There is always a fascination about trying to discern patterns in the course of the world's history, and this perhaps as much as anything else explains the Phenomenally popular, as distinct from professional, interest in Professor Toynbee's Studies in History. A more particular source of fascination is picking out the turning points of history. Toynbee, for instance, suggests that the decline of the West began in what had hitherto been considered the high Middle Ages, to be precise in the years immediately. Mediately preceding the pontificate of Hildebrand. To be more precise he tracks it down to a small action on the part Hildebrand before he became pope, when he hired thugs to counter-attack the thugs who were stealing the offerings of Peter's pence from the altar of St Peter's.

Of the three monotheistic religions of the Semites, Islam was the last to make its appearance upon the stage of history in the third decade of the seventh century. Unlike its two predecessors, Judaism and Christianity, its appearance was attended by a series of epochmaking events which mark the eclipse of the two great empires of the time, Byzantium and Persia. And, whereas the beggign nings and developpm ent of the two latter religions are surrounded by comparative obscurity, historians know almost all the significant stages in the rise and development of Islam, which forces itself, like a cataclysm, upon the attention of the civilized world by dint of military prowess.

By this shall all men know you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.’ Such was our Lord's last exhortation to his disciples. He insists on mutual charity, love; because when we put that into practice it brings all the rest in its train. Charity is patient, kind, charity envieth not; it calls for forgiveness of trespasses, offences, debts. ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us’ gives the Our Father a touch of meanig quite different from our ordinary language. To what do I commit myself when I say this? I acknowledge that I am a sinner: ‘All we like sheep have gone astray'; like silly sheep. The gates are open, but do we go through them? No! We are stupid, silly sheep gone astray, just following our own way.

The psalmists were the singers of Israel; daily they magnified the name of the Lord, crying Hosanna!, Hosanna! … Today the crooner has become one of those psalmists. By means of the microphone, to a billion families and homes, he sends the same message—I believe, I believe. … His has become the voice of Sunday morning religion. His Nicene Creed is a short catalogue—a simple reverence of Nature's holiness, a worshipping of trees and stars and clouds, a palpitating delight in the first cries of newborn babes. Doubtless such sentiments are easy to ridicule; they can be dismissed as clichèd or Pantheistic—or even if they are conceded to have a Christian note of optimism, then the Christianity which they celebrate may be considered rather wishy-washy. Nor is it hard for those who argue thus to add examples.