M echanism and Man The plea made by Mr. J. E.
Rattenbury, in his Presi- dential address to the Free Church Council at Bristol, for e proclamation the message of the Reformation " in this over-mechanised age was opportune and necessary. Mechanisation seems inevitable. Much of men's activity must be mechanised. But even so the spirit can be free, and unhappy must man be if it is not. That, it is to be assumed, is what Mr. Rattenbury meant by the message of the Reformation—the proclamation of the spiritual possibilities of man, and his capacity for developing a part of his being that is emancipated from the details and stresses of day-by-day life and linked with something uncomprehended perhaps, but eternal. Such conscious- ness of individuality is, as Mr. Rattenbury pointed out, utterly inconsistent with the mechanical obedience imposed by the Totalitarian State, and he was right to sound a warning against it.
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