_Manchester Guardian_
reviewer. It may: none the less we believe that it is with such problems
that Christianity has to grapple if there is ever to be a Christian
society upon earth. The last thing we wish to suggest is the off-hand
conclusion that capitalism and imperialism are in all their
manifestations anti-Christian. The world is not so simple a place. But
we cannot go on applying one set of principles to our private lives and
another set of principles to our politics and industry. Man is not so
illogical a creature as that. There is bound to be, finally, either a
levelling up or a levelling down towards a single uniform standard. No
proverb is more dangerous than "Charity begins at home." When it begins
in the place most congenial to its exercise, it is apt to end there.
Lord Melbourne is said to have complained, after hearing a sermon,
"Things are coming to a pretty pass, when religion claims to interfere
with a man's private life." We smile at Lord Melbourne's honest
indignation. Our turn come to be indignant when the sermon applies the
Christian "paradoxes" to industry, commerce, and international relations.

And it is along these lines that religious teaching can be made
absorbingly interesting. It all comes round to the old question, "Are we
going to apply Christianity to the problems of modern society or are we
not?" The case against doing so can be found every day in the press, so
here, at any rate, is an issue worth facing, with a presumably infallible
authority to support each side. The direction of most religious teaching
hitherto has been too purely personal; the exhortation is too obvious and
the appeal falls flat. Politics without religion lacks foundation; but
religion without politics lacks quite half its content. Christianity is
the leaven, but so also is politics the lump.

Along these lines, we believe, one might get in the middle and lower
parts of the school results analogous to those we have described in the
cases of some sixth form boys. The present writer used to teach Divinity
to a middle form on the Modern Side, and whenever a Gospel happened to be
scheduled, he found ample material to his hand. It is surprising how
little, for all the sermons they have heard, most boys of sixteen have
faced the ideas expressed in the most hackneyed texts. "It is easier for
a camel to go through the eye of a needle...." "Love your enemies."
"Take no thought for the morrow." A most misch