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I believe a recovery of real religion to be essential to the well-being of modern humanity. But, alas, the very word "religion" has the wrong associations for many. They think of Puritanism, of churchiness, of spiritual restriction, of taboos, of dreary church services and sentimental hymns, of pious legend, of traditional thinking, of the attempt to squeeze all truth into a narrow religious mold, of the inefficiency and blindness of some churches, of the hypocrites who profess one thing and obviously believe another, of blind faith with its fear of true knowledge, of the pride of those who believe that they alone hold the truth -- and so on, ad nauseam. And yet what I am pleading for when I urge a return to real religion is something quite different. It must mean a willing adjustment to our situation as human beings in the whole creation, and that must mean accepting a relationship not only with other human beings but with the Spirit behind the whole scheme. As I have said above, we are children living largely in the dark, but we are not wholly without clues. We have reason, we have critical faculties, we have a more-or-less developed moral sense, we have intuitions and intimations which point to something beyond the here-and-now. We have, too, enough accumulated human experience to show what patterns of human conduct lead to misery and disaster, and what can lead to happiness and fulfillment.

The humanists would say that we have enough without supernatural religion -- with all our knowledge and experience there is surely no need to postulate a spiritual world and a supreme being called God. It would be pleasant to believe that they are right as far as they go, and that a little spiritual superstructure is all that is needed to turn a humanist into a truly religious man. But my experience and observation convince me more and more that the humanist position is quite unrealistic. For one thing it never takes serious account of evil. In humanist thinking the reason why people behave badly, cruelly or selfishly can always be explained in economic, political or psychological terms. Human perversity, callousness and brutality, when exhibited in sufficient quantity, lead the humanist mind to the end of its tether. Yet, to be frank, it has no remedy to offer except good advice!

It is all very well to be a humanist and exhibit "human" values if you are a reasonably well adjusted, kindly, tolerant, honest and decent person. In all probability you habitually exert a certain amount of self-discipline of your own thoughts and feelings, and probably you do not see why others cannot readily do the same. But suppose your temperament is a mass of contradictions and that you find it extremely difficult to be kindly and tolerant. Suppose that by nature you have no great interest outside yourself and have no desire to serve other people or ameliorate their lot. Suppose that you are only too aware of evil in yourself which vitiates relationships and dries up the springs of compassion. Is there, then, no hope for you to be a good human being?

This is to me the very heart of the whole matter. If there is no restoring force, no healing and rehabilitating Spirit, no extrahuman source of goodness and compassion, then many of us are undone indeed. If I did not know that there was such restoration and reinforcement, that there are such springs which can be tapped by human beings, I should naturally not be writing this book at all. But here is a field of actual human experience disgracefully neglected and very imperfectly explored, which could make a radical change in our human condition. It is a fine thing to say that unless we learn to exercise more love and compassion for one another we shall end up by destroying one another. But unless we can implement that rhetoric by exploring a power wiser and greater than mere humanity we are doing no more than underlining the obvious. For the more we examine the human situation -- and the more we can do of this at first hand the better -- the more we see that a deficiency of love is the root cause of nearly all our most refractory problems. Juvenile delinquency, for example, may be traced back to a childhood starved of love, and juvenile delinquency is never cured without the wise application of love. Marriages break up because love diminishes. Industrial relationships become embittered, men and women are cheated, exploited and deceived simply because there is a lack of love. It is time the very word "love" was rehabilitated, for probably no other single word has been so grossly misused. But the true love of which the world stands in such desperate need is compassionate and wise, strong and patient. Wisdom, cleverness, experience and psychological "know-how" are all useful tools in dealing with human situations, but unless they are used by love no situation is permanently changed and no human attitude radically altered. That is a matter of observable experience.

But to adopt the way of informed, constructive love is necessarily costly to the personality. And nowhere do we see more clearly the terrible lack of real love than in the scarcity of people willing to give themselves in coping with dark, difficult and messy situations. Why is there a chronic shortage of nurses and midwives? Why such a lack of those willing to nurse the mentally ill, or care for the physically handicapped? Why indeed is there such a lamentable shortage of leaders for youth organizations, of prison visitors, of doctors willing to go to the disease-ridden parts of the world? Why are there so few volunteers in the really needy centers of human misery -- why are there so few whose love extends any further than their own circle? Why are works of human compassion nearly always left to be operated by a mere handful on a shoestring budget? Why indeed, unless there is a tragic and world-wide deficiency of outgoing love?

Unless we are totally blind to human situations as they really exist, we cannot avoid the conclusion that without a revolutionary quality of living the human race is doomed to an endless process of unproductive suffering or even of total extinction. Even if a few should survive a nuclear world war there is absolutely no guarantee that the same dangerous situations would not reappear. Much as we may dislike the doctrine of original sin -- and indeed it has often been formulated in a way that must antagonize any man of sense and good will -- there would appear to be in human beings the seeds of selfishness, arrogance, brutality, callousness, the lust for power, jealousy, hatred and all the rest of the miserable host of evil. I do not believe that we serve the cause of truth or of humanity if we insist that these things have no real existence, when in fact they may be merely dormant or unprovoked. A realistic view of human life demands that we take into account the evil as well as the good in human nature.

To me it seems perfectly plain that there can be no satisfactory human living, feeling and thinking without a true religion. For example, men can without much difficulty regard one another as comrades and brothers in undertaking some difficult enterprise provided that their basic ideals are more or less the same. Those who are opposed to the ideals of such a band of comrades must be either converted or destroyed. Without true religion I cannot see anything illogical in this process, which is indeed the process of Communism. The intrinsic value of the individual, his dignity and his freedom become meaningful to us only when we see him standing in the same relationship to the Creator as we do ourselves. Without recognition of the Creator, without some apprehension of a good over-all purpose for all human beings in whatever stage of development they may be, to consider all other men as our brothers is no more than a pious phrase. And certainly, without access to resources of patience and compassion beyond one’s normal human endowment, most of us would have to face life with no more than a stoic despair.

Further, as I have said before, if this little precarious foothold upon earth is all that we are ever to know of conscious living, if in fact there is no life except the material and physical, those of us who are not particularly altruistic by nature would hardly think our labors and struggles worth while. Why should we not eat, drink and be merry? For tomorrow we die. But suppose this is not true. There are many besides myself who know that when we allow ourselves to be used by a purpose much greater than we are, we become conscious of fitting into a pattern with a feeling of permanence, a pattern only incompletely outlined in the here-and-now. If this be true, as many of us are convinced it is, then life itself, ourselves, our neighbors and all the crying needs of the world take on a new significance. This little life with its incurable limitations, its apparent injustices and pointless tragedies, its hopes, disappointments and frustrations, is seen as no more than the outcrop in time-and-space of a vast process which we can only begin to discern.

But such a view of life, which at once accepts man’s present limitations and believes in his ultimate potentialities, is only possible to the one who has true religious faith. The man who has no religion, and denies the possibility of there being any such thing, imprisons himself within the closed-system of physical life upon this planet. This is the position of the agnostic who, according to the Oxford dictionary definition is "one who holds that nothing is known, or likely to be known of the existence of a God or of anything beyond material phenomena." The dreams of the poet, the visions of the artist, the "pattern" apprehended by the truly religious man, have all to be explained as purely subjective phenomena within the material setup. All the hopes, joys, inklings and intuitions which seem to have a point of reference outside the physical world must be shown up for the illusion that they are. Every "intimation of immortality," every "sunset touch," every sense of awe and wonder and mystery have to be seen through and explained away. For the true agnostic the material dimension is the only dimension. There is no reality beyond this reality, no purpose and no God.

