THREAT TO LIBERTY

Taranaki Daily News, 19 February 1938, Page 8

THREAT TO LIBERTY

By Telegraph—Press Association.

CONTENDING FORCES SECULARISATION OF LIFB "TOTALITARIAN" STATES t

Wellington, Feb. 18. "We are living in an era in which thfl people have largely forgotten God," stated the Rev. Percy Paris in his inaugurai address as president of the Methodisti conference, in the Taranaki Street Church, Wellington. "I do not say they have ceased-to believe in His existence, but the tendency since the war has been the secularisation! of life." It was a state which had come from disillusionment and fear. Tha Treaty of Versailles had been so dominated by vindictiveness and revenge as to make it utterly qn-Christian. In the aftermath of the war and with; . the secularisation of life, men had losfc the bond of unity and freedom of spirifr which religion had provided. This year the churches were to celebrate the fourhundredth anniversary of the Reformation, that great revival which was the beginning of freedom. The president then dealt with the church's attitude to the totalitarian State. "To-day," he said, "personal liberty and political democracy are challengec by the dictator and the totalitariar State. In some countries liberty anc . democracy have ceased to exist. The wai sapped the foundations of civilisation ir those countries whose three hundred anc . fifty million people are now ruled by dic* tators. Chaos Ensded. "There came for them national bankruptcy, unemployment, great suflering. strikes and revolutions. Chaos ensued. Then the strong man armed emerged. He offered them some new form of unity and control, with the promise of recovery of prosperity,- and the assurance of a . restored national greatness. "And so we have Communism, Fascisni and Nazism. The names may differ. but the principle Is the same. It becomes. all in all — the totalitarian State. "Communism and Fascism are both protests against the unrestrained individualism and capitalist organisation of society which have failed to distribute effectively and justly the results of labour and industry in this new age of machine production. They are protests against a social order which permits poverty to exist in the midst of abundant plenty: and which makes inevitable the struggle between nStions for the raw materials and the buying markets of the world and so leads to military preparations and war. Both Communism and Fascism claim tc show the way out of the labyrinth. Cockpit of Europe. "These two philosophies, which threaten the stabilityof the world, have to-day made Spain the cockpit of Europe, in which there is being fought to a finish the battle between these two opposed conceptions of the totalitarian State. "In the long run," said the speaker, "I believe Communism will displace Fascism or nationalism. Then the battle will be joined between Communism and Christianity. The contending parties will be Communism, with its philosophy of the totalitarian State; and Christianity, with its doctrlnes of the sovereignty of God and His Fatherhood, stressing and safeguarding the inalienable rights of the individual soul, the spiritual and . eternal worth of human ? personality. Fundamentally and finally there are only two alterniatives— Christianity and the Kingdom of God, or an atheisUc Communism. Threat of Communism. T "No one has seen this danger and felt f this challenge more clearly than Pto-, fessor Nicolas Berdyaev, the exiled Russian philosopher. He writes: 'If there is not a Christian revival in the world, a reblrth npt only among the intellectuals, but also among the great masses of the people, atheistic Communism will conquer over the whole world. . . . All depends on what the spirit of the masses will be, as the future belongs to them. In whose name will they renew life? In the name of God and of Christ, or of the spiritual principle in man, or in fche name of anti-Christ, of divinised matter, in the name of divinised human collectivity, in which the very image of man disappears and the human soul expires? The Russian people have stated the problem to the whole world.' "Berdyaev is right. Communiasn is a religion, and the totalitarian State is its kingdom of anti-God. "If this is so, it can be met only by a religion which is more real, more spiritual, more righteous, more sacrificial; a religion of the love and grace of God mediated through the lives of genuine and enthusiastic Christians."