The cinema hoardings proclaim, if not so insistently now as a few years ago, the advertising value of the words sin and sinner. The devil is not regarded as a bore—at least by his nodding acquaintances. Vice is thought interesting, and virtue dull. Perhaps it is the fault of the novelists whose villains are more likeable than their heroes; perhaps because the notion of immorality is restricted now to the more exciting forms; perhaps because some of our vices have the reputation of virtue. These are the deadly vices, the deadly-dull. Virtues gone flat. Or, as St. Thomas says, the vice that looks like virtue; false prudence, for instance, and religiosity, and deadness to sense.

Anyhow, there it is, sin is definitely news. You remember how people flocked to the Albert Hall to hear The New Sin expounded. Only to be mocked. Similarly, the title and opening of a recent book on Buchmanism rouse the same attention. ‘It comes to grips with an unlovely subject,’ we are promised. ‘And’—the superb assurance—‘solves its riddle.’ But only to disappoint. (Pouf! call those sins, said the Borgia courtier squaring his shoulders, now if you really want, etc., etc.). Perhaps it is a back-handed compliment, but the Catholic literature of conversion is decidedly more thrilling, and does more than skate on the conventions. François Mauriac or Julien Green will point the contrast.

Making allowance for the fact that vice is often unprintable, and noticing the Buchmanite recognition of the pervasiveness of sin, this book still leaves the impression that the sins that matter are the indulgences That Spell Inefficiency.