“A SPIRITUAL AND MORAL CRISIS”

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3809, 16 September 1936, Page 7

“A SPIRITUAL AND MORAL CRISIS”

“ One prediction seems pretty safe In the next twenty-five years the world will become either very much more Christian or very much less. We are not likely to stay as we are.” — The Very Rev. W. R. Matthews. “ As I see it,” writes Mr Matthews in the London Morning Post, “ the civilised world is now in the midst of a profound spiritual and moral crisis, /t is standing at the parting of the ways. It is deciding whether it shall definitely abandon the Christian faith and values, which have contributed nearly everything which is good in it, and build its life on some practical negation of Christ, or whether it shall take the Gospel much more seriously than it has ever done before. “ What the answer will be depends on whether Christians can act together. If we cannot achieve some more effective unity than we have now, we may expect, and deserve, to see our cause temporarily defeated. “ The last few years have given us a striking witness to the power of the religious motive. The world is full of mysticisms which act with tremenaous force on the minds of the masses. All the ‘ totalitarian ’ States are inspired by some form of religious belief, and have mythologies in which the hopes of the community are symbolised. “ It may be a race mysticism, as in Germany, or a nation mysticism, as in Italy, or a class mysticism, as in Russia, but everywhere the dictators recognise the need for linking themselves with the religious impulse. “It seems, then, that the conflict of the future will not be between Christianity and Agnosticism, but rather between Christianity and some form of religion which substitutes the State or the Community for God and looks for an earthly Utopia rather than the Kingdom of God. “ I do not think we need be unduly depressed by the aspect of the world As the false religions work out their consequences in tyranny and human misery, the attractiveness of humanity’s only true Leader and Lord, Jesus Christ, will become more apparent. “ Nor do I think there is any cause for apprehension concerning the probable development of modern thought. The remarkable change which we have seen in the scientific view of the physical universe since the war has, on the whole* been encouraging to those who believe that reason and religion are allies ajid not enemies. “The old materialism has almost disappeared, and, though we must not expect that science will * prove ’ God for us, we can at least be glad that it seems to have nothing relevant to say against our faith. “ The intellectual currents are not hostile. Whether the Church as a whole will turn the day of crisis into the day of opportunity depends on the kind of Christians who are now its members.”