We have found among some papers a printed lecture on The Heart, Mind and Soul of Communism, by a Dr. Fred Schwarz, an Australian physician and surgeon. This Dr. made a special study of the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and is an authority on the principles and practices of Communism. It appears from references to the Christian faith, that Dr. Schwarz is himself a Christian. The lecture was published a good few years ago by the International Council of Christian Churches, who publish twice in the year, their magazine, The Reformation Link. They are not to be confused with the Modernistic World Council of Churches. We do not know if the above lecture is still in print, but the way things are going today, we would advise our readers who are interested in a factual and able exposure of the evil of Communism, to write to the Council of Christian Churches, 9 Milnthorpe Road, Chiswick, London, W.4. If copies are available they will cost at least one shilling, with postage added.
The vague ideas that many have of the character of Communism in theory and practice, will quickly be cleared up for them by a reading of this lecture.
Some who profess the Christian religion, and who do not know the true facts regarding Communism, appear to cherish somewhat of a favourable attitude to this evil thing upon the earth. And yet the fact is that Communism dispenses with the Christian’s God and much more as a consequence relative to man’s personality.
We now quote two paragraphs from Dr. Schwarz’s lecture which reveal the wicked views of Communism in relation to God and man:
Atheism
Communism clearly enunciates, “There is no God.” Karl Marx was an atheist before he was a Communist. Atheism was his first and last intellectual love. His earliest writings were attempts to
prove that the German philosopher, Hegel, was an atheist. From the fibre and texture of his atheism he built his philosophy and programme of Communism. His greatest disciple, Lenin, commences his pamphlet on religion with the words, “Atheism is a fundamental portion of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism.” Communism without atheism is cancer without malignancy, a contradiction in terms. When Communism rejects God it simultaneously rejects all supernatural moral law, all absolute criteria of truth and error. It abolishes heaven and hell and all absolute values associated with human life. Man is left in a battlefield where the laws are his own to make or break, where all codes of ethics and morality are relative, discretionary and subject to change.
Materialism
Having disposed of the question of God, the next subject to be considered was the nature of man. Here Communism is equally specific: Man is matter in motion and nothing more. The entire universe of which man is a part is entirely material. Thought is a quality of matter; matter thinks; the brain secretes thoughts as the liver secretes bile. The total life of mankind—thoughts, emotions, sentiments, culture and religion, are simply the product of the motion of his material constituents. Man is an animal and nothing more. In the dim past ages of antiquity, by some yet unknown materialistic process, a chemical aggregation of molecules took to itself the quality of being matter, . . . and countless more materialistic phenomena ensued and all life came into being. At the apex of the evolutionary tree there stands man, the first of the animals, yet an animal and no more. He has no spirit, nor yet any soul. As there is no God, he obviously cannot have been made in the image of that which does not exist . . . There is no heaven to gain or hell to shun. There is no special value associated with every individual life. Each human is an animal . . . The race of mankind can be scientifically improved by recourse to the normal laws and techniques of animal husbandry.
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Dr. Schwarz goes on to state that Communism asserts that, “We are the captive creations of the capitalistic system. It has ordained what we shall think, how we shall feel, and what we shall do in any given situation. The Communist Manifesto makes this lucidly plain. It specifically states that the family as we know it — the hallowed relationship of parent and child — is derived from the Capitalist economic system and that parental love will vanish with the vanishing of Capitalism.”
These extracts do not express suppositions on the part of Dr. Schwarz upon the subject of Communism, but state plainly from authentic sources the terrible truth regarding this scourge. But the extracts given are but a brief revelation of part of this terrible system, which defiantly maintains that there is no God, that man has no soul and that in Communistic society there is no human love and affection. The words, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” and which appear in Psalm 14: verse 1, are frequently quoted and without reference to what immediately follows in the verse. And what does follow is significant as applied to Atheistic Communism, viz., “They are corrupt, they have done abominable works . . .”
The lecture of course deals with other conspicuous features of Communism, such as the Liquidation of Infectious Social Classes; and this means the literal liquidation of human beings. As Dr. Schwarz points out, “This is entirely logical within the framework of Communistic beliefs. Remember there is no God: man is pure animal: there is no question of soul or spirit, of heaven or hell, to be considered . . . No enlightened Communist blames me for my opposition to Communism . . . Unfortunately I am diseased, and thus a danger to the whole programme of human betterment. So I must be liquidated, but no more so than all other members of my social class.”
We here record our disapproval of unwise and injudicious statements to the effect that Communism is to be preferred to Roman Catholicism. The question of preference, in our opinion, does not arise. A system which is permeated through and through with utter godlessness as Communism is, must inevitably arouse in the God fearing and every true believer upon our Lord and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, abhorrence for the system and a desire that God Most High would arise for the glory of His holy Name, in His own time and way.
The alarming fact today which confronts us in this once Christian nation is, that by the general abandonment of the Word of God, despising of the Gospel of Christ and a forsaking of the public worship and acknowledgment of God, we are as a people becoming prepared ground for the reception of the ideology of Communism and all other evil and God-dishonouring ‘isms’. The god of this world, Satan, is active in these days endeavouring to overthrow and eliminate from the earth the Kingdom of our Lord. But in the time which He hath set, God will arise by the power of His Holy Spirit to build up Zion once more. Therefore the prayer of the Church of Christ must be: “And let the whole earth be filled with His glory; Amen, and Amen.” (Ps. 72: v. 19.).