31 MAY 1940, Page 6

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

FROM everywhere, north and south, city and town and village, comes the same story, of places of worship crowded to the doors last Sunday, and in some cases of the doors them- selves thrown open so that late-corners arriving after every inch of standing-room inside was taken might still unite in the act of supplication and intercession. And in addition thousands, indeed millions, of listeners must have heard the Archbishop of Canterbury or of York or the Rev. Leslie Weatherhead on the wireless. What does it mean? What did it mean to the tens of thousands, or ten times that, who made up the difference between the normal congregations and last Sunday's? Have they been to church on the day the King fixed for intercession, and left it there? This coming Sunday will throw light on that. If consciousness of need sent us into the churches on May 26th, it should drive us there with an even more compelling force on June 2nd. Whatever we may think about the power of prayer to affect material victory, no one can find it hard to believe that it brings the power to endure with fortitude and faith whatever may be in store. Few preachers last Sunday can have dared to deny that evil does constantly triumph in the world. Some may even have had the courage to recall those searching words, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."