BUCHMANISM TRIUMPHANT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22718, 2 November 1935, Page 4

BUCHMANISM TRIUMPHANT

THE "GROUP'S" LATEST RECRUIT "Life Began Yesterday." By Stephen Foot. London: Hetnemann. 7s 6d. The author of this book, who in " Three Lives" told of his short but eventful career as business man, soldier, ana schoolmaster, has suddenly discovered his soul, and decided to tell the w"orld of that, for him, world-shaking discovery. The remarkable feature of this book is that Mr Foot seems to imagine that before the Oxford Group arose, no one knew of the existence of the soul. He is magnificently ignorant of the writings of philosophers, saints, and mystics. He is unaware, apparently, that the " sharing" of the Groupers is a debased and dangerous form of the Catholic practice of confession. He has discovered m "sharing" great spiritual benefit. Of course he has. The benefit, the release of the troubled soul, is an incalculable one; He is not aware of the reasons, arising from the centuries-old wisdom of the Catholic Church, why confession is so hedged around with safeguards. The Groupers, new-born babes in spiritual regions, are, like children, recklessly unaware that those spiritual forces, like any powerful force, can be terribly destructive in inexpert hands. The chapter on " Fear" is an example of comprehensive ignorance, an ignorance pardonable in the man in the street, less pardonable in a schoolmaster, and quite unpardonable in one who undertakes to instruct his fellows in how to live their lives. The author quotes John Mac Murray as saying:— How does one set about developing freedom of feeling and rid oneself of fear? I must confess that if there is an answer to this Question I do not know it. Ido not think that there is one, unless it is a negative one. Mr Foot says that formerly he was in the same position. He has apparently never heard of the methods of character training practised by all esoteric students, instinctively known to mystics, and available to any thinking man. Patanjah's method, whence the late G. W. Russell (the great A. E.) drew his inexhaustible stores of vitality, is only one of a dozen such, all showing the way to conquest of fear. To criticise this book adequately is extremely difficult because every chapter contains either gross errors of thought or gross ignorance of facts. It is a dangerous book. It presents the Group Movement as an immediate panacea for all our troubles. And it presents an idea of God, which, however grotesque to one acquainted in any degree fvith philosophy or theology, obviously appeals to a number of men.

This idea of God, little removed from crude anthropomorphism, is worked out, if one can so dignify Mr Foot's mental processes, in the disquisition on Guidance. The Group idea of Guidance is that "God," a sort of great big spiritual nursemaid, is to tell you what to do iu every contingency of life. All you havr> to do, if you are a Grouper, is to have a "Quiet Time," and God tells you howto act. You can write down His message, which comes in varied English, according to your education, sometimes accompanied by a biblical quotation. The suggestion that everyone can, as it were, telephone God at airy moment will provoke the priest and the philosopher to ribald laughter. But that laughter will not affect the naive adherents to this movement. Mr Foot and his co-groupers seem quite unaware that this " God ' of theirs is merely the moral code ingrained by their own education, listened to consecutivelv for perhaps the first time in their lives. This explains the troublesome fact that different Groupers will receive quite different messages on the same problem To follow " the highest as we know it" is an admirable ideal. But why call it "God"? The limitations of the author's own mentality are made painfully clear by himself where, on p. 97, he. quote s his previous attitude to foreigners: " Foreigners, of course, and people of other races I simply regarded as inferior beings. In an expansive moment one might be anxious to do -something for them —but the idea of equality simplv never entered my head." , . If that is not enough, the admission that " my talk only reflected my own attitude,'that religion was a pendulum that regulated life and kept one from the grosser sins," shows from just what sort of mental divine board Mr Foot leapt into the Group Movement. His confusions of spirit with soul, of emotion with spirituality do a little more to nmddv the springs of his thought. He considers that any life ran be changed, being unaware that, real changes of character are jumps from lower to higher

levels of cognition, always the result of long underground work. Any lasting change is the result of such a period of work, sometimes unconscious but always necessary. Conversions without such work, often spectacular, must be followed by a relapse. This relapse, the worst feature of any religious revival, always leaves the unhappy subject at a lower level of misery and despair than that from which he came. That the way of the Group Movement will be strewn with wrecks is certain from its strongly revivalistic nature. Indiscriminate " life-changers will have much to answer for when their reckoning is made. Mr Foot's quotation of support from high Anglican clergy lfl unconvincing. The hierarchy of the Anglican Church has never been notable for the uniform high quality of its intellect. When the Buchmanites make an impression on Rome it will be time to examine the validity of their premises. This review would have no effect, of course, on Mr Foot. He neatly characterises all adverse criticism as "cackle," and then proceeds to ignore it. Happy are the blind as they lead the blind. P. H. W. N.