VOICE of the NATIONS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 186, 4 May 1929, Page 19

VOICE of the NATIONS

SAYINGS AND WRITINGS ii: 1: OF THE TIMES s: :s

The Municipal Service. "Although the higher and the technical appointments in local government are now made because the applicants have the right qualifications, clerical and junior administartive posts are still largely made by private nomination. As long as local government was concerned with the parish pump this was well enough, but to-day, when our local authorities spend in the aggregate something like £500,000,000 a year, it is time to build up a local civil service which even in its junior ranks is free from every suspicion of corruption and is comparable to the national one in efficiency.”—“Manchester Guardian.” Churches Greatest Task.

“The greatest task in front of the Church to-day is to reconcile the faith with modern thought, and to present it in terms intelligible to the educated world. This is the problem of all others which calls for solution. We spend years in discussing problems of public worship, liturglologist differs from liturgiologist, and party rushes to arms against party, but meantime greater numbers by far are asking if there is a God who can be worshipped at all. We are concerned and rightly concerned as to the relations between Church and State: but this is a domestic problem compared to the necessity of making the nation Christian in faith and practice. . . On,the relationship between modern philosophical and scientific conceptions and the Christian faith little has yet been written. Here and there are to be found volumes of useful essays; here and there a book by some Christian writer who sees' the necessity of interpreting doctrine in relation to the present state of knoweldge.”—Dr. Garbett, Bishop of Southwark, preaching to the undergraduates at Cambridge.

Spiritual Elevation. “The only hope for man’s happiness is by spiritual elevation, which must come through competent teachers cultivating this sense in the young,” said Dr. Bridges, the Poet-Laureate, in his broadcast lecture, reports the “Daily Herald.” “When Keats wrote ‘Beauty Is Truth, Truth Beauty,’ he was, as is common with young minds, over-pos-sessed with his idea. All truth is not beautiful—all Nature is not beautiful. He—the poet—“said, ‘Don’t say, “I thought things out for myself.” Things think themselves out.’ Nothing in education is of more intrinsic need than the love of beauty. Man’s life can be seen as a progress from lower to higher—from the physicists’ atom to a vision of God.”

The “Secret of the Universe.” “The physical secret of the universe, if it could be discovered—in fact, the notion of such a discovery is meaningless—would be useless to us; for to the pure intelligence which alone cap contemplate the pure mathematical dialetic in which modern physics culminates, the useful is not a relevant category, and in so far as that mathematical dialetic has practical consequences—as, for example, if it enabled us to liberate and control the energy of the atom—those practical consequences would merely, enlarge the field of possible problems for man as a moral being. Morality would be confronted with new problems, though fortunately not with problems of a new kind. The secret of the universe is a silly phrase; but if it be taken in Its common implication as meaning some knowledge of universal application by knowing which man will find the fundamental problems of life simplified or solved, the secret of the universe is necessarily to be sought in morality—and, for most of those who are likely to occupy themselves with the problem at the present time, in a morality purified of traditional superstition.”—Mr. Middleton Murry in the “New Adelphi.”

Religious Futilities. “The trouble is that the compilers of liturgies are old men, and have the point of view of those disengaging themselves from life, not of those entering upon its adventurous enterprise. Those liturgies do not cater for the young. How can we expect the young who are avid for life, eager to taste all its experiences, to join in the petition of disillusion and the wail of weariness. Fiercest of all criticism is that silent criticism effectuated by the young turning their backs in large numbers to-day upon the churches of their fathers and mothers. . And the church which youth abandons is doomed. Their instinct is right. The spirit of a modern religious service should be in accord with the courage and good humour and the idealism of youth.”—The Rev. J. Tyssul Davis, 8.A., in the “Inquirer.”

America Really In the League. “The United States is a member of the League of Nations, in spite of Ks myth of isolation. As an economic power, seeen or unseen, present at every council table, as a signatory of the Kellogg peace treaty (assuming ratification), and as a master'stakeholder in every play, the United States is in the League, and it matters little whether or not its adhesion is indicated by parchment and seals. True, formal absention makes negotiations more tedious and oblique, but it merely delays American answers and decisions. If the League is a joke, it is a joke hated by all frantic nationalists who love wars and by all those Bolsheviks who hope to conquer mankind in the next world war.”—Professor Charles A. Beard in “Harper’s Monthly."

A City Heritage. “A city is a heritage to be passed on with improvements, which may make or mar it. If it is to continue to grow, it must readjust itself to the new functions of its citizens. The great difficulty of cities that are both historical and industrial, is that of uniting, by a wise civic spirit, the two outlooks. The centre of the city is the highest expression of its life. Nature primarily set the stage."—Mr. W. H. Barker, B.Sc., of Manchester University, in a lecture on “English Cities.”

