It is the object of these papers neither to find differences nor to apologise for them, but to pause for a while to consider how far they really exist. We wish to learn to appreciate something of another’s point of view without sacrificing anything we treasure as true ourselves. Is truth different for different men? Or is it vital to some men and a matter of little concern to others? Or are our differences questions purely of emotion or feeling or of the company we like to keep? If we answer negatively to these questions, then differences between sincere people must be mainly questions of misunderstanding. We cannot hope here to heal a schism, but something will be gained if we can help to remove one stumbling-block. This is worth while, even if the stumbling-block be small or mainly a legacy of the past.

I am confining myself to a doctrine which was at one time considered vital, especially among Methodists. And, though it may be less considered today, it has its intrinsic interest as well as being a doctrine that might be revived in any back-to-the-Reformation movement. I refer to the Lutheran doctrine of assurance of grace, referred to usually by Wesley in Pauline terms as the Inward Witness of the Spirit. I do not know whether the Wesleyans used to regard this as a peculiar Protestant doctrine, but it is certain that Luther himself looked upon it as such. It was to him part of his justification of his big step in rejecting the external authority of the Catholic Church and was further dictated by his desire to gain an interior feeling of peace with God more vividly felt than any assurance such as Catholics normally seek and find in their sacraments. They all felt confirmed in their appeal to assurance by such Pauline passages as the one, ‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.’ They made it part and parcel of their doctrine of justification by faith or confidence that Christ had washed away their individual personal sins.

For the best part of this century, the exploitation of the East by the West has been a favourite theme with pamphleteers; and as the sincerity of the pamphleteers has grown, so has the interest of the public declined. The subject, it is argued, has been flogged to death and, taking an Epicurean stand, Englishmen have added—let sleeping dogs lie. In the common mind China appears a far distant continent—another world.

The attitude is typical of Englishmen as a whole, but it is also typical of many Europeans. In America the orientation is different, because Chinese emigrés make up a considerable part of the population of the United States. Often enough Hollywood may depict the Chinaman as either a pirate or opium eater, but to the American he is a person of distinct characteristics; he may run a successful chop-suey restaurant in Greenwich Village or he may be an astute lawyer. They are not deluded by the romantic notion of film directors that he is a man capable of saying little else other than ‘Me muchee-muchee sad’. They are well aware that he may as yet prove a powerful business rival, although his methods of business will not necessarily be those of the American businessman. For part of Congress’s dilemma over recognising the ‘People’s Republic of China’ is a fear of admitting to a certain national failure. The Americans, despite their vast propaganda machine, have failed to impress the Chinese with their way of life; the Chinese have remained impervious, philosophically isolationist.

During the autumn two exhibitions appeared in London, which although widely different in stylistic characteristics and historical circumstance, admit an identity of purpose. Careful comparison might prove provocative in that both, although possessing a similar sense of direction, have failed to attain to the same measure of success in the communication of this principle. One of these shows consisted of work by the early Netherlandish painter, Gerard David and two of his followers, while the other, the first to be held at the Ashley Galleries, was confined to examples of church art and smaller devotional pieces by contemporary artists. It could be argued that any critical comparison would be unfair, even fruitless, and viewed superficially this is so. We are here concerned with technical arrangement only in so far as it detracts from, or heightens, the artist’s power to broadcast his message, rather than with a deliberate attempt to try to prove the existence of technical parallels which in fact are not there.

Briefly the issue is whether religious painting can flourish without the endurance of a broader tradition strong enough to support certain weaknesses in the artist’s vision when the grander impetus, such as was found in the major epochs of European art, is dwindling or lost. Mr Wyndham Lewis in a somewhat shallow commentary on the show impatiently dismisses its value on account of David’s lack of notable genius, regarding it as a dismal venture. Looking for corroboration he quotes from M. J. Friedlander’s introduction to the catalogue where he wrote thus, ‘In the history of art David represents the end, the tuneful knell of the fifteenth century in an ageing city (Bruges) ‘.

As I face this audience I am overcome by that compounded feeling of fascinated envy and sheer fury which overtakes, in different proportions, my countrymen when confronted by the quintessence of English cultural achievement, Oxford; so profoundly attractive and so irreconcilably alien. As a child I thought that Englishmen were just the same, Scotsmen with a different accent; but now I know, through experience, that they are different; that environment and tradition have moulded their characters according to a different pattern, a difference which expresses itself in a thousand subtle contrasts of emotional reaction and temperament—perhaps most strikingly emphasised in the contrast (so difficult to define) between English humour and Scottish wit.

Such contrasts, deeper experience shows, do not utterly divide. Quite apart from their common history, not always a uniting factor, both peoples recognise that they share a common culture pattern and, more important, that they are the same kind of beings. No doubt a platitude, but one pregnant with significance.

Generalise the analogy! Within infinitely greater contrasts, beneath the most diverse cultures, breaking through cleavages due to colour, custom and opinion, which stretch back indefinitely beyond recorded history, man remains irreducibly man. Biologist and theologian are at least agreed in that.

Irreconcilably opposed in everything save their humanity! If you doubt it look at the record of history: issues, so easy to settle, so simple at root, twisted and travestied beyond recognition and buried under the bodies of whole generations till the problems they beget are so beset by tension, so clouded by emotion, that they can only be solved by annihilation.