TENTACLES OF MAMMON

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21580, 27 February 1932, Page 13

TENTACLES OF MAMMON

KINGDOM OF GOD OR CHAOS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, January 21. The Bishop of Ripon, preaching in Westminster Abbey, said that never in history could the whole world have been so obsessed with economics as _it was to-day and never could a generation have been brought so nedr as ours to realising the economic, no less than the moral, rightness of the Christian way of approaching such questions, as it was given in the Sermon on the Mount. A frank and reasoned confession of the _ Christian standpoint by some of our British delegates, both at Lausanne and at Geneva, might be their best possible contribution both to restoring British leadership and to achieving the objects of the conferences. The preacher recalled Lord Cecil’s statement that if there were even 10 per cent, of Christianity in international politics the difficulties of disarmament would vanish, and quoted from,the speech by Mr Alexander Shaw about the hopelessness of reparations and war debts, in which it was suggested that the healing word for which the world was waiting was that spoken so long ago —“ Forgive ns our debts ns we forgive our debtors.” That sort of confession, said the bishop, needed to be made not only in what might be called congenial atmospheres, but round the international council table and in the Parliaments of all the nations. STEWARDSHIP OF WEALTH. Christian duty in this crisis was to rebel against the strangling tyranny of Mammon by establishing the “ stewardship of wealth.” The Kingdom of God was a state of right human relationships all round. Selfishness and fear barred the way to world peace and tirade recovery. Neither would have any say in the Divine kingdom of love. It would be worth .untold millions to statesmen and bankers to-day to find means of exorcising selfishness and fear. To dethrone the cash nexus as the characteristic relationship between nations and men they needed more than a revolt against Mammon; they needed a hew growth and release of human sympathy, such as only a new experience of the love of God could bring. To-day they saw more clearly than ever that it was the Kingdom of God or chaos. Millions shrired that vision who as yet gave no hint in speech or act. It was like one of those spring days in the high Alps when a step or a shout might start an avalanche.