Having learnt by experience how frequently the evil that a man does falls back upon his own head, our wise forefathers gave us the proverb which says that curses always come home to roost. This is brought back to our mind by the significance of the declarations of the recent Lambeth Conference along with the explanations or excuses since offered by the Anglican prelates responsible. It is another case of the proverb. It has taken three hundred years to overthrow the calumnious accusations of the reformers concerning the morality of the ancient monasteries, and it is to Protestant historians like Gairdner that we are indebted for much of the labour involved in the destruction of that false accusation. Does it not seem that the curse has come home to roost when we find the chief authorities of the Anglican body publicly and officially teaching that unnatural vice in sexual relationship is right and good provided that it be done ‘in the light of Christian principles’?

We should be tempted to laugh were the blasphemy not so horrible. All who had followed the trimming and compromising of the Anglican leaders were quite prepared to see them bow to expediency in this case also by declaring that birth-prevention was allowable. But it is the hypocrisy of that phrase ‘in the light of Christian principles’ which sticks in our throat: we were not prepared for that, for we did not think they had fallen so far from Christ.