[Short Notices]

Abstract

MR. McCoxiiOCH is a young clergyman who delivered a broadcast talk in the “Youth Looks Ahead” series about a year ago. One of the thousand letters received by him as a result of his broadcast is printed in the author's preface to the volume before us. It sheds a clear light on the attitude of many who have a strong desire to satisfy their religious instincts, but do not find the Church of much use to them. “The real difficulty of our time,” says Mr. McCulloch, “is in the approach to religion. The modern reaction is first an intellectual quarrel, then an attack on the institution, and third an expression of a genuine desire for God.” But Mr. McCulloch pleads that it is “fundamentally topsy-turvy to attempt to build up a religion by starting with a search for one which is intellectually watertight”. This is doubtless the case in so far as the religious need is not primarily an intellectual, but an emotional one. At the same time, a religion that is not “intellectually watertight”, or at least reasonably so, is not of much use to anybody. Such a religion can only be a more or less deceptive fantasy, and cannot be relied on in a crisis.

A Parson in Revolt

By Joseph McCulloch. Pp. 174. (London: Nisbet and Co., Ltd., 1936.) 3s. 6d. net.