Tárogató, 1943-1944 (6. évfolyam, 3-12. szám)
1943-09-01 / 3. szám
18 TÁROGATÓ CHURCH MEMBERSHIP INCREASES The year book of the Dutch reformed churches in Holland announces that the number of church members has increased during 1942 by over 11,000. The Dutch Reformed Church Council has resolved to hold double morning and afternoon services in the Breepleinkerk, Rotterdam South, owing to the increasing shortage of seats. This provides 1,400 more seats. Double services are already being held in the Putschepleinkerk. A PRAYER FOR COURAGE Give me a valiant spirit, Lord, That bows not to defeat; Though mine be but a broken sword Face-forward I would meet The onrush of my armoured foes, Nor beg on bended knee That they withhold the fatal blows Which they intend for me. The victory’s mine if my last breath Dare bid defiance still to death. —Joseph Morris. JACK MINER’S WOOD DUCKS That versatile and much-beloved naturalist and evangelist, Jack Miner, has not been content to attract wild geese and swans to his neighbourhood, but has made a successful attempt to gather round him the most beautiful of our wild ducks, the well-known Wood Duck. These ducks nest in trees, and Jack, after trying to get them to nest on the ground, has made tile nests in trees, and now there are twenty-five or thirty of these nests occupied with the ducks, while in trees around nest some fifty pair of the same beautiful birds. Jack “has a way” with him, probably the way of intelligent and unfailing kindness. —Onward. “If a nation values anything more than freedom,” said Somerset Maugham, “it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.” •—“The United Churchman”. • TESTAMENTS IN LIFEBOAT EQUIPMENT “From now on no man set adrift in a lifeboat or raft from a sinking American merchantman will be without a New Testament. It will not be left to chance that someone has a copy in his pocket. Testaments wrapped carefully in waterproof containers will hereafter be regular equipment of both boats and rafts on all merchant ships. They will bear the insignia of the merchant marine. “Suppose Sergeant John Bartek, who was on Captain Rickenbacker’s raft, had not happened to have had his New Testament with him during those three fateful weeks in the South Pacific? This question has undoubtedly occurred to many Bible-loving people, for, according to the sergeant’s testimony when speaking at a party for service men in Buffalo, N.Y., he said: ‘Without the Bible we might have given up. But every so often we’d run across a passage that would force hope back into us like a dry sponge in a basin of water.’ This forceful testimony on the part of the young radio engineer confirmed the conviction of the officers of the American Bible Society that something should be done to make the New Testament available to all shipwrecked men on lifeboats and rafts.” —The Churchman. Canada operates oil wells one hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle, and a modern refinery has been set up at Fort Norman on the Mackenzie River, which provides aviation gasoline and Diesel engine fuel. The oil wells produce eight hundred and forty barrels a day. * * * It is interesting to note that Major-General Tinker, who some time ago was placed in command of the United States Army Air Forces in the Hawaiian Island is an Osage Indian. * .* * Denmark is occupied by the Nazis, but the Bishop of Copenhagen said courageously that unity between the Scandinavian churches has been strengthened, and that “the people of Norway and her church inspire our profound love and heartfelt intercession.” * * * Canadian whaling ships caught 328 whales during 1941. The whales are used to produce meat, fertilizer and oil, with oil the chief product. The operations in 1941 resulted in 566,505 gallons of oil about 577 tons of fertilizer and 271 tons of meal. The God who made the world is able to take care of it and to bring it at last to a successful issue. * * * An ambitious man puts it into the power of every malicious tongue to throw him into a fit of melancholy.