Yet I would doubt very much whether the majority of those who call themselves "agnostics" would accept the dictionary definition. They are much more like people who "don’t know" than like those who would definitely assert that no one can ever know anything at all in fields beyond the material. False religion, prejudiced and perverted religion, arrogant and self-opinionated religion have unhappily made them distrust the religious approach to truth. Yet I say with some knowledge that there are modern agnostics who have never given ten minutes’ serious adult critical study to what real religion stands for. They have allowed themselves to be put off by the hypocrites, the obscurantists and the lovers of power, who exist in any religious system -- as they do elsewhere. I am concerned here to plead that such people should examine the religious approach de novo, and be prepared to give such a widespread human phenomenon as religion their serious attention. The man who possesses a strong religious faith knows very well that there are hundreds of questions which are likely to remain unanswered, at any rate in this life. But he is in possession of a strong clue to reality and a conviction that he is cooperating with a purpose transcending present observed material phenomena.

I Believe I am right in saying that no primitive race or tribe has ever been discovered without a religion of some sort. Of course it can easily be argued that since primitive man is far more vulnerable than we are he has to invent, out of his fear and insecurity, "gods" with greater knowledge and power than he has himself. We may further argue that primitive people have to invent "sanctions" or "taboos" for the regulation of tribal life. There must be some authority commonly agreed upon which transcends the wishes and power of any individual. Further, we cannot leave out of our consideration the action of the human conscience, however variable and misguided it may sometimes be. A sense of guilt and fear is found in most primitive peoples and that inevitably leads to rites of propitiation and sacrifice. Life is both mysterious and awe-inspiring and death, in its starkness and finality, is always at the elbow of primitive man. In some way, simple or complicated, horrible or beautiful, he has to reassure himself that the death of the body is not the death of the human spirit.

Now at a superficial glance all primitive religions are no more than a natural defense mechanism against man’s ignorance, fear and insecurity. Consequently if these last three were reduced we should expect to find the decay of "religion." To some extent of course we have seen this happen, although it would be a bold man indeed who would claim that today’s "civilized" world is free from ignorance, fear and insecurity! Nevertheless, as mysteries of the natural world are "explained," and as man gains more and more mastery over nature, one particular necessity to invent "gods" tends to die away. That side of nearly all religion which is produced by fear, ignorance and superstition will obviously be dissolved in the light of scientific knowledge. And that is all to the good. But for myself I would consider it quite unwarrantable to assume that the need for religion has been abolished. A primitive religion may express itself in very primitive ways indeed, but when we come to examine its heart and essence we find it to be far more than a defense against fear and ignorance. It contains in it, in however crude a form, basic human longings, which I do not believe we have in any sense outgrown. There is a desire to discover supernatural laws for human happiness, a willingness to cooperate with a purpose higher than the transitory human purpose, a longing to communicate with the Creator and an attempt to grasp some security which transcends physical death.

Civilized man is insulated far more than he realizes from the raw material of living. Most of the exchange of intelligent ideas today takes place, I believe, under strongly protected conditions. Man’s sense of wonder is blunted by many inventions, his solitariness upon the planet is concealed from him by the presence of many people, and the highly competitive world in which he makes his living stifles any lingering yearning for anything outside it. However expert he may be in his own particular field, his actual experience of life is far smaller than he realizes. Ideas and emotions are often not stimulated by life itself, but by the mediated experience of other people. The newspapers, radio, television, the cinema and the theater, all create in him an illusion of experience. His firsthand knowledge of human living is usually restricted to a small circle of intimate friends, and between them they have worked out a more or less reasonable code of conduct for their department of life. It is hardly surprising that the modern urban worker rarely sees any need for any kind of religion. Obviously we cannot undo the process of "civilization" which has made us what we are, but at least we can make some attempt to see how it disarms and deludes us.

At this point, then, I would put in a strong plea for a more realistic grasp of our human position, for more true humility. Whether our view of life be "scientific" or "religious" or both, it would seem only sane and proper for man to feel a sense of awe. He is but a part, and in all probability an extremely small part, of this astonishing universe. The sensitive thinking man is probably aware of this, but he may be quite unaware that for vast numbers of people the capacity for awe, wonder and humility has been exhausted or numbed by the bewildering advance of modern knowledge. Human beings have scarcely caught their breath after one achievement before they are confronted with yet another. They have no time to assess the worth of what has been accomplished, still less to value it in relation to the total human situation. This is surely where the thinkers and writers must come in and make some attempt to restore the balance.

I believe that it is necessary for us to recover a certain salutary humility before we can discern pattern and purpose in our present stage of human existence. I do not in the least mean that we should disregard scientific knowledge or that we should somehow restrict or distrust it, but simply that we should realize our own inherent limitations. We have to accept that our status and our standpoint in the totality of creation are both lowly and circumscribed. For example, astronomers are constantly telling us how foolish, indeed how arrogant, it is to regard the planet on which we live as in any sense the center of the universe around us. But in condemning the arrogance of such geocentric thinking we should beware of another, subtler arrogance -- that of supposing that the sum total of truth can be gathered, sorted and interpreted on this earth where we live! We are quite literally in no position to ascertain all the facts, and what monstrous conceit makes any man suppose that, if we had them, we have the intelligence and the wisdom to understand them? Astronomy itself provides a telling parable of our limitations. The development of the radio telescope, with a range thousands of times greater than that of the optical telescope, can give us information of certain happenings in the universe millions of light-years away. We are naturally enormously impressed by this reaching out into space, but our wonder can easily blind us to the fact that astronomy is always telling us of what has happened in the past. It can only say that such-and-such an event took place almost countless millions of years ago. It has absolutely no means of judging what is happening now. It can, for instance, tell us that the universe is expanding very rapidly. What it really amounts to is that we know beyond reasonable doubt that the universe was expanding a very long time ago. We cannot know what is happening now, at this point of earthtime, and indeed for all we know the universe may be rapidly contracting! Now there is no cure whatever for this kind of limitation, and it seems to me but one instance of the intrinsic limit of the human situation, and this might reasonably be expected to recur in other fields in man’s search for truth.

I do not think we need be either depressed or surprised at this, but I do think we must learn to live with it as one of the facts of our existence. It often seems to me when listening to the talk of clever people that they are in effect saying, "Unless I understand, unless I am let into all the secrets of the Creator, I shall refuse to believe in him at all." I am sure that such an attitude, even if it be unconscious, creates a strong barrier between man and his understanding of his true position.

Anyone with the most elementary knowledge of physics knows that there are sounds which are too high in pitch for us to hear, and forms of light which are quite invisible to the human eye. Nowadays we accept as commonplace the fact that we can devise instruments which can "hear" and "see" for us. Yet for some curious reason we find it very difficult to believe that there may be sense higher than our sense, reason above our reason, and a total purpose quite beyond our comprehension. It seems to me perfectly possible that there may be suprahuman wisdom, and we might well assume an attitude of wholesome humility when we reflect upon our relative insignificance. Can we not accept the suggestion that there are facts, even "scientific" facts, which we can never know because we are incapable of understanding them? Can we not be persuaded to believe that specks of consciousness on this little planet cannot, in all reasonableness, be thought of as accurate critics of the total purpose behind creation? I believe it to be essential for us to appreciate our inescapable limitations before the results of our observations and experience can make any sense to us. We do have to become as little children -- which is in fact what we are, comparatively -- before we can begin to appreciate anything of the plan or purpose of the Creator.

