[To the Editor of TILE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Dr. Needham long since
mastered the art of saying provocative and refreshing things. His article on " The Common Ground " is delirious with them. It is a pity that it expires in the 'commonplace dislike of churches. " Of the churches as institutions," he says, " we may have the most melancholy expectations "--all sieklied o'er with references to The Spectator, The Times, the New Statesman, the Universe' and Blaekfriars. One wonders whether he would take- his " expectations " of-biology exclusively from the same autho- rities. Denuded of its moderately relevant parade of history, his argument amounts to what we can hear at any time in Hyde Park, if the weather is fine. He seems to imagine that ' the " ecclesiastical institution " exists in order to produce " the just social order," and is to be damned because it seems sometimes to aim at something else : •" When that which is perfect (the just social order) is come, that which is imperfect (the ecclesiastical institution) shall be done away." That consummation is still so distant that ordinary people who cannot think in millenniums may be pardoned for supporting the " imperfect institution." It was not a Gracco-Oriental mystic but a Hebrew Apocalyptist who said that " the Most High created not one world but two." The Church would not have survived a-century, indeed would never have existed, as • a committee for clearing slums,' adjusting wages aid giving everybody a good time. In the want of such heroic philan- thropy, however, it did create European civilisation such as it was and convince men that their lives were eternally important, ,teach them to be just, peaceful,•iidustrious and even scientific. Alas, it did not teach them to be-tich. Yet it seems'hardly fair to condemn the eighteenth-century theo- logians for failing to understand economic problems which twentieth-century economists are not solving with any
conspicuous success. - - • The chief blemish of Dr.- Needham's argument is that it
gives us no hint as to what the just social order is or where it is to come from. It sounds-grand-to saythat" the Church must die to be born-again as the- Holy Spirit-of a righteous social order"•cif only one could discover its meaning. -Originally
' there- was a-Holy Spirit-of God. Does this Righteous Social
Order promise better things And how does the Church die in order to be born again ? Should the Pope resign ? Would it help on the R.S.O. if people stopped praying together ? Or ceased to organise leper settlements ? Or is it that priests are expensive ? Does the existence of nuns somehow interfere: with the employment of miners ? Does Dr. Needham really suppose that the present world is suffering from too much other-worldliness ? If he will consult his authorities, the New Statesman, &c., he will find them most laudably interested in this world. It is important to clear up what he does mean, because we poor people are often expensively and even dan- gerously inspired by windy eloquence about social justice
evacuated by people who have abolished the Judge. -
There may be Communism in the Christian Church. There. is certainly none outside it— which, though I should hate to agree with most of his opinions, may be, perhaps, what Dr.• Inge meant.—Yours, &c.,
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