The Effect of the Christian Religion on Civilisation

Extract

Everything Christian begins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and ends in glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. And the essential point in all religious recovery is a realisation that God is all in all, and that our heart, our strength and our faith in the future come from that controlling absorbing, essential fact of the reality of God.

When Eric Gill, the sculptor, was asked to make a sculpture for the League of Nations at Geneva, he went to the beginning of Genesis for his text, and he made a design like that of Michaelangelo in the Sistine Chapel in Rome—God touching man to life; ‘In the image of God He made man’—and above it he put a line from a religious poet of the last century, Gerard Hopkins : ‘Thou mastering me, God.’ Eric Gill, the artist, thought he could choose no better text for the League ot Nations; the League should be made to realise that without the inspiration of that essential text and that line from the poet, their councils would be in vain, as, alas, so far in vain they have proved.

The old and true Christian attitude is that God is the measure of all things; God is the measure of man. This so-called humanitarian age which is now reaching its close has said that man is the measure of all things; and, alas, unless Christian ideals can prevent it, we are moving into an age when the State will shape the measure of all things, and, if I may say so, that measure will be a mess.