MOTIVES OF NATIONALISM

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4016, 23 February 1938, Page 2

MOTIVES OF NATIONALISM

LACKING AMONG CHRISTIANS. “Christianity is a far feebler motive than nationalism; and in particular there is lacking among Christians, in vivid contrast to their professed theological beliefs, a sense of corporated membership binding them to other Christians,” said Lord Hugh Cecil in a recent letter to The Times. ■‘For their fellow - countrymen they feel such a sense of common membership and of the loyalty that springs out of it spontaneously, keenly, effectually. But for their fellow-Chris-tians as such few feel any sentiment of loyalty, and of those few very few feel it strongly. We ought to love Christ and His Church better than we love our country and our countrymen; but with the rarest exceptions we do not. Other nations are in nationalist devotion worse even than the English. What is really an idolatry has world-wide sway; and the indifference to the fate of the Assyrians is but one example. Yet if we could invert our preference of loyalty and care more for Christ and His Church than we do for our country and our countrymen, we should be very much happier and very much richer. Wars and defensive arms would pass away, the economic arrangements of the world would be made in the light of common sense for the general prosperity, instead of by minds intoxicated by nationalist passion and incompetent even for the way of enlightened self-interest. The sin of excessive nationalist sympathy and deficient Christian loyalty is a heinous and damnable one. It prevents our helping the Assyrians, but we are punished for it as we deserve.”