Lo, The Bridegroom!

Recent events in Europe cannot but have struck a responsive chord in the hearts of Christian men and women everywhere. The British people in their struggle for Christian civilisation have found a worthy ally in the peoples of the Union of Socialist Republics. With the Dean of Canterbury we deny that the Russians are an irreligious people. As Mr. Churchill put it, they too are praying. In our minds' eye we see Stalin, Molotov and Timoshenko on their knees before that God of Battles in whom alone is deliverance. We hear throughout the length and breadth of that vast land prayers and supplications arising from stakhanovite and commissar, from mujik and komsomol. Which of our most cherished hymns expresses more clearly the teachings of the Carpenter of Nazareth than those moving lines from the favourite song of the Russian worshipper—

Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!

Arise, ye wretched of the earth,

For justice condemnation thunders,

A better world's in birth.

When the might of the Red Army has swept ever the heathen hordes of Beezlebub, the anti-Christ of Nazism, then truly we may say with the immortal Byron,

For the might of the Gentile, unsmotc by the sword,

Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.

Krestianen.

•