6 MARCH 1971, Page 24

Sir: I am an old Anglican priest, seeking truth. I

find that H. R. Trevor-Roper's view is pretty well what I had reached by my own wits. I hold that the Christ of the Christian church is an ideal man (therefore called divine) built out of selected portions of the Gospels; in particular, a person full of love for the world (especially the human creatures in it) and of truth or, rather, of being true, true to him- self, and the ideal.

For this reasoh I call myself a Christian. and say `I believe in' this ideal, picturesquely presented in the Christian creed; which expresses the eternal and absolute values in language of time and space—resur- rection of the body, etc.