The Jig-Saw Puzzle

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 142, 12 March 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Jig-Saw Puzzle

“During the Congress of WorldFaiths, held in 1936 in London, one of the speakers told the story of a clergyman wrestling in his study one Saturday evening with his sermon, and being interrupted continually by the affectionate attentions of his small daughter.

“Casting round for a way of deliverance that would be at once decisive and yet tactful, his eyes fell on a map of Europe that was lying on his table. Cutting it up into innumerable small pieces he handed them to the young intruder and told her to take them after the fashion of a jig-saw puzzle, and see if she could get her Europe into place again. Congratulating himself gleefully on a decisive victory, he turned, with some satisfaction, to his work. To his astonishment, in an incredibly short time, the interloper was at his side again, with her fractured Europe united and complete. “He asked how she had managed it and her answer was: ‘There was the picture of a man on the back of the map. I got the man together and Europe came right.’ It was a good story, legendary or historic, with a parable for our Christian problem and our times.

“The small geographer knew, presumably, that she had little hope of. wrestling with the intricacies of Europe. But she had a reasonably good idea of a mere man. And she had guessed that, if she could but put her man together her world would soon enough come right. “The argument is a familiar one in its application to the problems of the world. Change your man, tl>e Churchman tells the social reformer, and he, soon enough, 'will change your systems. The small girl’s discovery presents us with an analogy of a kind that carries its own conviction with it. “. . . If we can get our man to-

gether, our world will, soon enough, come right.”—The Bishop of St. Paneras, Dr. Crotty.