Sunday's Child

...6I I Ireland's Senate Election...

...It is old mid-wives' lore that the child who smiles too early will never comb his hair grey, haply never have any hair to comb at all, but speedily take his charm and innocence to a better world...

...THE COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Literature, The Arts, and Public Affairs...

...So we have Mr...

...Nothing more or less, he tells us, than the sight of its application on a wholesale scale...

...Lang-don-Davies can say, and support his blasphemy with quotations from some of the bleakest contemporary thinkers and writers, that the god has toppled of[ his pedestal and "dissolved into a scattered medley of potsherds...

...Mary Carolyn Davies...

...Its very etymology was a definition...

...At least he would like to be surer than he can be at present that the death of one is as inevitable a condition of the other's existence as he is told--that both, each in its proper sphere, may not live and thrive...

...613 The Bellows Exhibition . .Anna McCIure Sho!l 614 ,The Golden Tickseed (verse...

...Langdon-Davies does not fail to remind us that the funeral oration of super- natural religion was delivered as long as thirty-five years ago...

...That blessings brighten as they take their flight, is a piece of sound observation...

...A "Sunday Child," right enough, he is not as fair of face as the proverb gives us a right to expect...

...So full of pathos, indeed, is the situation it evokes that the Rev- erend A. Wakefield Slaten, for whose sermon at the West Side Unitarian Church on a recent Sunday the death of Christianity was the text, seems to have felt himself compelled, by virtue of his Very office, to un- wring the withers of his congregation and to end his threnody on a note of hope that is worth quoting text- ually...

...In 1889," he notes, "Frederick Harrison delivered a famous lecture on The New Era, in which he told his audience that the belief in 'celestial re-wards of the separate soul' had been replaced by 'a faith in human progress.' " Dr...

...Not only are the views of those committed by their profession to a view of life "sub specie eternitatis" given generous space in the news columns, but editorial comment upon first and last things which they arouse is markedly sincere and thoughtfulmfree of the perfunctory reverence with which the worldly spirit too often parries a message it is not prepared to receive...

...The control of conduct based upon a favorable relationship" to some deity, which Dr...

...That some-thing will be the unification of belief based on modern 602 THE COMMONWEAL October 28, 1925 scientific education . . . We hear the cry of an in- fant religion--humanism...

...619 The Play...

...It was consciencem"con- scientia" or knowledge shared, and the finite and In- finite were partners in the process...

...When a pastor of one of the most enlightened and socially influential communions, therefore, tells his con- gregation, with all the air of giving them a sober and reluctant judgment that Christianity is dying, and that the noise of controversy which is bringing it into new prominence is merely the death rattle in its throat, one need not consider the prominence given his sermon in the press as any acquiescence in a theory which so many of the facts of life disavow...

...619 Communications...

...R. Dana Skinner 6z 3 Books...

...Slaten's metaphors, is that the infant comes to us with something of a weazened and aged look...

...Thomas Walsh, Katherine Br~gy 6z4 The Quiet Corner...

...6o 7 A National Birthday...

...Langdon-Davies's book is frankly addressed to Americans, not because they are, in his opinion, in greater need of enlightenment, but because, owing, he believes, to the greater material prosperity of their nation they are more inclined than Europeans to lend a ready ear to prophets of a faith so abundantly justi- fied by material results in the past...

...We are living in the last stages of a great religion...

...Slaten's baby is at least as old as that...

...Gustav Davidson 615 Latter-Day Snobs...

...But from the moment they presented themselves as the sole permitted answer to the eternal question that the human heart, dazed between the two infinities of time and eternity, flings at the stony face of destiny, the discovery of their inadequacy was only a question of time...

...When such a low opinion of the power of science to save is held by men who have emancipated them- selves from dogma (none of the authors quoted are believers, nor does Mr...

...The guesses of Darwin, of Spencer and of Haeckel passed muster for oracles while there was no need to appeal to them for present help in time of trouble, and while mankind generally was running on the momentum of old beliefs and convictions whose power is not to be cast of[ by a mere shift in mental allegiance...

