THE PEACE QUEST

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4235, 24 January 1940, Page 11

THE PEACE QUEST

DR SHORT’S SERMON. “We all long for peace, but are we prepared to pay the price of peace? It will be a costly business. It may mean the surrender of part of their national sovereignty by all nations. It will mean taking the profits out of war. It will also mean moral and spiritual rearmament in our own lives. We have not felt the need for peace deeply enough. The great vision has never impassioned our hearts or burned like a fire in our bones. We have not felt keenly enough the pain and anguish and vast burden of the world’s woe. We have not realised deeply enough the blackness of the shadow that Until we realise the desperate need

lies over the homes of humanity and across the faces of our children. If the populations of so-called Christian countries are shrinking, perhaps one reason is that parents refuse to nurture their sons for the shambles, for peace it will continue to elude us. It is not enough to sign pacts and agreements, though these have a certain value. It is not enough to deal with emergencies as and when they arrive, though men are thankful for the respite that is often gained. Something far more indeed is required. Nothing less than a thor-ough-going transformation of the human spirit will suffice.”—From “All Things Are Yours,” a book of sermons by the Rev. Dr. John Short, of Boui-nemouth.