Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 16 December 1938, Page 4

Timely Topics

» The statement referred to above [goes on to say: “Christian duty deimands that in the settlement of interP * national d i sputes the method of ■xeason. conference, and conciliation must be substituted for the method of violence. We must, turn our backs on the’ faithless pessimism which asserts that war is inevitable or that a war now may be necessary to prevent another war in an unknown future. Rather we must set our faces towards friendly agreements between single nations and between groups of nations, in a circle ever widening until it may include all nations as members of one great community. The goal is simply that nations should become good neighbours, each thinking not of its own good only but also of the good of others. The wUy to this goal may involve sacrifice, and all nations, including our own, must be ready to make them. Peace demands

f [ NATIONS AS GOOD I NEIGHBOURS. .

• A conference representative of s Christian Churches in England, held lon October 21, issued a statement of which the following is an extract: We are only .moving on the surfacl of these events (Munich pact and the relief which followed it) unless we see beneath them the ultimate cause of the evils which brought Europe to the brink of war. ■lt is manifold and widespread disobedience to the Will of God. Contrast His will of justice, of all that we moan by good will among men, with the aggressive ambitions, the jealousies and suspicions, the threats of violence which have brought disorder and distress to the world. Wrongs and cruelties have been, and are being committed everywhere which even a generation ago would have seemed unthinkable. “The Christian values on which we had hoped that civilisation would be built are in danger of disappearing from the . world. Unless they can be recovered, can that civilisiation escape its doom? Even in the very nearness of the recent dangers must we not see plainly a judgment of God? All nations, our own among them, and the whole Christian church, have had some share in the guilt and have deserved the judgment. There can be no honest return to. God without deep repentance for the past. With repentance there must be a resolve to seek a new way of life in the future. It is not enough to be thankful for deliverance from danger, not enough to prepare against its return. God's call is that we should set ourselves ,to recover and re-assert Christian standards in the life of nations.

|“LEST WE I forget:’.