31 JANUARY 1936, Page 17

[To the Editor of THE SexersToa.1 Srit,—Will you permit me

to ask your correspondent, signing herself Patricia Gilbert-Lodge, the following questions with reference to her letter in last week's Spectator ?

1. Why does she suppose that a religion should become out of date because it is 2,000 years old ? Surely an event in history remains true however many hundreds of years have passed since its occurrence. The passing of time seems to he in this matter irrelevant.

Does this lady really ask us to believe - that " the only person who will never desert us is ourself " ? Her experience has certainly been bitter, and, I think, unique.

3. No one could quarrel with her belief that " the chief commands of our God are to love one another and to be of use to the world " ; but what is the authority behind these commands to her and what their source ?'

4. Your correspondent seems to imply that Christ claims to originate the principles He laid down. What lie said was that He came "not to destroy but to fulfil" the law and the prophets.

5. Why does. your correspondent suppose that the Church is attempting to force anyone to believe in God and heaven? Neither the Church today nor her Founder has ever attempted to coerce belief in any way.

6. If " it was not belief in anyGod which guided the hand of the Greek sculptor" who gave us the Hermes, let us say, attri- buted to Praxiteles, or the statue of Athena which stood on the Acropolis, why was all this beauty and skill dedicated to religious subjects ?

7. Who is preventing your correspondent from obtaining the " freedom to develop," or keeping from her " the wisdom to understand the overwhelming beauty which lies around us " ? Certainly not the Church, and certainly no religion that is current today. And, lastly, if religious teaching RS she finds it consists of " huge woolly clouds on the horizon behind," may I suggest that she should study St. Thomas Aquinas' five proofs of the existence of God ? The Latin is quite simple, and I think she will find it lucid.

—Yours truly, A. Ross WALLACE. School House, Sherborne, Dorset.