I make no plea for obscurantism or "blind faith," but rather that men should find their proper place in the universe. This is precisely where a real religion, which takes proper account of man and his limitations and of the Creative Mind which knows no limitations can provide sense and sanity in our bewilderment.

Let us be clear in our minds that there is a sharp difference between the attitude of the dedicated man of science and the man who, with little real knowledge of science, sees in it the answer to all the problems of humanity. The truly great scientist, as far as my experience and reading inform me, is a humble man. He unravels one complexity only to discover that the small door which he has opened reveals vista after vista of further complexities. He can hardly escape an overwhelming sense of awe. It is true that he may find himself unable to accept those childish conceptions of "God" which are all that perhaps have come his way, but frequently he is a deeply religious man. He knows how little he knows, and that is for all of us the beginning of wisdom. But that attitude of mind is poles apart from that of the man who thinks only in terms of the revolutionary contributions which science has made to human living on the material plane. Such a man thinks that the answers to all questions will inevitably be produced by scientific knowledge. To him, all that art or religion or philosophy have to say is really quite beside the point; science will lead him by sure and certain methods to heaven upon earth. I am not suggesting that many people would consciously express such a blind and arrogant view of life, but I am concerned to point out that it exists beneath the conscious level in a great many people’s minds. We need to see clearly how "scientism" has become a kind of sacred cow. Its infallibility is often accepted without question, and its limitations lie unsuspected. In Dr. Magnus Pyke’s book Nothing like Science (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1957.) we have a most significant side light on the sanctity of this modern god. For the author states in one place that he once proposed to give a broadcast talk on "The Failures of Science." He was not allowed to do so -- apparently because to debunk what is held by many to be infallible would be the ultimate heresy!

Let us take some simple illustrations of the limitations of science. By the use of scientific methods we can be told accurately and completely about the sound produced in the playing of a Beethoven sonata or a Bach fugue. There is not the slightest deviation in tempo or pitch, not the smallest variation in harmonic or overtone which is not readily measurable by the appropriate instruments. But in such an analysis would any sane person consider that science had done anything whatever to explain the music, to give the slightest clue to its effect upon human emotional experience, still less to explain why one piece of music should be great and the other mediocre? Similarly, in the art of painting, science may give the most complete physical and chemical analysis of a certain canvas, but can do absolutely nothing to explain its value or its effect. Thus science by its very nature and method is excellently equipped for dealing with physical matters, whether the problems arise in the conquest of disease, the fatigue of metals or corrosion by sea water (to name but three which come to mind), but by the very same token science is quite irrelevant in the field of any of the arts, or of philosophy or of religion. There are realms of human experience where the scientific method, as commonly understood, is simply not the right instrument to use. Indeed it would be as inappropriate to attempt scientific analysis in some human situations as it would be to use a microphone to detect odor, or a Geiger counter to measure the consumption of domestic gas! In the nature of the complex human situation of which we are a part it must be understood that there are aspects and dimensions of truth which are vital to man’s well-being on which science has nothing to say. Because science can answer so many of our hows we should not be deceived into thinking that it can answer any of our whys.

Of course we all owe an incalculable debt to the science which is applied to our common life. I confess I have no patience at all with those who long to return to some fanciful prescientific age. Who would wish to go back to an age in which there was no electricity for lighting, heating or power, no printed books, no piped water, no roads, no charted seas, no reliable means of communication, no anaesthetics, no antibiotics or sulfa drugs, no real understanding of physical or mental illness -- in fact to lapse back into ignorance? But at the same time my common sense and my experience tell me that many of the really intransigent problems in human life are hardly touched at all by such scientific advances.

There seems to me to be a danger for some lest they become drunk with scientific achievement and imagine that if only men make bigger and better technical strides then all "human" problems will solve themselves. Again, this is not an error into which any of us would fall consciously, but I believe it lurks dangerously in many unconscious minds. Surely it is not unreasonable to plead that more of the admirable patience and dedication required for scientific advance should be directed upon really pressing human needs. Is it not a measure of our bewitchment by science that modern man should be seriously planning to visit another planet within measurable time when there are on earth a thousand unsolved economic, social and moral problems? We can think at once of the problem of "integration" with people whose skins are variously pigmented, of the problems of nations emerging from centuries of primitive ignorance, of the problem of health and nutrition of millions of people in "the East." We can think of the problem of cancer or of poliomyelitis, of the increasing number of people who are mentally sick, of the thousands of broken homes, of the juvenile delinquent, and of the special problems of the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the spastic and the mentally defective. These are but a few of the dozens of urgent human problems which surely challenge man’s enterprise, compassion and willingness to serve. Yet, in actual fact, there is a tragic dearth of people willing to dedicate their lives to coping with them. Is not this also an indication of the extent to which man has become intoxicated by a false idea of science?

We have already reached the point where the discoveries of science can "greatly bless or wholly destroy." But the way in which the knowledge is used cannot be decided by scientific means. The majority of scientific men are without doubt kindly and humane people, but it is not their science which gives them their kindness or their humanity, nor can any branch of science assess what is "good" or "right" or "human." Science itself is incapable of making moral judgments and it is not really too wild a step of the imagination to think of a situation where scientific knowledge is valued more highly than human lives. In countries where our traditional "Christian" values are not held it seems to me perfectly possible that science could become the master instead of the servant.

Most of the activities of what is commonly called science are concerned with the physical and the material. But there are departments of scientific knowledge which do touch what I believe is our crucial problem, the problem of human behavior. The comparatively newly born science of psychology can offer much illumination and disentanglement. Enormous loads of human unhappiness have been lifted by wise and patient psychiatrists. Men and women have been reintegrated into society, human relationships have been vastly improved and a host of hitherto insoluble problems have been successfully dealt with by skilled psychological methods.

The curing of mental ill-health, enabling an individual to fit happily into normal social life, demands great patience and skill. We cannot be other than full of gratitude and admiration for those who devote their lives to such demanding work. But we might properly ask whether such adjustment, valuable as it is to the community as it exists, is sufficient. It may be doing no more than producing a well shaped cog instead of an ill shaped cog for use, for instance, in industrial life; it cannot integrate a man into the total pattern and purpose for human living, and does not attempt to do so. It is well known that the man-hours lost to industry through mental sickness of one kind or another reach an alarming figure. We may be sure that a Communist country is as quick as we are to use psychiatric methods to cure such mental sickness, if only in order to maintain the efficiency of its factory personnel. But such treatment would inevitably leave the godless, Communist-indoctrinated attitude of the patients as it was before. The Communist psychiatrist, or our Western psychiatrist has, we will say, performed his work skillfully and well. He has helped the patient to "adjust himself to life," but in either case he has helped a human being to fit into a pattern of human life without giving him any clue as to whether it is the right pattern.

