Now in his 77th year, the author was editor of “New Blackfriars” 1940—1950, and founder-editor of “Life of the Spirit” 1946—55, was Warden of Spode House 1952—81, and has written many books and articles on the spiritual life.

The elderly must often be sad when they look back. There is no escape. In those long-gone days they were fresher and more alive. Today energies are failing and powers of perception lack the briskness and sharpness that were theirs when the experiences they remember first occurred. It is possible to catch the excitement of those earlier times—so exciting, compared with the present—but it is a difficult task. As soon as comparison finds its way into present consciousness sadness tends to make its entry. Yet views of the past change as variously as do the views as one climbs up a hill, some thrilling, some depressing, according to light and angle of vision. Now, for example, the picture of the world of 1908 (the year in which I was born) and onwards looks like a picture of increasing physical violence, of death and hideous human slaughter. And yet, on the other side of the page, we can find another picture, in which intellectual violence seems to be decreasing just as much.

In the late 1920s, when studying first philosophy and then theology in preparation for the priesthood, we used to agonize about those passages in the Bible when the Lord seemed to interfere with the workings of the entire material universe in order to procure some victory for a rather unimportant leader of the Israelites.