THE WITNESSES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27388, 13 May 1950, Page 5

THE WITNESSES

Einstein And The Church

For the Daily Times by the Kev. Gardner Miller

A very significant piece of news was revealed the other day. The chief official of the United Nations Organisation is visiting Russia and hopes_ to meet Stalin. That is policy on a high level, but it is not significant in itself. What is significant is the fact that the official carries with him a letter written by the great scientist, Einstein, in which he states that the use of the hydrogen bomb would be likely to disintegrate civilisation. It is not my line at all to write on politics, even if I were qualified to do so, but this is a matter upon which the colour of one’s political allegiance has no bearing. What is of life—and death—importance is that the lives of men and women and children the world over are in real danger of being brought to an abrupt close. I do not believe that science has the last word, or that political and economic combinations can strangle the life of nations. God has the last word, just as He had the first. And it is astonishing to me that this fact is so patently ignored by those who seem to have the fate of the world in their hands. The only hands that can grasp the world and hold it firmly are the hands of God. And the fact that God is ignored is seen in the further, fact that the Church is looked upon either as a kind of social adjunct or as a survival of things no longer surely believed.

The Great Barrier

That double foolishness is where the wisdom of this world is misleading. The Church is weak, very weak, but she is not dead. She has still within herself the powers of the God-head, and is still the living channel of those powers to men. The channels may be blocked; they can be blown up, but never by any external stratagem, only by internal combustion. The Church is the great barrier to disintegration. She is the living hands of God in the world. “Ye shall be My witnesses,” said Christ; and in so saying He laid down the lines upon which His Church was to live and build for all time. Amid all the biting and almost insulting remarks made about the Church these days, it is interesting to read what one of the world’s great scientists has to say. I refer to Einstein, the man whose letter is to be read to Stalin. Einstein is a Jew, and professes to have no religious faith at all. It is all the more remarkable that his testimony to the value of the Church at the outbreak ’of the war is so clear and outspoken. It was to a leading French journal that Einstein said: “ Having always been an ardent partisan of freedom, I turned to the universities as soon as the revolution broke out in Germany, to find there defenders of freedom. I did not find them. Very soon the universities took refuge in silence. I then turned to the editors of powerful newspapers, who, but lately in flowing articles, had claimed to be champions of liberty. These men, as well as the universities, were reduced to silence in a few weeks. I then addressed myself to the authors, individually, to those who passed themselves off as the intellectual guides of Germany, and among whom many had frequently discussed the question of freedom and its place in modern life. They, in their turn, were dumb. “ Only the Church opposed the fight which Hitler was waging against liberty. Till then I had no interest in the Church, but now I feel great admiration and am truly attracted to the Church, which has had the persistent courage to fight for spiritual truth and moral freedom. I feel obliged to recognise that I now admire what I used to consider of little value.” , The praise of men is not the Church’s aim, but it is gratifying to have such a testimony. In the Church are summed up all the great values of life; within her is the Divine Life, and that Life cannot be dissolved by the hydrogen bomb. The failure of the Church is lamentable; her possibilities are inexhaustible. Witness and Martyr To witness for anything you hold dear may cost you all you have. You cannot have strong conviction without arousing strong opposition. How you deal with your opposition reveals your character and the well-spring of your conviction. There have been times in the history of the world when the witnessing Church became the martyred Church. The Church cannot die, but its members often die on her behalf. The New Testament distinctly shows the relationship between witnessing and martyrdom. It seems to me that we are hastening to a period in history when witnessing to the shedding of blood will be demanded of those who believe so much in Christ that they do not hold their own lives dear to themselves. But take this as consolation: “I am with you; right to the end.”