, that was responsible for such conditions, but rather the lack of the Christian ideal that every person should do his or her part to the best of their ability. People should give of their best in their homes, in their work, and in their play and times of leisure. While it was found that so many lived utterly selfishly, while they were idle, grabbing, cold-hearted to those around them; while there were sadists in our midst —so long would they "hold the earth from Heaven away" and prevent any upbuilding of that Eternal City which Christ declared existed in every person. The astonishing fact which He put before those who asked him questions that "the Kingdom of God is within yourselves" is not kept in mind nowadays. Every day, when reading the daily news, it is desperately saddening to note the stories of wrongdoing in all directions and in so many ways. The declarations made in the highest Courts of the Dominion recently should surely cause the most careless to pause and consider what they are doing. The time to give the little children strength for the right is when they are .very young. Those who have had experience know how beautifully children react to the truths of the Bible stories of Christ in His youth, and later when He took the young children in His arms and blessed them. People should ask themselves: "What is wrong in the system of the upbringing of chil-

dren nowadays when so many of the adolescent and a little older live such crooked, miserable, dishonest lives, and even if not brought within reach of the law, are found to be greedy for pleasure, unmoral, and without any fine realisation of the decencies and pro-: prieties of life?" Personality, tact, and patience are needed in teachers allied to some kind of religious' conviction, not necessarily dogmatic, but just simply the Christian ideal, the. power and the spirit to work with it, and make every pupil turned out one of whom they might be proud. That these are to be: found is the saving grace of the times, and the hope must be that measures would be taken to overcome evil with good.