TURN NOT DEAF EARS, SHOW NOT HARD HEARTS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 26 June 1940, Page 6

TURN NOT DEAF EARS, SHOW NOT HARD HEARTS

[To The Editor] Sir—May I ask, through your paper, the Ministers’ Association to call a mass prayer meeting next Saturday afternoon in Trafalgar Park. One feels this war is a great challenge from God for us one and all to come back to Him. I am sure that there are a few, or should I say a very few people in New Zealand who have not saio the Lord’s Prayer at some time in their lives. I would appeal to those people to come to a mass meeting—that is, if the ministers will arrange one—and say it now. If everyone would read the Lord’s Prayer and examine it sentence by sentence, they would see what a wonderful supplication it is to God in this, our evil day. when the evil one and his nordes are out to destroy all that God’s 'S°n died for. Let all remember that Christ died for sinners—so let no one I say. I am too great a sinner to come 1 and pray. It is y.our prayers that are wanted to end this war. The enemy’s insidious propaganda has been let loose for the last twenty years in the universities ?nd schools and has successfullv weaned thousands of our young people from their parents’ religious teachings. I remember a clergyman telling me a few years ago that when his son had been at an university for a short time he came home and told his father, that he (his father) was all wrong in his religious beliefs, and that the son knew the truth about things since he had been studying science. Is it not a fact that the majority of us have been wicked sluggards for" the last twenty years and have been only too willing to take the easy path of pleasure instead of thanking God for His wonderful deliverance of our nation in 1918 from the hands of our present enemies. We would have thanked Him in the right spirit if we had been self-sacrificing and built up our Army, Nayy and Air Force to such a strength so that no nation would have dared attack us. There can be no wrong in building these forces up to defend their country, but only when they are built up to overrun and murder people In other nations. There ought never to be any unemployment of fit men in our Empire again after this latest experience of our treacherous foes Every fit lad should be trained to defend his country and also learn a useful trade at the same time —then if a slump comes they should be called into the forces and go in for drastic training so as not to deteriorate—as all unemployed people are bound to do. Now. while our men are giving their all to save us—then let us before it is too late to save our men. come together in mass meetings for prayer, and ask God to forgive us for our past greed for pleasures and silly vanities which have no solid foundation for good in the world.—l am, etc., A. LEA. Nelson, 25th June.