THE GARDEN OF ALLAH.

Evening Star, Issue 21037, 26 February 1932, Page 1

THE GARDEN OF ALLAH.

TO TUI EDITOR.

Sir, —The difficulty of mastering just one calling must have suggested “ tho cobbler and his last.” . It is felt by some who would limit the church’s province to moral values. Others more subtle may deem it urgent to warn off the light-bearer lest his beams affright the shades of vested interests. That economics has failed conspicuously to give us a coherent system of valid inferences from verified data is plain to everyone. _ From the hungry workless who declaim against Capitalism to the sleek professors in uncivil warfare, wo all realise that tho “ dismal science ” is as disjoint as the world it would interpret. Perhaps the very reason it grovels in the mire of human selfishness is that its teachers have almost every one neglected to consider the spiritual nature of mankind. From Adam Smith through Karl Marx to Theodor Emanuel Gugenheim Gregory they have limited themselves to phenomena arising from motives of self-interest, greet!, and inertia. Urgent is our need of a philosopher able to distil from religion, ethics, and economics their choicest ingredients, and blend them into a message of hope for a distraught world. In part the synthetic essence has been worked up by such as Carlyle, Ruskin, Henry George, and Bedell Smith, under the inspired teachings of the Nazarene. If the leaven of religion is to work through the inert lump of our social order, the capsule that seals it must be broken. _ What more fitting than that Christians of larger vision should set themselves to show us just how to start the fermentation which shall transform our decomposing mass into a staff of life P Others who have well-nigh lost heart and hope will tell us that the church fell down when it failed to avert the war. In'truth, it failed to avert the peace that bore the war and all its dark brood. To warn us that the temple is overrun by money changers, to trumpet forth the call to action, to scourge the thieves from the sanctuary—tires© would seem the bouuden duty of a church militant in this hour of crisis.— I am, etc., MacG. Walmsley. February 26.