THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1938 GOD AND OUR EMPIRE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23172, 19 October 1938, Page 14

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1938 GOD AND OUR EMPIRE

Two impelling notes, blended in a harmony enriching both, have been sounded at the opening of the Auckland Diocesan Synod. One, of majestic quality, reaches with ease the inmost recesses of the human heart. It is the call of religion, awakening an innate sense of God and summoning life anew to ventures of robust, reasoning faith. The other, of tone as positive and vigorous, arouses determination to give that sense of God a wide and sure sway in everyday affairs, throughout national activities and on' into service for all peoples. As the first makes deep appeal, so this second takes thought broadly out to the task of making every avenue of endeavour subject to high purpose. Two notes, but their conjunction bids heart and hand engage in an enterprise of all three dimensionssacred, practical and selfless. They have been sounded by two great Churchmen held in profound esteem —Archbishop Averill and Archdeacon Mac Murray—and in the rallying-cry is a special urgency because both of them expect soon to lay down cares of office: the Archbishop has announced his intention of resigning at the General Synod early in 1940, and the Archdeacon will take emeritus status at the beginning of next year. Each has already a notably long record of splendid devotion to duty; each has won the unique approval that public affection bestows ; and each has gathered through the years an ever-growing audience for words of insight and good counsel. That they may both be long spared to wield the personal influence that has meant so much to so many is everybody's hope, but the pathos of a valedictory touch gives now their utterances special weight. These words are timely. "God or no God," declares the Archbishop, "is the world's fundamental problem at the present time," and his own expansion of the simple dictum is a searching commentary on the mistaken steps by which the world has gone, almost unaware, down the easy slope toward fatal ruin. On every hand are offered glib diagnoses

of the besetting trouble. The drift to war, the discord within national

communities, the economic disorder, the decay of family life, the loss of lofty personal ideals, the neglect of

social responsibilities, the restless search for mere amusement, the abuse of welcome leisure —what do they all denote, at bottom, but a dwindling appreciation of the sanc-

tities of life? It is idle to talk only of foolish nationr.l enmities, of social injustice, of faults in systems of finance, of defects in administrative programmes, when the real seat of disease is an irreligious, unspiritual outlook. Beneath the lack of true fraternity and all the mismanagement of mortal business —superficial but revealing evidence of prevalent malady—is a deep-seated ill of which these are signs, and no magic plaster applied to the surface of the bodypolitic, whatever high-sounding name be given to the vaunted remedy, can do more than create a fresh irritation of I. the. skin. .Fraternity would speedily return were a realisation of the divine fatherhood of all peoples and classes to possess human minds and- actuate human motives. Legislation will miss even its mostenlightened way without that, and humanitarian plans go wrong. This truth, the burden of the Archbishop's charge and the Archdeacon's sermon, is vital.

So they have rung out a recall to religion, something deeper than that which Matthew Arnold called "morality touched by emotion," something saner , than fervent rhapsody, something more powerfully energising the will to live well than any casual or mechanical resolve. To become "very sure of God," as an old phrase described the experience, is the only panacea. It will be reached by different roads according to individual aptitude and temperament, and nobody can dogmatise as to another's honest quest of it; but in the main it can be found and kept by means that centuries of practice attest as indispensable, and its sharing can overstep denominational boundaries of thought and rite. Once the emphasis is rightly placed upon the one central verity there is a salutary possibility of resolving divergencies of practical effort to set wrong things right; indeed, within the clear circle of religious sympathy can be room for varied technical approach to problems. To the CJhurch, in its broadest connotation, belongs supremely the task of revivifying religion, as both venerated counsellors plead; but this is not to say that statesmen and philanthropists, teachers and social workers, can reasonably regard themselves as outside the spiritual host—all should be in it. Moreover, as both see the task, it includes a vitalising of every activity of national citizenship. A vaguely cosmopolitan sentiment, as the world is now politically constituted, will achieve little. "Our duty to God and and our Empire" is the Archbishop's statement of the present urgency; not in antagonism to others, but in a spirit of service to the welfare of all nations. The ideal is high, yet it is not beyond reach..