Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Will to Love: An Address to Christian Parents and Sunday School Teachers
And the task before us is the gigantic task of creating a new world. I repeat this, because I do not want you for a moment to forget it. I am not using words of mere rhetoric, but stating a cold, sober truth. For our encouragement we may recall that in some directions the process is already afoot. It has abolished slavery, and is leading to great changes in the position of women, the nurture of child-life and in other things. Nevertheless, there is a task before us which can only be described as colossal. Yet it is true that there never was a time when it was so hopeful. For men are turning away in despair and disillusionment from the principles and methods of life which have led us the present exhaustion and bankruptcy of the world, and are asking if there is not some better way. And the great fact that you and I have to remember is that we are the trustees of that better way. The real task before us is that of imposing Christianity upon the life of the nations, or, to put it in another way, to banish the present system of international com petition and rivalry, and to establish in its place the reign of international cooperation and mutual service.
But I would like to point out to you that thisprinciple operates not only in international relation ships but that it governs also our personal and social and industrial relationships within the common wealth. There is no name for it but the principle of self-interest. It is the parent of the competitive system in commerce and industry, in which every man is for himself and the weakest goes to the wall. It lies at the root of the class antagonisms which breed the strife of labour and capital; the jealousy of professional privilege; and all the divisiveness which dismembers the commonwealth and which, more than anything else, has vitiated our politics; and not ours only, but that of Western civilisation generally. And this principle of self interest is the clean negation of the Christian principle of conduct, wherever you may find it. Recognise that it is so in the case of the individual. We are not quite so clear that it applies to the group, and some there are who deny that it can apply at all tc he nation. But where ever we find it, it rs unchristian. It has yet to be shown that nations cannot act in an unselfish way; and that many men are denying this today is due to a weak pessimism which would surrender the larger interests of the world permanently to the forces of evil.
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