We gratefully acknowledge that psychiatry can, and does, remove certain disabilities and resolve certain conflicts, but it cannot by itself supply our standards or values. It cannot answer any questions outside the immediate range of human personality. I believe that those who would see in modern psychiatry something at once more efficient and more "scientific" than true religion are doomed to disappointment. For however excellent psychiatric methods may be, no adjustment can be provided toward any supra-human purpose in life and no connection made with any resource outside human personality. Such further integration may be, and of course sometimes is, provided, even unconsciously, by the psychiatrist. But that is because he is a man of faith himself, and not because he is a practitioner in psychiatry. He has to go beyond his function as a scientist if he is to adjust his patient to a world of spiritual reality.

Obviously this whole business of "adjustment to life" raises fundamental questions. Unless we have some standards beyond the immediate human situation, the most we can do is to help fit a man into the existing social fabric. But suppose that our whole social fabric is wrong, as is sincerely believed by Communists, then our good, well adjusted man is only good and well adjusted in our opinion, in a certain context and under certain conditions. This is, of course, the cue for the humanist to appear and advocate his "human" values. But let me repeat that the man who denies the existence of God or any spiritual order can only produce a set of ethical standards which he and his friends have decided are the best and most conducive to human happiness. He can have no sort of answer for the millions of people who sharply disagree with his concepts, and who is to say who is right?

Now I know from conversations which I have had with scientists that their whole method of training and pattern of working makes it difficult for them to conceive the apprehension of valid truth by any "non-scientific" methods. This, by an effort of the imagination, I think I can begin to understand. But I would appeal to any scientist who happens to be reading this book to think seriously that people such as poets, artists of every kind, mystics and indeed ordinary people of faith may be receiving truth in an entirely different way from that to which he is accustomed. It is not in the least that his own wholly admirable and painstaking methods are being ignored or, so to speak, short-circuited. It is simply that there are ways of apprehending some kinds of truth which are quite independent of the scientific method. Sometimes these are intuitive and sometimes they are developed by long practice, and of course sometimes they are both. I think the honest scientist cannot help admitting this, and perhaps he may be persuaded to see what I myself find quite plain -- that the more man’s attention is concentrated upon the material the more his spiritual faculties become atrophied. I hope he will be good-humored enough to realize that such a chapter as I have just written is not meant to be an attack upon science but an attack upon that one-sided obsession with the material and the tangible which leads to the loss of spiritual apprehension. Man cannot live in any real sense by science alone.

The prevailing atmosphere among thinking men and women of good will today is one of what may loosely be termed "scientific humanism." Since all of us are filled with admiration for the achievements of science and since all of us desire to practice and propagate such human virtues as friendliness, tolerance, good humor, sympathy and courage, we unconsciously assent to scientific humanism as a working philosophy of life. What we do not so readily see is that science has very little to offer in solving problems of human relationships, even though these are the problems which most need to be solved. Nor do we see, behind what appears to be a kind-hearted philosophy, an utter denial of any dimension beyond this present observable life, of any such thing as absolute right or wrong and of any power which might be called God.

Now although I know that many humanists are good and kind people I remain convinced that humanism itself is a bleak and cruel creed. For it offers man a blank denial where his needs are greatest and his aspirations frequently most desperate. But before we examine this failure let us see the extraordinarily fragile foundation upon which the humanist position rests. No man in this country with its centuries-old tradition of Christianity can detach himself from that tradition, however vehemently he abuses the Christian Faith and denies the existence of God. Not all humanists, of course, are to be found attacking Christianity or denying God; many of them indeed strike me as wistful people. But humanism itself, according to its official literature, explicitly denies the Christian Faith and the need for any moral or spiritual authority outside humanity.

What exactly does humanism mean by "human" values? It is easy enough, in a land where more real Christianity has been practiced than is sometimes supposed, to believe that it is truly "human" to be kind, just, faithful, unselfish and tolerant. But does the humanist seriously imagine that such ideas are universally held? Is he really so naïve as to think that they are widely held in, for instance, a Communist-controlled country? And if not, who is to say what is really "human"? Where are the real standards of right and wrong? It is worth noting in this connection that conference and negotiation between a traditionally Christian country and a Communist country invariably break down because the values held by the parties concerned are not the same. What appears to us to be insincere, false, callous and cruel may be perfectly "moral" and "human" by the standards of Communism. It is monstrous to suggest that whole races of people have suddenly ceased to be "human"! But it is perfectly possible that they have conformed to a view of life which is quite antipathetic to the one which we traditionally hold. Yet if we say that they have been "deceived" or are "mistaken" or have been indoctrinated by "false" ideas, then we are passing moral judgments, and the moment we do that we are implying that there are standards of good and evil. Without some knowledge of pattern and purpose behind life, what constitutes "a good human being" can vary so enormously as to make any definition nonsensical.

Humanism denies men any religion, any suprahuman standard, any timeless point of reference; and without any of these things I do not believe humanists have a leg to stand on, and it is high time the absurdity of their position were realized. The most a thoroughgoing humanist can do is to express his own opinion about what is "good" and "right," and there may be a hundred different views about that! And I cannot help commenting that the very same intellectual humanists whom I have met, and who can speak so convincingly about the uselessness of religion and the sufficiency of scientific humanism, are among those who are quick to point out that "right" and "wrong" are purely relative and vary both from country to country and from age to age!

But there are other weaknesses in the atheistic humanist position and they are much more serious than illogicality. Since in the humanist view a man’s life is entirely restricted to his consciousness of living on this planet, and since God is totally denied, a conscientious humanist renders himself impotent in many crucial situations. Thus, since there is no life beyond this one, humanism can offer no hope to those who are severely handicapped. Since there is no God, it can offer no external power to guide and strengthen a man who is defeated by his own emotional conflicts. Humanists are themselves prisoners of a closed-system and, since they believe in it so tenaciously, they have no gospel of any kind to offer to the weak and struggling, and can offer neither hope nor security beyond the ills and accidents of this present stage of existence.

Sometimes I cannot help suspecting that some of the atheistic humanists who write and talk so brilliantly have had very little experience of life "in the raw." For I know, as many others know, that in the crises of life men and women not only reach out desperately for God but quite often find him. You cannot visit hospital wards, for example, week after week for many years, you cannot attend many deathbeds and speak with literally thousands of bereaved people over the years without realizing what potentialities there are in the spirit of apparently quite ordinary people. Personal contact with many suffering, loving and sorrowing people convinces one that man does not live only in this dimension of time and that no amount of humanist docketing will confine him to it. It is not merely that human beings in their hour of need show tremendous courage, although this is true. Quite ordinary people reach out and touch powers beyond themselves and use them. They receive solid assurance that goes far beyond their tentative hopes. Those of us who have had much to do with the sick and suffering know how common it is for people to tell us that they have drawn upon reserves outside themselves or rested their hopes and fears upon a serenity apparently quite independent of their own minds. Most of them describe this in religious terms, rightly, as I believe, but even if it were not so described I cannot doubt that it is part of the total human picture. I have used the example of human behavior in pain and suffering because it is under those conditions that insincerity, pretense and habitual self-deception are most easily stripped off.

