Mexborough and Swinton Times December 30, 1939

Be of Good Cheer

Rector of Wombwell’s Words

Fortitude and Faith

Canon J. St. Leger Blakeney, Rector of Wombwell and Rural Dean of Wath-on-Dearne, writes: “I gladly respond to your invitation to pen a New Year’s message.

“With the New Year before us, a year which may be fraught with tremendous issues, we need to look out upon the future with that courage and hope which the peace of God can alone bring. The people who in the hours of danger are, as experience shows, least apt to give way to despair are those whose courage rests upon some definite faith. They are the people whose trust in the care and guidance of our Heavenly Father, however simple and childlike it be, is also thoughtful. And that sort of courage is not alone, or even chiefly for the trenches, or the sea-swept decks. We are daily seeing it at its noblest in the firm, bright face of mother or young wife, self-controlled and brave, with the background of anxious stress or deep emotion behind the smile, but with “the peace of God which passeth understanding,” irradiating the patient home-life, or the multiplied activities outside.

“If the peace of God can, and does, guard us from fear, so, too, it guards us from the less definable depression which can easily, to use a common phrase, ‘take the heart out of people’ at such a time. True It is that it was against the firm and persevering effort of England that this unutterable thing in the world’s life came about, then it is with a clear conscience and head erect that we go forward.

“I remember soldiers saying in the last war that the organisation wore presses more heavily on the hearts of those at home, than those with the fighting line and little leisure for more than the dutythe hour. Anyhow, every day’s evidence shows that if the temptation comes at all it is we at home and not our gallant and indomitable sailors and airmen, who are liable to fits of depression and gloom.

“The England of to-day is proving herself to be worthy of her traditions and true to her ancient faith. There is one thing that we must guard against and that is the danger of letting anger, even if it be righteous anger, be fanned and cherished into something like an unchristian hate.

The wrong must be set right, but let the Nation beware lest in setting right one wrong we drift into another, and lest in our restless and even fretful anxiety to be doing or saving something that will count, we allow anger to degenerate into a baser spirit.

The ore thing that can guard and garrison our hearts against this spirit is the peace of God.

In conclusion let me wish you all as happy a New Year as it can be. May 1940 see the cessation of hostilities and a lasting and honourable peace established which shall endure throughout all generations.”