THE NEW CRUSADE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21912, 22 September 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE NEW CRUSADE

FOOTHOLDS OF FAITH

BY ELSIE K. MORTOX

Our Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, has assumed tho role of leader of more than one crusade, in national affairs since he took office, and if his latest suggestion regarding the formation of a Bible-in-Homes League could be put into effect it would have far-reaching influence upon the life of the whole community. There would bo little need for further controversy and sectarian bitterness upon the question of Bible teaching in New Zealand schools if that teaching could be brought back to New Zealand homes!' But tho Bible went out of fashion a generation ago, so far as family reading was concerned, and any individual or organisation powerful enough to launch and carry to victory a new crusade to bring it back to the homes would be doing something that would be recorded in letters of gold in the history of our national life. In an age that tolerates such national blasphemies as an "antiGod campaign" and perpetrates such a revolting mangling of our language as the invention of the term "godism", tho simple act of return to tho old tradition of Bible teaching in the homes would give a new significance to national life, a stronger and nobler tone to the life of the individual and tho community.

That statement, of course, will be challenged with scorn and derision by the opponents of religion, to whom " godism " in any form is as contemptible as the term they havo invented. But their arguments are so futile, their small blasphemies, as measured by the eternal verities, no more than the antics of naughty children who make faces and gestures of puerile defiance at their elders to prove their courago and independence of spirit. Their elders could take them up with one hand and spank them with the other, but they forbear, knowing the waywardness and folly of the childish heart. And it seems to me that is how our Heavenly Father deals with His blind and stupid children. Sometimes one marvels at so divine a tolerance, in the face of such blasphemy and ingratitude, until one remembers a scene that took place a long time ago on the outskirts of a city called "Holy", a man sinking to the earth in a welter of blood, his body bruised and broken with stones, looking up to heaven with the face of an angel, and crying with his dying breath, " Lord, lay not this sin to their charge!" An Age of Chaos

They tried to kill this new Christianity with stones, with whips, with flames of fire, with ridicule and abuse, with imprisonment, with tortures indescribable, and it spread and spread, and went on spreading over continent and ocean, carried over all the world by frail women and youths and old men, all with the same glory on their faces and in their hearts, and now, two thousand years after, even while the armies of anti-Christ are mobilising once more for the last great attack, the unchangeable, eternal purpose is being worked out as calmly, as surely, as the stars move in their courses, and the hearts of men in every nation are turning to God as their only deliverer in an age of chaos and disaster. But even while the Bible remains the only sure guide, offers the only certain comfort in life and hope in death, even while it still maintains a record as the world's best-selling book, it has been ignored in family life, its great truths forgotten, and its purpose thwarted by those very things that were predicted by Paul two thousand years ago—""strifes of words, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, destitute of the truth, profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called" Ho knew it all, that greatest of all those heroes of the faith, the men who went willingly to martyrdom for the sake of that transforming glory of mind and soul that in the uncouth mouthings of modern mockers has been dubbed " godism .It is surely time that the Bible came back to our homes, into our lives, and into our hearts, surely time for a new crusade to set the feet of God's children firmly once more in the ancient footholds of the faith! It does not matter in the least which denomination, which sect or body of crusaders starts it, so long as they follow the gleam as the knighis of o d followed the vision, of the Holy Grail. . . An Armour lor Youth But one thing is very sure Bible reading must never again be brought into the home in the form in which it was taken in other days. Never again should children be compelled to learn verses of the Holy Book as a punishment, or be forced to listen to the long, tedious readings of an unconsidered selection. There is so much in the Bible that is inspiring and beautiful so much that can be accepted without' question or controversy, that no question of doctrine or passage of ob-scure-meaning need be permitted to mar the very real spiritual that even a short reading of the Uih'e each day can bring into the tamuy circle. . The spiritual gain to parents and children would bo a steadying influence in an age of unrest and perplexity, an armour to youth against tho peculiar temptations to which it is exposed on every hand. What have the force.s that oppose Christianity to ijfer youth to-day? The code of some futile, scure thing known as " humanism, a moral code which, in the words of one exponent, " has been developing out of the day-to-day necessities of a socialist society in tho making, a morality based upon reason, and humanity." In a world that has enthroned the forces of materialism as its god, a "reason" that utilises the highest brain-power of man to invent new and ghastly methods of destroying life, and a " humanity" that threatens to permit the loosing of a war of horrors unspeakable upon mankind, offer a Ifcmidation so insecure that the idea of a "morality" based on such a structure is enough to make angels weep and devils chuckle! No Mew Path What kind of a substitute _ is "humanism" with all its tirade against the sin of exploitation for the simple, age-old teachings of Paul, who knew well enough all tho moves in tho game of bitter obstruction to the teachings of Christianity? What need to evolve any new codo of "humanism when the old spiritual standards stand as unassailable, as secure, to-dav as they stood more than two thousand vears npo ? Wlint more can be said than has been said in simple teachings and deathless parable—in the Beatitudes, in the lesson of the Good Samaritan, in the submission of spirit and quiet confidence of the prophets and saints of old? There is no new path open to the feet of the wayfarer who would reach the Celestial City; no new codo is necessary for the man who sees his neighbour beset by thieves, wounded in the highway. But our feet have strayed from the path. Instead of following new and untried ways lot us return to the old path, illumined by the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, tho way of the saints and the martyrs and the great good men of every age and race who have lived and died for the faith, true knights in the greatest of all Crusades.