I know perfectly well that the militant humanist will tell me that I am merely describing subjective phenomena. But the whole point is that what I have observed results in objective phenomena -- courage, faith, hope, joy and patience, for instance, and these qualities are very readily observed. For while the kind-hearted humanist can at the very most only rally a mans own resources, the one who has some experience of a power outside himself can invite others to share it with him This will mean fulfilling certain conditions, and if the result were merely a subjective experience it would scarcely be worth while. But if it results in a new sort of reality being apprehended, the effects of which are objective and demonstrable in terms of human living, then surely it is very valuable indeed.

The man who wants everything proved by scientific means is quite right in his insistence on "laboratory conditions" if he is investigating, shall we say, water-divining, clairvoyance or telekinesis. But there can be no such thing as "laboratory conditions" for investigating the realm of the human spirit unless it can be seen that the "laboratory conditions" are in fact human life itself. A man can only exhibit objectively a change in his own disposition, a faith which directs his life and a belief in its significance, in the actual business of living. And this is precisely where I join issue with the humanist. If I had not seen objective results springing from faith in spiritual realities, I should no more believe in God than the most thoroughgoing atheist.

But what really puzzles me is the attitude of mind adopted by the humanist who denies the existence of God. He claims that his own life has a purpose, and that other people’s lives have their various purposes, but he emphatically denies that there is any purpose in the whole. Moreover, since he also denies any further existence beyond that of this planet, there can be no sense whatever of ultimate purpose of any kind. For the whole tale of man’s struggles, discoveries, achievements, insights and aspirations ends automatically when this little planet becomes either too hot or too cold to support human life. I honestly find it impossible to believe that men who are otherwise quite intelligent can seriously think, as they appear to do, that the end of the whole vast human experiment is sheer nothingness. I think I can understand a man willingly devoting his life to posterity, even if he is unable to believe in his own personal survival of death. But what I cannot believe is that it is worth anybody’s while to give time, talents and energy to something that finally is utterly without worth.

Now I am well aware that one of our modern humanists might interrupt at this stage and say, "Now your religion, your belief in God and immortality are put up by your mind, simply because it will not face the true facts -- the utter loneliness and futility of human living." But, quite apart from other arguments, which I will advance later, I am perfectly entitled to retort, "But suppose your attitude is also one of wishful thinking! It is because you cannot bear to believe you are set on this temporary stage to develop responsible moral character, and because you cannot tolerate the idea that this is only the first of what may be many stages of conscious existence that you deny completely the idea of God and of life on any other plane,but the terrestrial. You are deliberately lopping off certain human experiences because they do not fit in with your theory of closed-system humanism."

I am convinced that there is a true humanism, which flows not from a vague Christian tradition but from a quickened sense of the meaning and purpose of God. I am further convinced that the true love of mankind springs more readily and more potently from the Christian Faith than from any other religion. Such a love of humanity is no enemy of science or knowledge, but it can add a quality and a depth to living which are impossible without a true religious faith. The particular brand of scientific humanism which affects so much of our thinking is either agnostic, in the less narrow sense of that term, or rigidly atheistic. And a system which denies the existence of God, the possibility of touching extrahuman spiritual resources, and any dimension of human living except that which is lived upon this planet, seems to me to be a pathetically inadequate philosophy for the complex spirit of man.

I have already mentioned the widespread ignorance on both sides of the chasm which divides the world and the Church. The traditional churches do not always seem to realize that the premises for sensible argument, which are basic to themselves, are probably neither valid nor comprehensible in the world outside the Church. When the practicing Christian talks to modern man about the "Law of God," the "Teaching of the Church," or invokes the authority of Holy Scripture, he is to his own mind bringing out the heaviest weapons in his armory. But to the man whose idea of God is nebulous to the point of negligibility the invocation of "God’s Law" is quite meaningless. To say that "the Church teaches" is equally without force, for the man of intelligence knows, in the first place, that there are a great many churches and that some of their teaching is contradictory. Secondly, he may ask rudely but pertinently, "Who are the churches anyway and by what right do they attempt to speak with authority to me?" And although in the heated atmosphere of the revival meeting the phrase "the Bible says" may carry fervent conviction, the intelligent man who has read the Bible knows perfectly well that it can be made to "say" a lot of things, and that, as a matter of sober history, witch-hunting, slave-owning and the inhuman policy of apartheid have all been justified by reference to the same Bible.

But the ignorance and misunderstanding do not exist only on the side of professing Christians. There is, for example, a basic misconception held by a great many people outside the Christian Church. It is commonly supposed that, in the religious view, life is primarily a kind of competition in goodness and morality! Consequently, the agnostic who can, and frequently does say, "I am as good as So-and-so who goes to church," feels that he has given a final and unanswerable reply to the whole Christian position! But true Christianity has never taught that life is primarily a kind of competition in goodness. Most Christians today are "in the Church" because they have felt the need for God and for cooperating with what they know of his purpose. There probably were times in the history of the Christian Church in this country when some church-going Christians would look upon themselves as "superior" to those outside the Church. But to imagine that such is the common attitude today would be laughable if it were not a tragic part of the misunderstanding between the worlds of faith and unfaith. Most modern Church-goers give this weekly witness to their own inner conviction without the slightest sense of superiority, and more frequently than is sometimes supposed, it is given by young Christians despite ridicule, discouragement and even some persecution. If I plead for more understanding on the part of Christians for those who have not enjoyed a Christian upbringing, I would also plead that the agnostic should know much more accurately than he appears to do what the Christians of today, particularly the young Christians, really believe.

Now apart from the nonsense of the supposed "competition in goodness" both Christians and humanists believe that it is important to lead a good life. But in this country there is not the sharp black-and-white contrast between Christians and pagans, largely, I believe, because the whole life of the country has been soaked for many centuries in the Christian tradition. Thousands of people today are exhibiting, even to a marked degree, "the fruits of the Spirit" which Paul listed long ago in his letter to Galatia. They are, for the record, "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, fidelity, tolerance and self-control."

It is obvious that these qualities are no monopoly of the churches, and that devoted selfless service is quite frequently given without any religious faith. It is naturally argued by our scientific humanists that this is good and normal human behavior. But is this really so? It would need firsthand knowledge of an entirely pagan country to say for certain that these impressive spiritual qualities are growing spontaneously, rather than being the delayed action of many years of unconscious Christian absorption. It could surely be reasonably argued that many people in this country are living on the spiritual capital of the past, and that there are signs that the capital is being depleted. Already there are many thousands of present-day parents who were brought up with no religious faith and few standards, and they have had almost nothing, and sometimes less than nothing of spiritual value, to pass on to their children. Surely it is not farfetched to suggest that the depletion of spiritual capital accounts for the breakdown of moral standards in our society. For, as I hope to show in a later chapter, moral standards ultimately depend upon something transcending the human scene.

Quite apart from the gulf between the comparatively small world of faith and the world of unfaith there are innumerable smaller gulfs between various sections of our common life. I am not pining for the long-past "ages of faith" when I point out that there was in those days a communal basic belief in God and in revealed standards of human behavior. This central belief to a large extent held people together in their widely varying activities. Moreover, in days when the sum total of human knowledge could practically be held in the mind of one man the division caused by human specialization was little more than a superficial difference of function. Men could at least imagine that all truth was one.

