God and the Atom

None will deny that we live in the greatest age of discovery and destruction this earth has ever known. The advent of nuclear power opens to our generation the power to build up or obliterate, exceeding anything previously known. Here is the great tension—the close proximity of good and evil. Here is the challenge of a crisis, vitally affecting ourselves, which we cannot shun, but to which we must seek a solution. "The human race has now got to learn to live in the shadow of that mushroom cloud. Here, surely, the Christian has something to say, some responsibility to discharge, to his fellows, Christian and non-Christian alike. For we know that this close companionship of wretchedness and greatness, fear and love, pity and hate, Heaven and Hell, is of the very essence of God's creative purpose. Our warfare is not 'against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, and against the rulers of the darkness of this world'." (Prof. C. A. Coulson, F.R.S., Ph.D., D.Sc, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford.)

The great destructive power of our age lies not in that which destroys the body, but in that which destroys the soul. Much has recently been learnt about radiostrontium, and of the manner in which it accumulates in the bones of a man, and then destroys him through leukemia, and of the way in which it may be absorbed into the soil, be built up into the growing plant, eaten by cattle and thus transferred to man. But though only recently man has unveiled such problems in the realm of nuclear knowledge, yet, as old as man himself, from the time man chose the evil and rejected God, the potential for wrong has become reality and wrought havoc to thwart the perfect order of God's purposes. Only then, as God's plan is known and made to become a reality can a satisfactory solution ever be found. God has spoken unto us in these days of uncertainty and given to us a revelation of Himself and of His Plan, in Jesus Christ. Only He can unravel the knotted tangle we have created as we hasten round and round in circles getting and gaining knowledge, without stopping to consider His eternal purpose, for such he has. The evil of Godlessness is a far, more imminent and final doom than the slow, unseen destruction of radiation. The catastrophic consequences of Adam's and our participation in wrong are conclusive and eternal, unless corrected, while material things are only temporary.

The purposes of the University Mission is that students may come to know God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. The Evangelical Union is working to this end as a group of Christian students, conscious that without God, no scholar or any other man can make his full and lasting contribution to a world seeking wise and able leaders, and convinced by that very experience of participation in the purpose of God, that He gives a full Life of joy and hope and deepest satisfaction.

The world is a turmoil of evil and good constantly contesting for supremacy. In Winston Churchill's phrase we have to learn to "tread the rim of Hell". We may remain in the black darkness of our own stumbling wisdom, or we may acknowledge God not only to be what He is—the omnipotent Lord of the Universe, but also—my Lord and my God.

E. Hornblow.

President E.U.