6 JANUARY 1933, Page 10

A Spectator 's Notebook

ITHE first leader in last Monday's Times has not attracted the comment I should have expected. To my mind it was a most remarkable and significant article, such as I never remember having seen in that or any other daily paper. For it was in effect a searching and intimate sermon—not an essay on abstract religion, but something - personal and vital—fearlessly and unfalteringly penned. "We can but guess at the events before us.. But at all events if we choose we may be sure of meeting them strengthened by an eternal Power and guarded by a Love that never changes." Has a Times leader ever ended with words like that before ? And does the fact that one ends that way now justify any belief in something like a revival of concern about religion ? cbviously not much can be built on a single article, but study of the London papers as a whole does undoubtedly suggest that their editors believe religion to be something in which the public is more interested to-day than it was twelve months or two years ago. The B.B.C. would, I think, say the same thing. So would the universities, particularly Oxford. Tenden- cies are 'hard to measure and actual statistics are decep- tive, and in this matter mostly non-existent. But there are many signs of a movement stirring that may mean

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