Article October 19, 1940 Issue

Signs of the Times

Topic: Preserving Civilization

with contributions from Canon Salter, James B. Conant, W. Angie Smith

[Rev. Canon Salter, M. A., in Porthkerry With Barry Parish Magazine, Wales]

The deepest things of life are never found on the surface. ... You cannot create a new society or a new religion any more than you can create a new tree. These things grow gradually and often invisibly. There are certain moral and spiritual values which can never change—things like truth and goodness and beauty, as well as things like honor and liberty and love. Sometimes these ideas and ideals may be hidden in the cloudy mists of modern thought, and some will declare they have disappeared forever. That is what is happening in Europe today. Men are trying to invent new systems of morality, trying to set up their own national gods, and trying to overthrow the old moral standards of honor and decency. Now is the testing time. What can be shaken and lost, all that is false and artificial and conventional, will be shaken; but those eternal values which cannot be shaken will remain.

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