AN AGE OF FAITH.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—The triumph of the "Progressives" will cause many to pause and think. How is it that the majority of Londoners permitted, by voting or abstaining, a party to be re-elected of pronounced semi-socialistic principles ? Is it because the evils of our social system press so heavily upon the conscience of this sensitive age that any negative and reactionary party is doomed ? The majority probably do not believe in Socialism ; but they believe that there are great social evils, and that these can be grappled with, the first as an obvious fact, the second an ineradicable instinct in any serious age : and so London prefers the faith of the wildest dreamers to the nega- tive caution and critical prudence of social sceptics.
If this be so, it suggests two considerations,—firstly, a general one, are we not, though we little realise it, living in an Age of Faith? Secondly, must not the Unionist Party meet the coming Election with a policy of positive progress, and not with merely negative logic against Socialism and Home-rule P—I am, Sir, &c.,
ALFRED BROOK, Canon of Inverness.
[Is it faith at all, or rather hope, a very different thing, combined with a new and strange carelessness as to the danger of unsettling everything P—En. Spectator.]
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