Welsh Journals

THE CHURCHES MUST! THE Churches really must-they must do or die, and the first thing they have to do, if they wish to live, is to refuse to listen to those people who say they are going to die. If commercial firms displayed half the pessimism church people show with regard to their future they would find themselves in the bank- ruptcy court in a few weeks. It has become an obsession with men of some little learning to prophesy the end of the Church as an insti- tution in a decade or two. If you ask them what one should do to avoid such a catastrophe, they assume the solemn-wise mysterious expression of the owl, and say, There you are." Fortunately or unfortunately, prophesies have a way of not being fulfilled. Some decades ago so great a man as Principal T. Charles Edwards prophesied that the Welsh language would not be spoken after fifty years. The language is more alive than ever, but it is alive with a difference. Fifty years ago people spoke Welsh because they knew no other language; to-day, knowing other languages, they insist on speaking Welsh, because it is the language they love above all others, and because it is the language which alone touches the depths of their souls. To-day many men attend Church or Chapel because it is a custom they learnt from their parents. If the Church does the right thing to-day, it may, fifty years hence, be more alive than ever. and that because men will be convinced that the spiritual idealism which it teaches is the one thing that can save the world. Small men blink at facts, mediocre men fear facts, great men make facts. To-day, so far as the Churches are concerned, the makers are thwarted by the blinkers and the vast dead-weight of those who fear. If the Church is to reach its highest pinnacle it must face squarely the facts of the day, and putting aside all fear, insist on making the world of to-morrow a vastly better world than that of yesterday. What are some of the facts of the day ? On the one side is the horrible picture of social selfishness and sexual sin (exemplified in the first case by the profiteering of the capitalists and the unreasonable demands of certain sections of labour, and in the second by the terrible statement that one in six of the population suffer from venereal disease), and this with a pulpit practically silent on the cardinal sins of the age. On the other side is an intense idealism peering through the surface of sin and clamouring for a better world, an idealism so far ignored by the Churches that many of our most intelligent men are leaving them and giving their whole energy to the Labour Party, as though any political party could give their souls all that a properly constituted Church of God could. These facts alone should convince us that the Church needs a new orientation of its aims, tenets, and organisation. But before the Church is likely to trouble itself to aim at a new orientation, it will need to convince itself that its continued existence is a vital necessity, and that the Gospel of love and brotherhood is more urgently needed to-day than ever before. By Abel J. Jones, M.A., B.Sc., Ph. D. As to the necessity of its future existence, Professor Mi all Edwards touched the kernel of the truth in a recent article when he said, A diffused Christianity without a centre or focus would gradually disappear altogether." Fifteen years ago the writer discussed this matter with many well educated men in Germany, where at the time the attendance at Church had fallen to a low ebb. Most of them endeavoured to argue that there was no less Christianity in the country than in previous years, and that the apparent weakness of the Churches would have no ill influence on the religion of the country. The writer was never convinced by their arguments, and the war that followed gave ample proof of his contention that a falling off from the Churches must mean a gradual falling off from religion. The value of the Church, however, was not lost sight of by all thinking Germans. Indeed, it would be difficult to state it better than Professor Eucken did when he wrote The Church seems indispensable in order to introduce and to hold at hand the new world and the new life to man in the midst of his ordinary existence; it is indispensable in order to fortify the conviction and to strengthen the energy in the midst of all opposite collisions; it is indispensable in order to uphold an eternal truth and a universal problem in the midst of the fleetingness of the moment." One could imagine what the intellectual condition of our own people would be a generation hence if the school as an institution ceased to exist; the religious condition would be no better if our Churches perished. The Church is as important to the religious education of the people as a school is to its intellectual education. Heaven knows it is difficult enough in a world like ours to keep one's motives pure and one's aims high. How any man can do this without the fellowship of men of similar aims and the common worship of the Fount of all that is noble is inconceivable. It is to be feared that much of the weakness of personality and of the failure of the lives of some of our well educated men is due to the neglect of this, one of the highest sources of inspiration. As to the second question-is the Gospel of love and brotherhood as urgently necessary as ever? There never was a time when the value of Christ's teaching was so profoundly appreciated by the better educated of the laity. A writer in The Nation undoubtedly struck the truth recently when he wrote­- The young and ardent spirits of Nonconformity who believe in the application of Christian principles to public affairs are profoundly disturbed by the apathy and timidity of their leaders, their newspapers, and their official assem- blies. They are depressed by the lack of brave, efficient, and enlightened leadership." There is to-day a vast amount of intelligent idealism lying dormant. Many men who have studied all manner of theories and religions are profoundly con- vinced that the religion of Jesus, above all others, is the one thing that can rescue the world from chaos.