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Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21802, 6 June 1936, Page 19

CHRISTIANITY’S TRIAL Christianity, History and Civilisation. By B. Lloyd. Lovat Dickson and Thompson, Ltd. 283 pp. (10/6 net.) According to the rector of Great Harwood, who is the author of this book, the present day sees the opening of,the third chapter in the history of . a revolt against Christianity. The first stage was the repudiation Jsy men such as T, H. Huxley and Buckle of ecclesiasticism and supernatural dogma. These controversialists were, however, convinced of the truth and beauty of Christ’s moral sayings. The second stage or chapter is associated with the names of Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, and D. H. Lawrence. For these men Christ is not the good man par excellence, nor are His moral doctrines of much value to us, for they were applicable only in a world unemancipated by the advance of the physical sciences. We now live in the third stage, the effect of the Russell-Huxley-Lawrence doctrines can be fully seen. This effect is a vacuum which is rapidly turning into the Castle of Giant Despair, where dwell quite naturally dictatorship and unemployment. The anti-Christian intellectuals now realise the need that there is to fill this “vacuum.” They propose to put Civilisation there es an, alternative to Christianity. Mr Lloyd’s book is a well-in-formed and thoughtful attempt to show in the “Courts of History” that Christianity and Civilisation cannot justly be put in antithesis to one another. In doing this he has made considerable use of W. Arnold Toynbee’s “Study of history,” and as a disciple of that learned scholar Mr Lloyd has no narrow view of what civilisation means. Nevertheless, he contends that the Christian religion has certain values without which human society would be infinitely poorer. Whether the future will provide for the average man little more than a mechanised routine, or whether it will loosen the bonds that nojv distort and restrict •personality, depends upon the rejec-

tion or revitalising of Christianity by the European peoples and their dependencies. Therefore, the first task of the Church is to preach the gospel of the love of God and only secondarily must it lay emphasis hi the social implication* of the Faith.