CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

Evening Star, Issue 21253, 7 November 1932, Page 1

CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

ARMISTICE SERVICE Members of the Imperial Ex-Service-men’s Association and of the Toe H movement attended the service of the Congregational Church, Moray place,; last evening. The service, which took the form of an armistice service, attracted a large congregation, and it was conducted by the Rev. Albert Mead, who is chaplain to the Imperial Ex-Servicemen’s Association. The choir opened the service with a) beautiful rendering of the hymn written specially for armistice, ‘ O Valiant Hearts,’ after which the congregation stood for silent remembrance, which was followed by the singing of Isaac Watt’s hymn, ‘ Our God, Our Help in Ages Past.’ The Scripture passages were road by Mr Freeman Green, and Mr George Salmond rendered ‘ The Lord is My Shepherd,’ by D. Blair. During tho service the choir sang the anthem ‘ Christ is Risen from the Dead.’ Addressing the congregation on 1 Then and Now,’ the Rev. Albert Mead took as his text Exodus xxv., 8-9, and Hebrews viii., 5. “Then,” he said, “ was a time of vision. Now should be a time of action, for now we have to bring our dreams into reality,For many the war was a time of vision.Men and women were lifted above the ordinary plains to the mount, where they saw things which needed doing.. There is moral elevation as well as physical elevation in a mountain. Wo gain there wider mental conceptions,which should be followed with moral resolutions. The mountains of the Bible bccom . holy mounts, for there men saw not merely far-flung distances, but they saw the near things in clearer perspective as one does when in the rarer and clearer atmosphere of the mountain heights. A person sees his experiences, the ordinary happenings of his daily life, related as peaks in a range, gilded with silvery or golden light. The mount provides a transfiguration of life and character, and when one descends from tho mountain, then one has to bring his visions into reality in the valley life.’ Speaking of the last war, in which’ Mr Mead served for four years, he said: “ That was a time of vision. . . . Wo saw certain things for the first time.We saw the ineffectiveness of the war machine. We said ‘ This is a war to end war,’ and we believed it, too. But now we see that war does not eml_ war any more than the devil accomplishes self-abolition. The war machine was ineffective, not because of any deficiency in those who worked at it, but because it could not produce what wo really need to live at peace one with another—a spirit of goodwill. As Sir Philip Gibbs has written in ‘ The Day After To-morrow,’ ‘ There is plenty of goodwill in the world, but wc need mora willing‘foi 1 the good.' That has been revealed in recent conferences on armaments. We have a consciousness concerning war, but now wo need more conscience concerning it if it is to ho abolished. Whilst I was near Soissons a certain Government official came asking for war relics for a war museum.Wo need to put war itself in the museum of inadequate things as a relio of barbarism.

“ Without stopping to quote various national leaders and thinkers of high standing, we can reckon ourselves in good company if we now aim to follow through with our vision and make war a thing of the past, a relic of outworn machines now no longer,suitable to serve our modern need. Again, wo had a vision of brotherhood. We discovered a spirit which brought men together as brothers. Sharing a common trench life, we saw a vision of what we tailed ‘ the brotherhood of the trenches.’ Brotherhood is not created bv calling our fellow-man ‘ Tommy 5 or ‘ Jack ’ or ‘ Robert,’ or even by calling him ‘ Comrade,’ unless there was the real and lasting spirit of brotherhood, for brotherhood is a deeper thing. Then many gave themselves in- many, and various ways in scarificial service. Surely that is just what we need now in our own time. Brotherhood is a spirit, not a system of life. We may still havo classes and grades, but a spirit of brotherhood can permeate them all.' Then, too, we had a vision of religion. Religion as conventionalism was dispensed with, and men and women reached the inner realities through prayer. They prayed as never before, in homes as well as in trenches. Tonight we keep in memory many men a id women of the British Empire who rrnvc themselves, which was much more than giving what they had—their nloney. Let us bend all our energy to the realisation of the visions of yesterday that the then may be realised in now, that future generations mav rise up and "Pali" us -blessed, _