SIR, —May I be allowed space for a word of sympathy
and counsel to the writer of the letter signed " Student " in your issue of December 7th —of sympathy because he is obviously unhappy, .groping for a synthesis which at present eludes him, and one knew long years ago the pains that accompany that kind of quest ; and of counsel because he is badly in need of it, though whether he has yet reached the stage at which it can be acceptable I have no means of knowing. Of Glasgow University I know nothing—though I have learned much from the published works of its Alumni—but I can claim more than half a century of knowledge of the life of another seat of learning, viz., Cambridge. I was. there a fortnight ago to preach two sermons. At one of them the first lesson was read by a physicist of international reputation, at the other I counted the scientists among the large number of Fellows present (it was in a college chapel) and found them outnumber their literary colleagues in the proportion of two to one. There is food for thought for " Student " here. These men have had to face his problems and have found (what he is, as yet, unable to discover) that in the Jesus of the New Testament there is at once the " Truth that makes men free" and the nexus which unites the material cosmos with the real world of (spiritual) values.
" Student " finds " doctrines like Hell, the Trinity and the Virgin Birth impossible to believe in." He means, of course, " believe." We "believe in " God—i.e., we put our trust in Him, as we find Him in Jesus Christ. Few of us believe in a physical Hell ; none of us " under- stands " fully the doctrine of the Trinity, though many of us have come to see in it the rationale of our own deepest religious experience, so far as human words can express that which in its very nature is beyond expression in words, save in so far as they can be used, humbly and reverently, as halting metaphors and illustrations. And as to the Virgin Birth, so long as Jesus Christ remained an historical figure and no more to us, that opinion of His physical origin held in the first century was to us a bit of mythology, beautiful as much other mythology is, but no more. But when we came to know Him as Saviour and Lord, we found it though still incredible when considered solely biologically, congruous to our Faith that in Him, the Spiritual World, or, better, God had ir- rupted into the life of man in order to " save " mankind from sin—i.e., from the " failure " to seek in Him the standards of true living and of conforming to them when they were found.
My counsel to " Student " then is (a) have patience and go on groping— many others have gone the road you are treading and found the signposts that led to the end of the quest ; and (b) may I recommend to him two books by a great Christian teacher on his side of the Border, Invitation to Pilgrimage and Our Knowledge of God, by Dr. John Baillie, Regius Professor of Divinity in Edinburgh University? The first rs elementary but profound, the second profound but convincing.—Yours
faithfully, H. MARTYN SANDERS. 27 St. George's Court, London, S.W. 7.
[Will the writer of the letter signed " Student " in our last issue please send his address?—ED., Spectator.]
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