‘We are called by all the cries of aspiration and longing for a better world that may still be heard even amidst the din of battle.’ Photo: Ambulances at Gizaucourt (1917) by Arthur Cotterell, from Friends Ambulance Unit Autograph book
‘A new year message to the Society of Friends’: Henry T Hodgkin, from 28th 12th Mo. (December), 1917
‘No easy way opens up to us, and yet it is the way of joy.’
We are set in the midst of a world of men and women whose chief and deepest need is a living relationship with their Heavenly Father. That fellowship once established, the way is open for fellowship between man and man, and between nation and nation. Out of such an experience we may be brought into the one kind of human society which will endure, because it is founded according to the mind of Christ, and in harmony with His supreme purpose. Reconstruction, international settlement, inter-racial reconciliation – all these are vain terms, holding up mere dreams of future well-being, unless men’s hearts are possessed by the love of God, self-seeking and all private mindedness being driven forth by the passion of an all-absorbing love to God and to our fellow-men. No negation of evil will save us today. Only the cleansing streams of divine love and power can carry us forward to realise a new and better world. Love must be in us no passing emotion, but a dynamic and creative force. This it may become, not by the will of man, but as we are born of the Spirit.
