"Belief in God" Needed in World, Says Matthews in Second of Lecture Series

Affirming the great need for a belief in God in modern community life, the Very Reverend Walter R. Matthews, Dean of St. Paul's, London, gave the second in a series of five addresses on "The Christian Gospel Today" in the Memorial Church last night.

"The whole of civilized humanity is in a deep crisis," Dean Matthews said, and "we need the strength which comes from faith in the eternal."

God Needs No Argument

"The existence of God," Dean Matthews believes, "really needs no argument. I am personally very firmly convinced that every person has a direct assurance of God. Often this intuition is not attended to and remains a dim light. There are not actual atheists; a man becomes an atheist by reasoning himself into atheism out of a natural belief."

Deelaring that the great intellects of the past have been almost all Christian believers and that "the intellectual quest ends in God," Dean Matthews said "the majority of great modern thinkers would aver the decisive words: 'God is'."

Never Out of Date

"I am perturbed when Mr. H. G. Wells finds God out of date when greater intellects have found God is never out of date.

"When we survey the course of religious development," Dean Matthews said," we cannot help being struck with he progress in religious concepts.... or the existence of the religious impulse. Is it plausible to say that the whole is a vast delusion, that there is nothing in this vast existence of truth and reality?"

The third lecture, on "Christ as Leader and Lord," will be held on Wednesday at 8 o'clock.