But today, in our country, the picture is entirely different. A common faith in God is held by only a minority, and comparatively few people believe that there is Absolute Truth to which all human discoveries of truth can be referred. This means in effect that our modern greatly accentuated specialization tends to divide people more and more. In our industrialized society all kinds of professions and vocations, all kinds of skilled and unskilled occupations, tend to become wrapped in their own cocoon of specialized knowledge, and to have little more than superficial contacts outside their own mystiques. What does the steelworker, for example, know of the life and problems of a modern secondary school teacher? What does the electronics engineer know of the life and problems of the surgeon? Such examples could obviously be multiplied many times; there are many human occupations which exist in practical isolation from the rest of the community, and in the absence of a common faith there is today no effective meeting point. From time to time crises such as strike action remind people that they are dependent upon one another, but for the most part they live and work within the confines of their own occupation, and there is extraordinarily little communication of ideas of any significance. This truth is most easily observed by those who have the opportunity of passing readily through the unseen barriers. The doctor, the nurse and the clergyman or minister are some of the few who can observe these divisions.

Now these people, divided into occupational compartments of knowledge, skill and experience, are a kind of parable of what is happening in the realm of thought. The scientist who is exploring the very frontiers of human knowledge in some specialized department of truth may have absolutely no knowledge of the work of any other specialist and may indeed take a certain pride in such ignorance! Of course there is a fascination in retiring more and more completely into the ivory tower of expert knowledge, and the temptation to do so is just as real to the religious man as it is to the poet, the archaeologist, the astronomer, the geneticist, the mathematician and all the others. But the result of such retirement is that there is no common pool of human knowledge, no interaction between various aspects of truth, and no kind of conclusion based on the total of human knowledge and experience. It will naturally be objected that the real expert cannot share his specialized knowledge with the untrained, and that is no doubt true. But surely his point of view can be expressed, and the reason for his dedication to his particular facet of truth translated into terms comprehensible to other men of intelligence? Can it not be more widely recognized that we are all in the human predicament together and that the pooling of knowledge and experience might lead to considerably more light being shed on the business of living which faces every one of us.

There is another danger in extreme specialization. Unless the specialist informs himself to a reasonable degree outside his specialty he can easily be misled in a department where his critical faculties have no familiar data on which to work. Thus a dedicated scientist who feels, because he is a human being, the need for something less coldly detached from humanity, may easily be drawn into a religious cult which is both crude and obscurantist. His highly developed mind apparently ceases to function in an unfamiliar milieu -- or it is possible that he may not wish it to function. Psychologically it may be an enormous relief to him to enter a world of warmth and fantasy after the cold, disciplined life of the laboratory where feelings count not at all. That this can and does happen I know from personal experience, and it sometimes has unhappy consequences. For other scientists, doctors or whatever the specialists may be, are apt to jump to the conclusion that "religion" is simply an emotional escape. They are therefore hardly encouraged to examine such a phenomenon as Christianity with unprejudiced critical faculties.

Apart from such dangers in excessive specialization, there is a kind of intellectual snobbery about the whole matter which I am sure all men of good will should steadfastly resist. I call to mind a former high dignitary of the Church of England who was presented with a fountain pen. But he never used it, on the simple ground that "he did not understand mechanical things"! I cannot see why the artist should despise the engineer or the engineer the artist, and I have little patience for artists or intellectuals of one sort or another who dismiss a scientific device, which has taken years of patience to perfect, as a mere gadget. Those who make it their proud boast that they "don’t know the first thing about electricity and couldn’t even mend a socket" or, when referring to their car, say, "I haven’t the remotest idea what goes on under the hood, I just drive the thing," are to my mind guilty of a quite unpardonable conceit. It would not take them long to understand at least the elementary principles of those things which they affect to despise, and even to have some clue to the rudiments might give them an inkling into the enormous skill, patience and ingenuity which lie behind the practical application of physical science. Those who loudly deplore the intrusion of "science" into our private lives and speak nostalgically of the past would be among the first to complain if they were deprived of the convenience of electric light, the telephone or the motor car! On the other hand, the man of science has no right to dismiss a religion such as Christianity, for example, as a mere hangover from more primitive days. He surely cannot seriously imagine that men of similar intellectual caliber to his own have not asked the same searching fundamental questions about life and its meaning which he himself asks, and yet have come to the conclusion that the Christian Faith is an indispensable part of total truth. If it is rare to find a bishop, shall we say, giving time and thought to understand the elements of a scientific process, it is, in my experience at least, also rare to find a scientist giving his serious attention to the meaning and significance of Christianity.

Obviously, in an age such as ours there must be specialization; but must there be such drastic isolation of objective? Surely there need not be such divisive walls between art, science and religion, erected and maintained only too often by pride, ignorance and prejudice. No intelligent seeker after truth imagines that he is the only one on the right track, and the time has gone by when complete ignorance of another man’s point of view could be considered a virtue.

Many men and women are baffled and bewildered by the complexities of the modern human scene. They can see no sense or purpose in it at all, and many of them are not a little frightened at the new vistas of human knowledge and power which are continually opening up in a dozen different fields. Most of them hold on, without much reason or authority, to the moral standards of what is commonly supposed to be the good life. But it must be plainly said that when they turn to the churches they feel they are entering the atmosphere of a bygone age. Indeed the whole language, teaching and climate of "Church" appears almost totally irrelevant to modern life. I am not of course saying that the irrelevancy is factual. I am merely concerned to point out that this is how the whole machinery of "Church" often appears to the outsider.

I am happy to be aware of exceptions, but the fact remains that most of the practicing Christians in our churches are the product of Christian parents -- there is a sort of hereditary indoctrination. What is more, almost every clergyman or minister of my acquaintance comes from a Christian family, and is not infrequently "a son of the manse." The training of young men for the ministry of the Church is certainly far better today than it was when I myself was ordained. Nevertheless, I am convinced that even today it does not do enough to help a man understand the unbelieving world to which he is called to minister. It is not uncommon to find that those who train him however learned they may be in such matters as theology and Church history, are almost totally ignorant of non-Christian ways of thinking, except perhaps theoretically. It is still possible to find plenty of ordained men who have never worked, in the secular sense, in the contemporary world, and who find it difficult to understand the perplexity and insecurity of godless materialism. The very fact that the modern Church finds "communication" such a desperately difficult problem is undeniable evidence of its lack of understanding of the world of unfaith. I know that these are hard words, but they are not written in any spirit of useless criticism. I am merely concerned to point out, and to emphasize as strongly as I can, what is to me the daily tragedy -- the gulf between the good men of faith and the good men of unfaith. Let us put briefly the two contemporary points of view.

The Christian believes in a God of Love, All-powerful and All-wise. He believes man to be God’s special creation, and whether he believes the fault to derive from the failure of the first man or not, he believes mankind to be suffering from a universal infection called "sin." He is inclined to believe that the non-apprehension of God is chiefly due to this moral infection. The Christian further believes that the eventual effect of sin is death, and that man would be in a hopeless impasse were it not for God’s personal visit to this earth in the man Jesus Christ. This man not only provided a perfect example of human living but by making himself, as it were, representative man, allowed the forces of evil to close in upon him and kill him. By this action he reconciled the sinful human race with the utter perfection and holiness of God. After his death by crucifixion he returned to life again, both to prove his own claim to be divine, and to demonstrate the fact that he had overcome the power of death. After his Resurrection and Ascension he sent his own Spirit into the personalities of his early followers so that they might be the spearhead of a movement designed to convert the world to belief in, and cooperation with, God himself. Christians further believe that Jesus Christ founded a Church which is to be on earth a witness to heavenly truth, and that he gave that Church unique spiritual authority. The Church therefore seeks to add to its membership so that men and women may be reconciled with God and may do his Will upon earth.

