THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1950. MAN'S IMPORTANCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27570, 12 December 1950, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1950. MAN'S IMPORTANCE

It is a difficult and a challenging message which the Archbishop of Canterbury delivered in Wellington on Sunday. What he emphasised was the worth of the individual, and the responsibility of the individual. The first is denied by so many of the dominant • forces in modern civilisation, and the denial is made acceptable partly by the relief it provides from the burden of the second.- Man has a duality of nature in that while he is an individual he is also a member of a society. “No man is an island unto himself.” The conscious and unconscious forces which aim at the development of men in the mass can have a strong appeal to those of goodwill, and the discovery that progress in social welfare on this plane is made at the cost of sacrifice to human dignity often comes too late. Indeed, there is ultimately not even the awareness of sacrifice for the gains are in things visible and tangible that deny the sense of loss. This is the path of materialism which creates amorality. The crimes of the Nazis were the greatest" warning to the world of the dangers of such philosophies. In Germany the State was made all-important. Man existed only in his relation to it, and what he did at its behest was good. The Nuremberg trials were, at their highest interpretation, an insistence that man is primarily an individual and is responsible for what he does. They were, also, a demonstration that international law is fundamentally Christian law. Dr Fisher made one statement which will seem startling to many, even to some who think themselves to be Christians. It is that any person outweighs in value and importance the whole physical universe. Christianity alone gives man this emphasis, and it is a concept which is too seldom presented in ordinary religious life. The reason is that it is so uncomfortable a belief to live with—yet so impossible' to live without. It embodies a complete guide to moral conduct and admits of no compromise. It means that a man has to treat every other man as his full equal, that to wrong any man is to wrong oneself and to wrong oneself is a crime against life and against God. That is the tremendous basis which is tacitly recognised in every feeling of guilt and remorse, in every reaction that some action is “ not fair ” or “ not decent.” Such euphemisms are the veil which men strive to draw before the face of God. In giving this message the Archbishop has spoken very plainly .so that he cannot be misunderstood. He has diagnosed the general ill by its symptoms in the lives of individuals; he has given the challenging inspiration that the cure is in ourselves.