Events at Nottingham and Notting Hill may well be symptoms of a more deep-seated and widespread evil in our midst. It is true that bullying Teddy-boys have been suitably punished, but it is also true, at the time of writing, that our popular press has printed letters which betray considerable race-feeling and racial prejudice. And anyway there is apparently conclusive evidence that the population of Britain falls into three broad groups of roughly equal size: one third is tolerant of coloured people, one third is mildly prejudiced, and one third is very prejudiced. These are saddening figures; and, alas, all the ugly incidents and ugly attitudes at Nottingham and Notting Hill do but confirm the accuracy of the estimate.

This is what obtains in twentieth-century Britain. In striking contrast, antiquity did not know of racial prejudice. The true Greek saw the world as something divided between Hellenes and Barbarians; another division would give the categories of citizen and slave. You were born, or became, a Roman citizen, without the slightest reference or advertence to skin pigmentation. Jews in the time of St Paul, whatever their exclusiveness and strong feedings about ‘gentiles’ or uncircumcised non-Jews, were quite unconscious of colour differences. We read in the Acts of the Apostles of an Ethiopian, a minister of Queen Candace of Ethiopia, who had gone to Jerusalem to worship (Acts viii, 27). He was no doubt a devout proselyte, and accepted like all others . . . ‘from every nation under heaven, Parthian, Medes, Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judaea, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia . . .’ (Acts ii, 8-10).

This day has been made holy for us by the day who made all days; the day about whom there is a song in the psalm, ‘Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth. Sing to the Lord and bless his name, rightly declare day from day his salvation’ (Ps. xcv, i). Who can this day from day be, if not the Son from the Father, light from light? But that day who begot the day that would be born of the virgin this day, that day has no dawning, has no dusk. The day I mean is God the Father. Jesus after all would not be day from day, unless the Father Were also day. What is day anyhow? Simply light; but now not material light for material eyes, which is shared by men and beasts, but light which shines on angels, light which our hearts are now being scrubbed and polished for a sight of. This night is soon over which we are now living in, in which the lamps of scripture have been lit for us, and soon what another psalm sings of will be here, ‘In the morning I will stand before you and gaze upon you’ (Ps. v, 5).

And so that day which is the Word of God, who shines on the angels, who shines in that mother country we are exiles from, that day clothed himself in flesh and was born of the virgin Mary.