In sharp contrast with this view of life is that of the intelligent agnostic. He finds himself part of a vast number of human beings living on this comparatively tiny planet. He knows something of the aeons of time which must have elapsed before Homo sapiens appeared. He can probably see an upward trend in the process of evolution, however blind and ruthless that process may sometimes seem to be. But, if he is honest, he is not wholly convinced that the present tendencies of man are in an upward direction. He cannot help observing evil, injustice and cruelty. He cannot help seeing how frequently the innocent suffer and how the tough and cruel go through life comparatively unscathed. He also sees a good deal of human unselfishness, kindness and courage, and these qualities he is prepared to recognize as good and even to regard with a certain reverence. Now the Christian’s starting point, or at least the starting point of such evangelism as he may chance to hear, probably seems to him quite monstrous. The emphasis is on human sin and on the failure of men to reach the apparently arbitrary standards of God. After all, he thinks, if there is a God in charge of the whole bewildering universe, it seems singularly unfair that he should be presented in the role of a hanging judge! For, to put it plainly, he holds all the cards and knows all the answers, while even the most devout Christian, on his own admission, walks by faith and not by sight. It seems to our sensitive agnostic that the God presented by the passionate evangelist is making unwarrantable demands. For if, after a long process of evolution, highly complex beings with self-consciousness emerge, then surely any reasonable Creator would not expect too much of his creatures who are blind and limited through no fault of their own. Indeed, if there is a God his attitude toward man could fairly be expected to show both pity and the desire to help. But to call his creatures "sinners," and to insist that to admit their "sin" is the only way to get to know him, seems uncomfortably like condemning a small child for not understanding the binomial theorem!

To my mind the difference between these two points of view is not always properly appreciated. The Christian, who is far more indoctrinated than he realizes by upbringing and training, very naturally tends to consort with fellow-Christians who share his point of view. If he is a clergyman or minister his specialized training will condition him even more deeply. It becomes virtually impossible for him to view the human scene without theological color. He holds a faith which, in my view, is infinitely worth passing on; he is more often than not a man of kindness, compassion and sympathy. But again and again he feels frustrated and grows disheartened because he does not really understand the thinking and feeling of people who possess absolutely nothing of that Christian conviction which shapes his whole life.

At the same time the intelligent agnostic, with his prejudices against the churches and all their ways, very rarely takes the trouble to look behind the tradition and the façade and to find out the meaning of essential Christianity. His knowledge of what the alert modern Church is doing in any part of the world is usually infinitesimal, and equally minute is his firsthand adult knowledge of the early Christian documents which comprise the New Testament. Consequently his attacks on the churches are nearly always ill informed or out-of-date. If he rarely fires a shot at Christianity itself it is simply because he usually has little more than a very sketchy knowledge of what it is all about.

There is an added difficulty in the modern situation which is not always appreciated by the sincere lifelong Christian. In the old days, when man knew very little about the true nature of the physical world, he could very easily be reduced to a state of awe and even terror by natural phenomena which he did not understand. But with the vast increase in scientific knowledge in the last seventy years -- a knowledge which is expanding all the time -- man’s attitude toward Nature has greatly changed. When confronted with the inexplicable his reaction is very far from that of the saints of old who could humbly say, "It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth to him good." Old-fashioned humility of this kind is a very delightful virtue, especially when we observe it in other people’s lives! But the modern agnostic is not necessarily lacking in humility when his reaction before the inexplicable is markedly different. He says, in effect, "This is something new to human experience; let us try to understand it and, if possible, control it." And it may be worth pointing out here that if it were not for this attitude men would still be living in terror of darkness, lightning and contagious disease.

Some Christians, at least, do not appear to have properly observed this change of atmosphere in thinking. For a man who believes in a God who is a benevolent Heavenly Father, it may be easy to accept life at the Father’s Hand. But it is really expecting too much to think that the intelligent agnostic is going to smother his own critical faculty and observations of life and submit to an unknown quantity called "the Lord’s Will." The modern agnostic, who is by no means unaware of the mystery of life, is not nearly so arrogant as he appears. But he is not going to be shocked or coerced into faith by the sheer weight of the inexplicable. "If we admit that there is a God," he is saying, "surely we can consider ourselves as having passed the fears and bogeys of childhood. Cannot God treat us as intelligent adults and let us have at least a few hints as to what life is all about? Can we not know something of its purpose so that we may cooperate with it? We cannot abrogate our intelligence, but we would give a great deal to have reliable clues to the nature and purpose of life." Surely such an attitude is reasonable, and surely the Christian should try to understand it!

The concern of this present book is chiefly the relationship of man with the contemporary God, and it is in this context particularly important not to sigh for old days which can never come back. If we admit the existence of "God" we can certainly claim that because of his nature the passage of time cannot alter his character. But as for man, his conditions of life, his perceptions and outlook, his attitude of mind, both toward himself and toward any possible Creator, have all changed so enormously in the last sixty or seventy years that we face almost a new situation. In the whole long history of mankind there has never been such a violent acceleration in the acquisition of human knowledge, at least of certain kinds. We really cannot be surprised that the young person of today is very largely lacking in historical sense. There is such a fundamental difference between his attitude to life and that of his counterpart of less than a hundred years ago, that he can hardly be blamed if he sees no more than the most tenuous connection between his own age and all the previous centuries.

This marked change of outlook has swept over us with unbelievable speed. It is in a really very tiny fraction of the thousands of years of recorded human history that the lonely watcher on the hill has been superseded by scanning radar, the cannon ball by the guided missile, the urgent message on horseback by the telephone call, the peepshow by the cinema, the spreading of unreliable rumor by responsible broadcasting, the eyewitness account given to a few by the mass-perception of television, the months-long weary voyage by quick and comfortable transport, dangerous and arduous labor by powerful mechanical devices. New fabrics, new materials included under the general term of "plastics," new drugs and antibiotics, the mechanization of farm and factory labor, new methods of food packing and the widespread use of refrigeration, these and a hundred more things are quite new in the human scene. It is no good repeating nowadays the weary old cliché, "there is nothing new under the sun," for it is obviously and demonstrably untrue. There are literally thousands of human discoveries and devices which have never, even in embryo, appeared before in human life.

In addition to this, never in all our human history has there been such interchange between the nations not only of ideas but of living people. (We need constantly to remember that in past centuries only a very privileged or adventurous few were able to travel at all.) The network of news coverage throughout the world is so efficient and on the whole so reliable, that the intelligent man of today may make himself better informed about events in the distant places of the world than the intelligent man only a hundred years ago could make himself informed about events within his own country. Despite all men’s fears and prejudices and differences, it is for the first time becoming possible for thinking people to sense what was foreseen a long time ago, that we are "members one of another."

