RELIGION AND BUSINESS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 151, 30 June 1928, Page 21

RELIGION AND BUSINESS

"Seven Days With God." By Abraham Mitiro Eihbany. London: George Allen and Uinvin. A Syrian, one brought up in tho Greek Orthodox faith, Mr. Eihbany endeavours in the light of modem kuowledgd and view of tho needs of our own time, to present the idea that a world without God is inevitably a sad world. The way to God, as tho author sees it, is not limited to any ono form of worship, nor to any act of worship alone, but worship and prayer do afford access to God, and that is tho great present need of the West and, in some measure, even of the East. Tho greatest obstacles to progress of Wostern civilisation are Speed and War,' tho ono destroying the nerves, tho other destroying the best of tho breed. Again. and again is heard there is "no timo" for tho worship of God; but although the man of the West may not put the new "wine of his time with the old bottles of the times of Isaiah and Paul and escape disaster, yet the soul can secure the mastery over its possession and eir-, cumstanee, achieve victory over, the world. Christianity is a religion of victory, and that is why it has made so powerful an appeal to the Western mind. Spiritually speaking the West is still in its youth. But it is- also bowilclered by what the East long ages ago weighed in the balance and found wanting, viz., the division' of life into two spheres—the spiritual.and secular. "Tho theory (Mr. Bihbany writes) does not work because in its deepest being tho soul knows no other sovereign but God." But "the changeless East" is changing, and the writer, with special knowledge of the peoples of Turkey, Arabia, Persia, and India, has much to say that is important in showing how Western influences and thought are affecting Eastern peoples. For all that, the East is not being Westernised. But it is becoming, a liew East. Its educated classes are beginning to experience and express dissatisfaction with inherited forms of religion; doubt and agnosticism, as in th© West, have been andare working as ferments in the East. This condition is seen in Japan and India and in Turkey. The pious of the East is infected with doubt and indifference to religious practices. The author docs not despair, and^ sees no reason for being downcast at these manifestations on the part of Eastern peoples parting with their ancient faiths. Instead he sees in Christianity tho link connecting the East and West. Christianity has not failed he holds, because it, "has" been tried; and its greatest success is to bo found in the fact that the men in particular —the author shows that the theory "Business is business" has a sinister bearing on the lives of those who practise it. He holds that the seven days of every week belong wholly to God, and not one of them should be given to Caesar. The author has placed his convictions forcibly and clearly before his readers in the manifest desire to help them avoid being lost in the arid wastes of materialism.