This week I may as well begin by acceding to a reader’s request that in future I avoid serious subjects and confine myself, instead, to regaling readers with lyrical waxings about my idyllic childhood. Well, it was idyllic in its own way. We could get “hurls” on the milk-lorry, a lift to school on Louis [...]
Looks like I got it wrong last week over the anti-capitalism demo outside St Paul’s. It’s the church, not the demonstrators, which now has egg on its face. No banker has been forced to resign and no chief executive has been forced to take a cut in pay, but the Dean and his Chancellor have [...]
A wise Roman Catholic once remarked that there is no one so prejudiced as someone who thinks he has no prejudices; and what’s true of individuals is equally true of societies. The more we pride ourselves on our tolerance the more intolerant we seem to become.
Effects of the change What Chalmers himself called “the very great transition in sentiment” was accompanied by an inward peace and joy which he never lost. Reflecting on the experience years later, he wrote: “The righteousness which we try to work out for ourselves eludes our impotent grasp, and never can a soul arrive at [...]
