NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23160, 5 October 1938, Page 14

NOTES AND COMMENTS

OXFORD MOVEMENT'S GOAL A "new moral climate for the world" with a "spiritual leadership" of more positive action should be the objective of the Oxford Movement, s,aid its founder nnd Mr. Frank N. D. Bucliman, in 2000 convention delegates at Interlaken, Switzerland. "Every statesman admits the world needs a new moral climate," he one thing to articulate a great truth like spiritual leadership; it is another thing to live it and make it the constant of a nation's life. That is the cruc of the matter. Spiritual leadership must have the content of positive action far greater than what the world now associates with that term." FRENCH NEW DEAL SEQUELS The greatest need ■of France at the present time, says the Times, in comment on the French Government's decision to modify the 40-hour week still further, is to increase production. It is the only way to maintain the exchange value of tho franc and to provent the intended effects of a rise ill the general wage level being destroyed by a rise in The drastic reduction in working hours, involving in many trades tho complete suspension of work for two days in the week, has completely contradicted its purpose. Production has fallen; wages and other costs have been increased; prices have been driven up; and there have been demands for increased wages, and further, labour unrest at a'time when external dangers make national unity more necessary than ever. FIRST-HAND RELIGION

There is a large number of Christians who are content to believe on authority, writes the Bishop of Chelmsford in his diocesan magazine. First-hand religion is of another order. People who seek this cannot be satisfied by the tourist agency method whereby one undertakes to hand over the cash and the agency guarantees to see its patron through to the Jpurney's end, with comfortable hotel quarters ready booked and interpreters! to meet all trains! The seekers for,,a first-hand religion must launch their little praft and sail, out on the sea alone, but. if they are honest men they will not be alone for long, for very soon the Divine Pilot copies on boprd, who "maketh the storm to cease, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad, because they are at rest; and so He bringeth them unto the haven where they would be."

HERITAGE OF THE PSALMS The Psalms are a heritage unrivalled in religious poetic literature, says the Church Times, in answering modern critics of their inclusion in divine service. The Christian congregation assumed the use off them to suit its need. The Church of England ordained that the Psalter should be repeated in its entirety during the course of each month, lest the laity should be deprived of a priceless privilege. It has been said that "the Book of the Psalms contains the whole music of the heart of man-—• a harp swept by the hand of his Maker." Tho Psalms are a mirror in which each man may see the measure of his own soul. They express in exquisite words of kinship' the craving of the heart for the divine. They transcend the capacity of the learned. They suit the speech' of the • simple; A better knowledge of the whole Psalter will give them religion's widest range of prayer: Hope and fear, aspiration, confession, supplication, the cry of distress, the yearning for the sanctuary, the asseveration of trust and hope and faith. Perhaps most- important of all, the Psalms stir the imagination as no other prayers stir it. They give tho never-to-be-forgotten pictures on which nearly | all the imagery of religion is based. What loss would it be should this - imagery bo forgotten: The hart and the waterbrook; the divincf word as a lantern to oqr feet; God lighting a candle in the darkness of wickedness; the refuge of the hard-pressed and tho faint-hearted beneath the shadow of the eternal wings; tho vanity of strength consuming away, as it were a moth fretting a garment. The Psalms have a tongue that ought never t6 be silenced m our services, A corporate .use unrivalled by any other poetical form. They should be taught, explained, and learned that they may never be forgotten. ' MAN-MADE RACIAL PREJUDICE

"Race prejudice as an obstacle is real, but ill-described. It is not what it is said to be. Race prejudice, by the best evidence, we have, is not riaturemade, but man-made. It is .not an instinct, iput a habit," said Mr. Qeorge M. Stratton, in a Carnegie Endowment lecture on "International Conciliation." "Nature's part in the matter is this: Various stocks of men have been'given various builds of body and a varying look of eye, hair and skin, and probably some differences in their nervous and mental powers; and men have also "been gi von the power to dislike. Now man himself, not nature, has taken the dislike and has attached it to the men of a stock differing from his own; and quite reasonably, because. hg or liif ancestors have usually had unpleasa'ntexperience with th"eih. If they do no£ fight him,'' they are found' to ! be Uncomfortable to havo around; thoir |/manners, morals,/ loyalties .are not- ! agreeable. Uaoe prejuclieeis not found in .little children;, they acquire it today from moving pictures, playmates; bopks, ,and parents; It is, an obstacle, for. all I '. that, to ', mternatibhal.: under* Standing; but nature has no sole hand in making- it. -It is man-made and can be , unmado by < man. Nor is, race prejudice'as strong'for war to-day as v 6ome think. Wars to-day are waged regardless .even of the greatest differences of stock.-, .White Italians, it is truo ; .fight- black Abyssinians, and yellow Japanese fight, White Russian* or jled. Russians. But yellow Japanese are as -ready' to. fight with yellow Chincsp; indeed, .they are, now at their third- war With them in 60 years; America's six wars, in a little more •than'a; centuryand a-lmlf, were all with men of our own Caucasian race; Germans... and French ..are Caucasians. The. World War, in the main, was withiiri a single; greatstock. War does not stand or fall with race prejudice. ..The. opinion that war must always be, bacaiise We. have in tis instinctive pugnacity,' is as ill-based on facts and as illogical as the opinion about racial prejudice. Anger, it is true, is natural to us; as are • also our movements of struggle to overcome bodily restraint. But like raqial prejudice, war is manmade, not nature-made. It is acquired."