Article March 22, 1919 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from F. J. Barwell-Walker

[Acton Gazette and Express, London, England]

This war has been searching the church like fire, and has exposed the vast amount of wood, hay, and stubble which has been covered with veneer and painted to look like enduring marble. The process is painful but wholesome, and the effect on the church and society will be highly beneficial and, we may hope, permanent. She did not stop the war, because she permitted among her own members and in her own bosom the discordant passions of jealousy, suspicion, and misunderstanding, which are in close kinship to similar passions that have been smoldering in Europe for years, and of which this world conflagration is the natural outcome. Beelzebub cannot cast out demons. You must be rid of the beam before you can extract the mote....

We shall need something more than a league of nations; something more cohesive and compelling than a general agreement of war-weary statesmen; something more spiritual than an international police. There must be a new atmosphere in the world. The spirit of brotherhood and altruism must be engendered and maintained. Each must consider not his own interests only, but those of his fellows. The spirit of grab and gain must yield before the policy of the Sermon on the Mount. Cooperation must be substituted for competition, good will for suspicion, and love for hate. But the exchange cannot be achieved by enactments or armies. There must be a preponderance of spiritual ideals and predominance of spiritual energies, and these ideals and energies are essentially the sphere of the church, when she is purified and cleansed, and realizes the original designing of her creation.

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