Time at War Read Online Free Page A

‘moan moan and let’s all be miserable together’ idea is horribly wrong. And thank God I truly believe that the men realise it is too.
    And I had such an enjoyable weekend! A very good party on Saturday night …
    And then later, after my aunt had sent me a copy of a speech she had made to an assemblage of bishops –
    Of course I agree entirely that there is no hope for the world and the progress of our civilisation if we move and live guided merely by political or economic considerations. Thus you say that belief in religion and in a Church is essential. But you are anxious to centre this necessary Faith in the doctrine of Christianity as it is interpreted by the Church of England today, and in this I find it impossible to follow you.
    Doctrine as interpreted by the C of E seems to me to be this – whether one takes the doctrine of Original Sin literally or metaphorically, it appears that God created man with a proclivity to sin, so man sinned, and continued to wallow in his sin for many gloomy centuries. Then at a given moment God sends his son down to earth in human form, and by his voluntary death the Son of God takes the sins of the world upon his shoulders, and the world is left free from sin. Thus has the ultimate purpose of the world been fulfilled by the life and death of Christ? If so, what is there here upon which we can build a faith for the future? What can we do except sit gloomily and ruminate upon the past, and wait until in the pangs of the aftermath of fulfilment we finally destroy ourselves? The early Christians clearly believed that the purpose of the world had been fulfilledin Jesus, and they hourly expected the end of the world. We were made sinful: all we can do is to pray that Christ will come a second time more swiftly to consummate us.
    You will notice that all the way through this argument I have tried to use the phrases ‘the doctrine of the C of E’, or ‘Christianity as interpreted by the Church’. I have never condemned Christianity itself, for I too believe that in the story of Christ’s life and teaching there may lie the foundation of our necessary Faith.
    What are the facts of Christ’s life as far as we are able to ascertain them? He came into the world as a human man born of a human woman. By his personality and teaching he won a great and devoted following and performed many so-called miracles. Through his own intellectual exertions and his emotional experiences he raised his human personality to such a state of perfection that he realised that he himself might be called God. It was the agony in Gethsemane which showed him this, and it was then that he realised that if in becoming perfect man he had become God, and that it was time for him to die and to become God in form as well as in reality. Those are the facts of Christ’s life. The rest is either mythical or incidental.
    Now here is the foundation for a faith for the future, a hope for man as an individual. This is the message of Jesus – he shows that in man is the seed of God, and that it is through the exertions and understanding of the individual that the state of perfection can be reached. Make yourself perfect first, and then with the love thatyou would thereby acquire you would be able to make others perfect. He was always a supreme individualist, and the idea of absolute servility of mind to a mystical and dogmatic Church seems entirely against his nature.
    These are the impressions that a somewhat irregular Church attendance and a little reading here and there have given me. My mind is not made up, and I hope it will never be, for one should never settle one’s opinions, but always be seeking and searching for the Truth.
    These ruminations were an attempt to escape from the wearisome routine of everyday reality. A determined effort to find a system of truth beyond the meaninglessness of anarchy. My father professed an interest in religion: he had the idea of a