Signs of the Times

The Empire-Advance
Virden, Manitoba, Canada

The New Year is always a time of new resolves and new determinations. Perhaps, of all years in our history as a nation, more hangs on this new one than on any other. ... In this New Year we ... must declare our threefold purpose: to win the war, to secure the peace, and to build a new world. We reaffirm the destiny of democracy, a society of free men governed by God.

In a true democracy, change starts with the individual. He does not sacrifice the nation for his own selfishness, but his selfishness for his nation. Lasting total victory will be not only a victory of arms, but the victory of a new spirit. ... Democracy must be the expression of a great unselfishness, for that is the all-conquering weapon. That will mean change. Democracy will win the right to lead the nations again to an era of lasting peace—not only by armed might, but by a willingness to rectify past failures.

And then to build a new world. That world begins now. Before the blood and tears are ended we must begin to lay its foundations. And when they are ended we must continue to work for it. It will not come by chance, but by change, by fighting and hard work. In the new world everyone will care enough and everyone will share enough, so that everyone will have enough. Statesmen led by God will call forth a new responsibility from the people. The world will be governed—not by a superclass or a superrace, but by the superforce of God's spirit.

The United States News
Washington, District of Columbia

We have resolved through the Atlantic Charter. We have resolved through the Mackinac Charter. We have resolved through the Fulbright resolution.

We have resolved by presidential declaration to establish the "four freedoms"—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from fear, and freedom from want.

And Ave have said that there shall be no more war, that aggression shall cease, and that righteous nations must band together to enforce the peace by every means at their disposal.

We do not need more resolutions. We need humbleness, penitence, re-examination of our true motives, and the courage to rehabilitate the conquered as well as to restrain the conquerors.

We need, in brief, a dedication to spiritual values and a commitment not just to the words or rituals but to the actual practice of a Christian philosophy.

The Boissevain Recorder
Manitoba, Canada

Many people are praying these days for a religious awakening, and there are signs of its coming. ... Those that are watching for a true revelation of God are persuaded that we are entering a new era of spiritual ideals. For Christians of all names are coming into closer fellowship for mutual help in this great task of setting up the kingdom of God on the earth, by teaching the good news of the gospel of the Christ to all men.

Ronald G. Macintyre
Morning Herald, Sydney, Australia

The crisis upon which the world is entering is essentially religious, because essentially spiritual. There must be a new scale of values, and a new philosophy of life, based on the teaching of Jesus and permeated with his spirit.

Dr. Leslie Church
Public Opinion, London, England

We have come to a tremendous crisis in history. Perhaps we are standing on the threshold of incredible opportunity—opportunity that, being accepted, might bring man to his finest hour. A new sense of unity is becoming apparent. The bankruptcy of materialism is revealed. The anemia of humanism is diagnosed. There is but one balm for the healing of the nations: "Thou, O Christ, art all we want."

"What hath God wrought!" So vast a miracle that faith survives Armageddon, and will survive, and greets the unknown with a cheer.

As we listen to the many voices we hear a constant phrase—the "New Order." Its ceaseless repetition implies one certain fact—the Old Order is passing away. ... We are coming to an end, but we are also coming to a beginning. Amidst the confusion and horrors of war men begin to see a vision. ... Spiritual values are not only being saved by the courage and fortitude of ordinary men and women, but they are assuming a new importance. The battlefields themselves prove to us that life, as we have been living it is not good enough. Men are disturbed and discontented with themselves, as well as with one another. They have decided that "the age of anyhow must go." Our discontent with second-rate living is a proof of our first-rate possibilities.

This new tumult in the spirit of man is not confined to a single nation. It is becoming evident in a group of nations united to rid the world of its fears and to make sure of its freedoms.

In Norway, that land of heroes, in Denmark and Czechoslovakia, in Holland and Belgium, in the Balkans, in France, and even in Germany, Christian people are paying the price exacted for their supreme spiritual loyalties. Listen to the words of Niemöller, on his way to prison: "We are not free, but Christ is not bound." That is the truth which makes men invincible. No gauleiter can suppress that. We give thanks to God for the noble army of martyrs—witnesses to the truth of Christ Jesus.

We turn to our own land. The old order is passing away, never to return. We shall not grieve, for there are features in it which will be preserved and developed. They have the quality of the eternal in them. There are other things, evil and selfish, to be destroyed.

The last remnants of the caste system are vanishing in the fires of war. For the moment, under the compulsion of circumstance, a juster distribution of the necessities of life is being effected. We share what amenities there are and we practice common austerities.

It is the task, of the Christian to see that we do not return to the vicious ways of living which brought hunger, unemployment, and unnecessary inequalities of opportunity to so many. There is a stirring in the treetops—the sound of a clean, strong wind which shall sweep away many things.

There is a new phrase with which we are becoming familiar—"combined operations." It must surely be as important in the work of construction as it is in the work of destruction. Only when there is close collaboration between statesmen, scientists, economists, the vast army of workers, and the Christian leaders of our land shall we be sure that evil is being destroyed and that the welfare, physical, moral, and spiritual, of our children is becoming assured.

Colonist
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

That moral regeneration of mankind must come before there is any sure hope of a better world, is a thought that is being borne in upon increasing numbers of people.

Again men know they are their brothers' keepers, in a brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God.

Field Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts
Canadian Baptist, Toronto, Canada

In the twilight of today I see on the horizon ... not the man of Munich, not the man of Rome, but the man of Galilee. ... I see him going round the villages and districts teaching and spreading his message of a new kingdom, healing the sick and suffering. And his message is: Cherish in love your fellow man irrespective of race or language; cherish and keep the divine idea in your heart as the highest good.

This is the message also for the church of today, and for mankind.