The War and Unity: Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918
Religion
The War and Unity: Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918
Christian sociology; Christian union; Social change; World War, 1914-1918 -- Religious aspects
Or picture, if you can, young India, pouring out her life-blood with
pride and ready sacrifice, in France, in Egypt, and in Mesopotamia, for
the "British Raj." The most moving scene in the history of the British
Commons was on that evening in 1915, when the princes of India stood
amidst the representatives of the people of the homelands and paid their
homage.
How much such things mean will depend on the vision of those who hear
them; but they have in them the stuff that holds the future.
This ghastly war, not of our choosing, has transferred the seats of
learning for young Britain from their peaceful sites to the battlefield.
If the object of education is the cultivation of the power of thought
and observation, the kindling of imagination, and the extension of
knowledge; then "over there" is a University set in full array, with
ghostly as well as human tutors, a curriculum without precedent, and
such a body of undergraduates as Cambridge or Oxford might covet.
It is not for nothing, as regards the Empire, that your sons, the
children of the East End, and the boys of Canada, Australasia, and South
Africa, are meeting and mingling with Gurkha and Sikh, and with each
other. They are sharing a common discipline, a common adventure, making
sacrifice together. They are seeing each other with eyes from which the
scales are falling, and knowledge and understanding are growing out of
their contact. The farthest reaches of Empire have been brought nearer
to the Empire's heart by this brotherhood in arms, and the barriers
between classes have been lowered until a man can step across them
without climbing. The distance between East and West has been
immeasurably shortened, whether we are thinking in terms of London, or
of the Empire.
In our consideration of this whole subject we are to take the Christian
standpoint. To us, the words "Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in
Heaven," on Divine lips were more than a pious wish. They were a great
intention, the expression of age-long purpose. We believe that the gains
of the centuries--the harvest of the past which is worth
conserving--have been secured by moral and spiritual conquest, rather
than by military or political achievement. There may be elements in our
present forms of unity which we may well allow to go by the board. The
things that make for permanence will abide not only with an enlightened
statesmanship, but with a growing understanding, an ever broadening
interpretation of Christian teaching about
The Kingdom of God on earth,
The Universal Fatherhood of God, and
The brotherhood of man,
leading the nation to see that the knowledge of God and of His Christ is
the rightful inheritance of every son of the Empire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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