...To give only one instance, remarkable if only from the status and circulation of the paper in which it was contained, the New York Times editorial on the Jesuit martyrs of America was a real attempt to assess the value of all that is contained in the conception of sanctity, as understood by those who do not accept the standards of a material philosophy...

...Christianity is passing away and something will take its place...

...J. B. S. Haldane, in his Daedalus, doubting very strongly whether "in the end man will survive his ac- cessions of power ;" Dr...

...What has shaken the belief in Europe in the omnivalence of science, to such an extent that Mr...

...In a very remarkable book, The New Age of Faith, just published by the Viking Press of New York, Mr...

...There is an uncanniness in the very self-consciousness of the smile with which he answers our caresses...

...6o 3 The Locarno Settlement...

...When the last rites are over, the interment decently conducted, and even the echoes of the funeral oration are dying away, upon what sort of nursling shall we be privileged to gaze, and upon what interim guardians and foster fathers must we rely while he is being dandled and weaned into maturity and authority...

...Hilaire Belloc 6o9 The Winnowing of Womanhood..George N. Shuster...

...Langdon-Davies himself, who identifies religion with magic, seem to be in more orthodox case) the open-minded seeker after truth may be pardoned his misgivings at hearing the ancient belief piously exhorted to a sort of Caesarean opera- tion in order that the new may live...

...6oi Week by Week...

...But to the discipline it enforced he owes all that lifts him above the blind life of sense and instinctmwhether it be the pride of intellect which rears its head to deny the ancient beauty, or the com- punction that bids him, when a false god lies in frag- ments, turn again towards the true...

...Schiller in Tantalus posing as the one ascertained law of "progress" that there is no law, and bidding us know that civilization, "as at present constituted," is "a deteriorating agency...

...We are sitting by the deathbed of Chris-tianity...

...6o8 The Faith and the Press...

...Elisabeth Marbury 616 Statement (verse...

...In a word, if the old faith is dying, it is at least dying in childbed...

...Constantine P. Curran...

...John Langdon-Davies, a writer of the younger school, who has lectured extensively in this country on social and economic subjects, takes up the entire question of science as a substitute for faith, and examines it, not from the point of view of a churchman or advocate in any way for older forms of reliance, but on grounds of its sheer capacity to meet the de- mands that are likely to be made upon it when Dr...

...Bertrand Russell declaring, without apparent fear of contradiction that "science threatens to cause the destruction of our civilization...

...Slaten's infant religion comes to us, the solicitude for finding a welcome pre- pared in advance which it evidences, there is almost a premonition that his reign in the hearts of men will not be either very long or very prosperous...

...The first thing that will occur to those who entrust their thought to Dr...

...The noisy controversies you hear are the death rattle of the ancient faith...

...Loretta Roche 6x8 Moon Magic (verse) . .Dorothy Cruikshank 6t8 Those Rich, Far Places...

...By controlling his conduct according to the dictates of a law that lay be- yond the confines of experience, man did not always succeed in controlling his earthly destiny or mastering his environment...

...627 SUNDAY'S CHILD I T is a common observation in recent years among those concerned with observing the trend of public interest as reflected in the public sheets, that "religion has made the front page...

...To contend that the renewed interest in religious issues which no one can help but notice is the gathering of the Christian nations round the deathbed of their parent faith, divided between sor-row for the passing of what was once dear, and some anxiety to what it will be found to have bequeathed when the testament is opened, is not only an ingenious theory but pathetic and picturesque imagery...

...R, Dana Skinner 618 But of Her Lips (verse...

...Slaten sees "liberal religious thought" discarding, had a better and more logical name in days when thought was harder and empirical negation less the fashion of the moment...

...In the ingratiating air with which Dr...

...Volume II New York, Wednesday, October 28, 1925 Number z5 CONTENTS Sunday's Child...

...It is interesting to note that in his chapter, From Magic to Scientific Control, Mr...

...Slaten's vision is an accomplished fact--in a word, when mankind has nothing else upon which to rely...