“One of the Cloth.’ “Perhaps because It is so universal, criticism of the man of the cloth is more amusing than harmful,” writes “One of the Cloth,” in the “Aberdeen Press.” “From my experience, I have summed up the situation as follows: If a minister is not married, he ought to be; if he is married and has two or three of a family, how can he be expected to look after his job? If he spends his time in his study, people say he ought to visit more; if he visits and is interested in organisation,, they say he ought to spend more time in his study. If his sermons are careful and learned, they are too heavy; if they are topical and interesting, there is nothing in them. If a minister is correct in his conduct, he is too stiff; if he unbends and Is human, he is lacking in dignity. So, not being able to keep up the standard set him, the poor man chuckles to himself and goes his own way.”

The Passing of Islam. “In most of the Moslem countries where a new nationalism has come to the fore the tendency is to blame Islam for much of the stagnation and Illiteracy of the past, and to regard religious leaders as out of date and a drag on the wheels of progress. Consequently one notices how these countries look back to the pre-Islamic history of their people and glory in the days before Islam entered their hands. This is surely the case in Turkey, where young Turan Is glorified as the worthy descendant of the old Turkish days before Islam. Egypt looks to the glory of its ancient past, and Persia is more interested in Darius and Cyrus and the glory of Persepolis than in any achievements of Islam in Iran. The constitution was amended In order to separate religion altogether from the State. Thus, Turkey, once the head and bulwark of Islam, has formally disestablished and disendowed the Mohammedan faith and made religion a matter solely of personal and individual interest. This, I take it, means that the tide of the Turkish revolution is still rising. In Persia educated circles see absolutely no value in Islam, and are much more impressed by the claims of an Irreligious outlook on life, which would appear to open the way to freedom and progress.”—Rev. Wilson Cash, writing in “World Dominion.” Give Us Clean Books. “What is evident is that there are far too many writers to-day who mistake decadence for strength and salacity for wit; marital unfaithfulness, for example, is not in itself, as so novelists assume, either interesting, inevitable or meritorious. Give us something that shall enable us to live our lives more kindly, more serenely, more bravely! Never were the chances before literature greater than they are to-day. The reading public is not only vast, but is wearying of the book which is usual just because it strains to be unusual; the palate becomes jaded with sensations; the dose has continually to be increased to have any effect at all, a process that has limits which there are indications are now nearly reached. Our clean and simple writers, our sincere and manly writers—is 'it not in truth to these that minds turn with relief? What are the books that have helped and cheered us? It is significant of the trend of modern literature that to answer the question we have immediately to think of the books of an earlier day.”—Lord Gorell, author and publisher, in the “Dally Chronicle.” The Private M.P. and the Nation. “Every man has his own ‘instinctive’ conception of the State, its functions and its organisations. Broadly speaking, their varying conceptions are well enough summed up in the terms Conservative, Liberal, and Labour; and he who honestly applies his mind to the solution of national problems will visualise those problems through the blue, red, or yellow glass of one of these. No party which seeks to ignore this division and endeavours to exclude these sectional views and found itself upon some vague abstraction of national interest has the smallest prospect of survival or of effective service. .... Perhaps something might be achieved if every candidate for Parliament who recognises a personal responsibility to the State and who insists upon his freedom of judgment as a member added to his party definition the words ‘and Commonwealth.’ The appearance of a body of candidates or members defining their political positions as ‘Conservative and Commonwealth,’ ‘Liberal' and Commonwealth, ‘Labour and Commonwealth,’ as the case may be, would be an event of great significance.”—Mr. Alfred Hook, in his book “The Human Factor.” “Frozen Music.” “We are most of us sensitive to beautiful sounds, and even those who are quite innocent of the technique of great musical compositions are able to derive keen pleasure from their performance, because of the ease with which music is communicated to our senses. This is only as it should be. for if a supreme artist has enshrined in a work of art a large part of the thoughts and feelings that are shared by men and women, these should be felt and understood by his audience. But to understand what someone says we must know something of the language in which he speaksWe have seen that in the cast of most of the arts their language is familiar to us, and in music it is a language that is so elemental and universal that we seem to know its alphabet without being taught. There is even something, of this kind in architecture —a something that is at the root of saying that architecture is frozen music—the feeling of pleasure and awe that comes over us when we enter beneath the vaulted roof of one of our great Cathedrals, and that rises even more readily when we see a noble ruin, where the building has lost all trace of its mundane purpose, and In Its decay seems to be prilled and to wear an ethereal crown of untarnished beauty.”—Mr. Walter H. Godfrey, in “The Story of Architecture In England.’*