CORRESPONDENCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19477, 21 December 1925, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE

LOOKING AHEAD

((To tho Editor) Sir, —Aly friend, Mr Arthur Talbot, is taking a long look ahead—ls million years! That is the due date for the final fizzling out of our useful old friend the sun. I suppose for the last quarter or so of that time, say four million years, he will be getting a bit cold like, land wool will go up in price. But bye and bye—you remember how a candle flame behaves towards the very last—out he goes! And then, marvel of marvels, our pin notary system, instead of, as might be epected, becoming covered completely with a rind of ice, is to become sublimed into —l’m not certain what—gas or something. It's not usual for extreme cold to sublime things, but that may be the fashion .150,000 centuries hence, and Mr Talbot probably knows all obout it, he and Sir Oliver Lodge. And the best bit of all is the highly civilised condition into which the human race is to pass in that “distant arden’’—is that the way to spell the word in Poe’s ‘ • Kavcn ''? But there’s the least little bit of a fhaw in Mr Talbot’s forecast; he doesn’t say how this splendid result is going to be achieved. Has he closed his eyes to the historical fact that the i trend of humanity has been ever downward when left to itself? Incas, Aztc.s. ('optics, Hindoos, Persians—these we know. And if we knew the history of other savage races—New Hebrides, Solomon Island, and New Guinea natives —we should probably lind that the same has been the ease with them and others. What is going to arrest the ever downward trend of poor humanity? Afr Talbot is sv.quainted with a branch of the race which has been touched with the religion of Jesus Christ, and although be does not, L fear, give the honour to Him to Whom the honour is due, it is that religion and that alone which has arrested the “rot” and introduced the upward trend. If Jesus had never appeared I doubt if the human race would to-day have been in existence, or if in existence at all. it would have been uniformally on the level of the Australian black fellow. I am quite at one with Air Talbot in the belief that there is a Golden Age iu store for our simple and suffering race, but civilisation is not going to ho the. thing that will introduce it. Civilisation is a result, not a cause, the result of the influence of Christianity iu the world. The air is full of the Locarno spirit—it is the Spirit of Christ warring against war. perhaps quite unconsciously exercised by the men who have been so loyally acting for peace. So with every movement for amelioration —it manates from the Cross. The Christ Whose birth we celebrate in a few days lived the perfect life, died the atoning death, conquered death by His Besurroction, as cended up to Heaven, and loft a promise that He would in due time return to finish the work which in his tried life In- w;is unable to complete. And I reliirn He will. Iteturn to rule lhe j in every corner, city, country, [ . i Hl’.ne;.! and island, for He is possessjcd of ’all power in Heaven and | earth. L\ il in ail its hideous shapes land forms will be treated in a way in I which it has never before, been treated. I and it will finally be completely eliminated from human affairs. As far us 1 can gather from the Scriptures of Truth, humanity is not to be spiritualised. It is to lie freed from all that defiles and imbrutos, and made like what it was at first intended to be. i In the centuries to come I think I can j see the home still the unit in the world; j the father, the mother, the son. the j daughter untouched by the spoiler, living in more than Edenic. happiness ami with the amenities of life obtained by modern and future invention; quarrels, hatred, jealousy, war, known only from the liturature of the past. That’s a programme worth looking forward to. is it not? And it may not be 15 million years cither. Wo celebrate the birth of the Christ-child next Friday, and T wish yourself and Air Talbot, and all who take the trouble to read this letter, a Happy Christmas-tide.— I am, etc., J. AITKEN.