Yet while human achievement in practical and scientific matters has progressed by leaps and bounds, the presentation of the Christian religion is still frequently made in an atmosphere at once stuffy and old-fashioned. The language of the Authorized Version of the Bible, the language of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, yes, and the language frequently employed in homemade prayers in the Free Churches, not to mention the language of hymns, are unquestionably heavily redolent of the past, only partially aware of the present and vaguely hopeful about the future. At the risk of offending many Christian people it has to be said that to the impartial observer, the faithful Christian is apparently saying, "This must be true, it has been believed for so many centuries." But the non-Christian is at least sometimes saying, "This thing may be essentially true, but it is so old and encrusted by tradition that it is high time that it was cleaned and re-examined." Under sentimental appeals, under pressures of guilt or fear, through a wistful nostalgia for the serenity and security of the past, or in sheer desperation through his modern bewilderment, modern man may be driven to accept the faith and trappings of past ages. But for every one who consents to do this, there are a dozen men of good will who cannot be intellectually dishonest, who cannot lightly forget the fears and superstitions of the past, and who cannot reconcile what appears to them to be the mumbo jumbo of bygone days with the dear cold knowledge of the present. If there is a God at all he must be "big enough" to fit into the modern scene (and that naturally means a conception of the Creator a million times greater than that held even a century ago).

Although we are deeply concerned with the present and the future, no sensible man will deny his debt to the past. If it is impossible to put back the clock, it is equally impossible to think that we can face life today without the slightest regard for the generations which have preceded us. It is neither more nor less than adolescent arrogance to think that any generation starts de novo. Young people, for example, may be intensely critical of all that has been taught them and may be contemptuous of the tradition and culture in which they find themselves, but they would be in no position to exercise their critical faculty at all if it were not for the educational process which is part of the system they are so anxious to denigrate. Even on the purely physical plane the voluble young rebel against the present order of things owes far more than he realizes to the past. What young person could feed himself, or maintain even a modest level of hygiene, without using the knowledge and accumulated experience of other people? Does he know anything about agriculture, weaving, the manufacture of soap or indeed of the mechanical processes which enable him to disseminate his ideas? I am not at all sure that this very obvious debt to the past is always clear to the modern "clevers." The most clear-sighted, fearless and unprejudiced writer of today is able to do what he does only because of the knowledge and invention of the generations which lie behind him. The modern writer, however contemptuous of days gone by, does not write as an Australian aborigine or a South American Indian.

Just as inescapably as we are rooted in the past, so there is a quite inevitable "given-ness" about the present human predicament. In our rebellious adolescent days we all feel like the poet who wanted "to grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire" and "re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire." But as we grow more mature, we realize that such a sentiment is not only highly egocentric but utterly impracticable. The plain fact is that we can do little or nothing about the basic terms on which we live. It is only after acceptance of these terms that we can do something constructive and practical. The countries of the free world are at present suffering fairly patiently the cults of "angry young men" or their equivalents. More serious attention would be deserved by the outbursts against Things as They Are if the rebels themselves would do something more than denounce and destroy. They claim that there are no causes left to live and die for, but I have yet to hear of an angry young man dedicating his life to the cure of leprosy, to the care of crippled children or the spreading of medical knowledge in newly-awakening continents, to name but a few of the worthwhile human causes. They cry that they have nothing in which to put their faith, but have they seriously considered the claims of true Christianity? If one looks upon human life as a challenge to courage, compassion and charity, the anger could be readily transformed into worthwhile energy, the frustration be resolved and the self-pity be forgotten.

For over twenty years I have worked within the parochial system of the Church of England, and have therefore retained a strong impression of the point of view of the average hardworking parish priest with his absurdly large and varied responsibilities. And, for the same period, I have had a good chance of observing the behavior and pattern of life both of those who have been within the Church from the cradle, as it were, as well as of those who came to join the Church from a background either pagan or agnostic. But for the past five years I have been living without parochial responsibility, and have had the opportunity not only of speaking to groups of most denominations in this country, but also of listening to a great many people, both Christian and non-Christian. While heavily engaged in parish work I used constantly to complain that I could not see the wood for the trees; for almost any conscientious priest or minister is kept so close to the immediate interests of his particular job that he cannot easily achieve any detachment. But when one is detached from a local responsibility for a period of even five years the over-all picture grows more clearly in the mind. One cannot help seeing life both from the point of view of those inside the Church and of those outside it, And one cannot avoid being almost intolerably aware of the gross misunderstandings which exist between the worlds of faith and non-faith.

There can be no doubt at all that the contemporary God is at work outside the limits of the Church’s direct influence. Yet much as I admire and thank God for all the random goodnesses which exist in our country today, I cannot see any prospect of any rebirth of religious faith without the Christian Church. Heaven knows there are sections of the Church which are antiquated and backward-looking, loving the traditions of the past rather than the living men and women of today. And it cannot be denied that the Church spends a good deal of time and energy on matters of quite secondary importance. Nevertheless, there are in the living Church hundreds of men and women of vision, of courage and selfless devotion, doing all kinds of bold and imaginative things to bring back into our common life that true religious faith which alone can give to it depth, meaning and purpose. The need is very urgent. I have found for myself, in various parts of this country, the most appalling ignorance of what Christianity is basically concerned with. Very few people outside the churches appear to have any knowledge of the aims and achievements of any live contemporary Church even in our own land. And as for the magnificent heroic work of the Christian Church throughout the world, most ordinary people have no knowledge of it whatsoever.

Our society today bears all the marks of a God-starved community. There is little real moral authority because no ultimate Authority is known or acknowledged. Since there is no accepted standard of values beyond the purely material, the false god of success, the lure of glamorized sex, the love of money and the "rat-race" of business or social competition hold almost undisputed sway in the lives of many people. When the true God is unknown, that combination of awe, love, respect, admiration and wonder, which we call worship, becomes diverted toward human beings who exhibit unusual gifts in the public eye. Without the Spirit of the living God the public conscience is capricious and ill informed. The death sentence passed on a brutal, calculating murderer arouses hysterical protest, while the killing and maiming of thousands of people on our roads raise among the general public little more than a perfunctory regret. Cruelty to animals is a far more burning issue to many people than the terrible damage done to the personalities of children by the irresponsibility or infidelity of parents. Where there is no belief in a Purpose extending beyond this life people are inevitably oppressed by a sense of futility. And since there is no great cause for which to suffer and labor, words like "duty" and "moral obligation" have simply lost valid currency for large numbers of people. Further, since a great many people know nothing of the Christian certainty of life beyond death, the power of death to injure and terrify is restored to a pagan level. And finally, since most people have no idea of any resources beyond their own, and apparently believe that we live in a closed-system of cause and effect, they come to accept both their own characters and those of other people with a slightly cynical fatalism. The whole situation cries out for the restoration of real religious faith.

I believe that modern man can never possess a faith which can both command his intelligent loyalty and influence every part of his thinking and feeling until he discovers the unique authority of Jesus Christ. Those who have discovered that authority, which is at once so different from and superior to any known human authority, must do all they can to make the widespread recovery of faith possible. There are many false ideas to be exposed, and the difference between what is purely traditional and absolutely essential must be made plain. There is sound historical evidence as well as modern information to be brought to the attention of those who are largely ignorant of the true content of the Christian Faith. This is no time for reticence, and all those who have found a satisfying religious faith in Christ are nowadays called not only to serve the patient purposes of the Kingdom, but to make the King known. Today information is as necessary as testimony. In a time of dire spiritual poverty the extreme difficulty of "communicating" the Gospel of Jesus Christ appears to me to underline the urgency of the situation. And, unless it can be communicated, what is meant to be Good News for all men everywhere becomes a frozen spiritual asset.