BLACKPOOL FAITH-HEALERS
SIR,—The marked reversion to religious fervour and phraseology at the Blackpool Conference is worthy of some note. Religious zeal should unite us to God, but one looks in vain in the recorded speeches for any such reference. Mr. Morrison appealed " for the glory of our country, and for the progress of mankind," while Mr. Bevan seemed—somewhat blasphemously—to imply that the command, " Suffer little children to come unto Me," was today being fulfilled by social legislation. All this appears too closely allied to Hitler's religion of soil and race and the deification of the State to be other than disturbing.
One of the sad features of Mr. Laski's Revolution of Our Time was its reiteration that some new motive for social improvement must be found instead of the dynamic religious faith of the past which he con- siders it is now impossible to hold. But nowhere did he find it, and the Labour Party Conference appears—quite naturally—to be in the same position. Christians should not let their faith be parodied or prostituted In this way, for by such phraseology the unwary may be led down the path that ends in National Socialism and other .perversions that have blighted the life of mankind. Whitsuntide was a particularly inappro- priate time to suggest that the Divine Spirit now works only through Socialist shibboleths or that the spirit of life can be confined to the dull uniformity of the Socialist pattern. But Christians certainly have a duty to show in practice that they have something better to give, with a zeal to perform it. —Yours faithfully, W. N. LEAK. West Winds, Winsford, Cheshire.
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