3 NOVEMBER 1944, Page 4

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

THERE is little I would presume to add here to the Bishop of Southwell's impressive tribute to the late Archbishop of Canterbury on another page. Much has been written in the Press about Dr. Temple's social zeal and his concern for education, expressed largely through the W.E.A. (he had, after all, been headmaster of Repton), and all that is entirely just. But by itself it might suggest the picture of a semi-political Archbishop, which Dr. Temple never was or came near being. He was primarily and essentially a great spiritual force, and those would misunderstand him gravely who doubted that. The whole of his outward life was a direct and faithful expression of his inward life. He never believed that any man could be saved by works alone. The Bishop of London, I think, put it as well as it could be put, when in his address to the London Diocesan Con- ference on Monday he referred to " the urgency with which he related the eternal truths of the Gospel to the `here and now' of social and personal life, of national and world problems and the life of the Church."