WARTIME PRAYERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 9, 10 July 1940, Page 8

WARTIME PRAYERS

VICTORY OVER EVIL

INTERCESSION SERVICE

BISHOP'S ADDRESS

Conquest of the forces of evil was what we should be praying for at tHe present- time, declared the Bishop of Wellington (the Rt. Rev. H. St. Barbe Holland) at the weekly intercessory service held in the Town Hall today. There were two sessions during the lunch hour, and a large number of citizens attended for part or all of the time. Mr. R. L. Button was chairman, during the second half-hour. The Mayor, Mr. T. C. A. Hislop, read the Lesson.

Speaking on the subject "What should we pray for?" the Bishop said that this question was answered by the Lord's own Prater. That prayer was the test by which all others must be judged. It might' be asked whether we were justified in praying for victory, for protection, for the safety of our loved ones. Some might think that we were trying to change God's mind by a mass attack. But such prayers were justified if the motive behind them was right—it was the motive that mattered. The one thing that mattered was the furtherance of God's will. If victory for us meant the establishment of His Kingdom on carth —the triumph of justice, freedom, and love—then prayer for victory was right.

What we should be'praying for was the conquest of the fdrces of evil, and' we should be sincere in this and willing, if necessary, to suffer ourselves in the victory over evil. In praying for" our /loved ones, we should pray that they may be fortified and filled with courage to do their duty. God would keep us and them unharmed in the greatest of disasters, if He so willed. We should pray, not that we and they might be untouched, but rather that we and .they should be unharmed by evil. We should be willing to suffer everything and anything, so long as the evil which was rampant throughout the world was overcomie. Good must conquer the forces of evil which .were so open and unabashed: in the world, and it was for the triumph, of the good that we ought to pray. *

"Send us all the courage you can;** wrote one soldier to his parents, concluded the Bishop. That soldier did not ask for prayers for his own .personal safety, and when the speaker himself was in the front line during the last war he was not concerned with his own safety. What he did hope was that his loved ones were/praying for him that he might be given the courage arid strength to do hisvjdt*. "Send us all the courage.you can: God/s will be done." . ■ "