Octogenarian Confessions Of L. P. Jacks

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 228, 25 September 1943, Page 4

Octogenarian Confessions Of L. P. Jacks

TT is only the odd person here and ■*■ there that one can nod to when passing through a crowd. Occasionally one comes across an old friend, and eyes are lighted and hands are clasped enthusiastically, after which rushes forth a flood qf friendly conversation. There are few pleasures in life so great as that of meeting old friends, as it were accidentally, By Rev. C. W. Chandler although we know that nothing in the universe is accidental. "That which is for you," says Emerson, "will gravitate towards you," and "He whom you seek is already seeking you."

Entering a bookshop is like going into a crowed thoroughfare. Gaudy covered novels are clamouring vulgarly for attention on one side, while on the other paper-covered "topicals," hot with perspiration, are perched up like bookmakers shouting the odds for and against a "New World Order"—mostly for. Most of the authors are comparative strangers; I cannot nod to them as I pass. Further on, in a place by themselves, and not very prominently displayed, are the humbly great—the true aristocracy. Their separateness is a mark of their superiority, not in any suburban sense, but due entirely to intrinsic quality—to what they have to say between their less gaudy covers. For the most part they deal in "everlastings"; what they have to say is true, and that for all time and in all places, which, if I remember rightly, is Sir Arthur Quiller Couch's "acid test" of good literature.

An Old Friend Well, the other day, as I was strolling around the crowded shelves in a local bookshop, I came across a very old friend. I met him first of all about thirty years ago in London —not in the flesh, but in print. I refer to L. J. Jacks. I ran my hands over the coveted volume in pure affection, had a peep at the price, and put it down again, only to walk out with "him" under my arm five minutes later—"The Confessions of an Octogenarian."

There are a few grand old intellects in England to-day. Much of their time must be spent in armchairs, looking out on this mad young world, kicking up her heels. Four at least of them are over 80. There are Bernard Shaw, W. R. Inge, Robert Blatchford, and now L. P. Jacks. I have a corner set apart in my library whicli is a sort of "old men's home"—all four of them are quietly resting there. But, old though they may be in years, they are young-souled.

Jacks has been editor of the "Hibbert Journal" for over 40 years, and author of some of the most helpful and memorable books I have ever read. "Mad Shepherds," wherein Snarley Bob and Shoemaker Hankin appear—old pals of mine—they've had a place in my memory for years and, what is more, have provided me with apt illustrations for sermons on innumerable occasions. "From the Human End" and "Legends of Smokeover" are other titles that occur to me. And now this latest volume, "Confessions." It is a book chockful as it can be of well-seasoned wisdom.

A Landslide On the question of reconstruction he is particularly forceful, nor are his views on this subject what they are because he is old and disillusioned, but rather because he is wise and greatly experienced. ' Referring to 1914-18, he says: "The 'reconstruction' that went on during the first German War ended, as we know now to our cost, in the Treaty of Versailles. Like so many others who were busy at the time with schemes for mending the world— 'after 'the war' —and incidentally getting in each other's way, I had my pains for nothing. The little interest the suggestion aroused soon evaporated, and the war was followed, as the present war conceivably may be, not by the building of a 'New World Order' (a new and better world), but by a general landslide into a worse."

On the subject of New Testament criticism, I have learned more from this book of Jacks, Unitarian though he calls himself, and that in one chapter, than from a dozen weighty tomes that gather dust on my study shelves. Our labels are libels, for although the Bishop of Liverpool had to "face the music" for allowing Professor Jacks to preach in his cathedral, some years ago—the same Jacks has as much honest faith as any in Israel. It's our labels more than anything else that have led to our present .state of impotency in the face of frantic human need. The common man, who, according to Jacks, is the hope of the world, is streets ahead of the theologians. He has sickened long ago of our divisions, and is waiting for us to "catch up" before he can fill his old accustomed place in our deserted pews.

A Tribute As a private opinion, and therefor as an opinion of little weight, I would place "old man Jacks" ahead of the other three whose names I have mentioned. He is broader and more refreshing than Inge, without being shallower. He lacks all the blatant egotism of Shaw, goodnatured and jovial as that egotism may be, and he knows where he stands to-day, I fancy, far better than Blatchford, of "Clarion" fame, although I doubt whether Jacks has influenced as many lives for the broader outlook as has the author of "Merrie England." There's something of the rugged grandeur of Carlyle in Jacks' prose, with whom he has, with Matthew Arnold, much in common.

Should the late principal of Manchester College, Oxford, whom Harold Begbie called "a peasant soul," find himself thus compared with these "immortals," he will doubtless "write it off" as the illconsidered opinion of one who is incompetent to judge in such learned matters. Anyhow, I've had my say, and there's a lot of satisfaction in that.