SPIRITUAL FORCES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 70, 20 September 1939, Page 6

SPIRITUAL FORCES

MORAL ARMING

OXFORD CROUP ASSEMBLY

A hundred people from all parts of New Zealand attended the first meeting of a Dominion Assembly of the Oxford Gi-oup at the Royal Oak Hotel, Wellington, yesterday evening. The meeting is the first of a series to be held throughout. the week, to study the implication and application of M.R.A, (Moral Re-armament) to New Zealand. The theme of the opening meeting was a declaration of .war on selfishness. It was emphasised that in view of the world situation the need for the spirit and principles of i M.R.A. was more than ever imperative. ' The inevitable result of war, said Mr. Lan Macphail, of Wellington, who led the meeting, was to inflame the primitive ' passions of fear and hatred in men, with a consequent demoralising effect throughout the nations involved. j "The best method of defence is attack,': said Mr. Macphail. "We must mobilise the moral and spiritual forces throughout the country to fight the root causes of war in the individual and in the nation." , It was pointed out that the Oxford Group was not a pacifist movement, although it is working throughout the world to establish lasting peace. "We have never had real peace because we have never earned it," said one speaker^ "If we want peace, we must pay for it, and the cost is facing where we and our nation have been wrong, and how we, as God directs, can put | right that wrong. Moral re-armament means beginning with yourself. It means absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love, personally and nationally. It means daily listening and daily obedience to God's direction." Miss Enid; Middleton, of Wellington, described the meeting in the East End of London w*hen Dr. Frank Buchanan, founder of the Oxford Group, had first used the phrase "moral re-armament," which had since been presented by leaders in almost every country as expressing the most urgent need of our day. Mr. W. Coffey, an architect who had come from Melbourne for the assembly, said that across the Tasman M.R.A. j stood for "Must Revolutionise Australia." "The true values of life are moral and spiritual," said Mr." Coffey. "Only as we learn this secret and become morally re-armed ourselves can we play a part in rebuilding a world which is suffering so tragically be- ! cause we have failed to listen to God." i "Absolute honesty and unselfishness are the only answer to industrial prob- ! lems," said Mr. M. Lennon, a carpenter, of Wellington. Mr.Greville Warren, a Hawke's Bay I sheep farmer, emphasised the need for an adequate perspection in facing the problems of today. Our understanding of others as individuals and nations had largely failed through this lack of perspection. • Other speakers who covered the lvalue of Moral Re-armament in their | homes, in business and industry, and in national affairs were Mrs. M, Bull a Canadian resident in Auckland; Miss I Edith Claire and Mr. R McKenzie. of Dunedin; Mr. H. Tombs, of WellingIton; Mrs. J. Hamilton, of Oamaru; and I Mr. D. G. Hartley, of Dunedin.