'ILet's Go and Wash-up a / Ti —MGR. KNOX —GIME POTTER Crowds had to be turned away from Maidenhead TOWD Hall on I hursday evening, when Mgr. Ronald Knox and Mi. thine Potter spoke On the subject of ' Recreation," at a " Religion and Life " meeting.
" The clergy have a habit," said Mgr. Knox, " of beginning to speak on some neutral topic, and coming round gradually, slyly, to the subject of religion. lie proposed to reverse the process."
MOTHERS' PLACE
The fervour at Om prayer was a thermometer, directly registering the worth of our daily lives to ourselves and to society. Theist is a terldently, with all ot us, to allot a minimum of [tore to prayer Hence the chaotic state of the world. Prayer is our first duly in life, and to plead lack of time for it is an insult to God. It is also untrue. The husiem people are found to he those with most time to spare. The most efficient people ace those who enjoy doing what they do, and are not too ready to label everything except sheet passive enterLunroent, as work. The mother, for example, who spends twenty-four hours a day looking after baby. Hers ;is the spirit we must cultivate, the spirit of '' Hurrah I' Let's have some fun. Let's go and wash up !"
This is admittedly riot easy in out mechanistic age. The medieval craftsman could scarcely fail to enjoy his work. Not so our twentieth-century factory-hand, for whom recreation is consequently of greater importance. Recreation, in order to be a true recreetion, must be both a change and a relaxation. Religion provides the only effective cheek to prevent relaxation tram degenerating into merely " letting
oneself go." And our recreation is often not much of it change, because
it, too, is so largely mechanised. In any fair-sized town one can go to the cinema every night lit the week and see a different film. 'Even the wii eless, though it does, on the whole, exercise the mind a little more, tends to make us mete receptacles of the thoughts of others. And our modern dancing is about as mechanistic as any human activity could be ! The human race is becoming a set of robots. There is not, in fact, much more in our daily lives left to be mechanised. The pro
presumably be complete when science has invented a mechanical substitute for sleep.
:Fliirsktei-sy'ailhloped he had painted suit_dtlatyprliesfes.ing picture of modern
MR. GILLIE POTTER
Fow peopie would associate radio and stage life, said Mr. Potter, with piety. Rightly. But piety is not at all .ne sante ming as religion. A relutious outlook is a common-sense outlook. The reason, however, lot the fallingMI in cnurch attendance is not, he was convinced, lack of common-sense or religious inddierenee, but that people consider themselves just not good enough to go to church. They fail to motets:and that the Church, like her Divine Founder, is here precisely for einners, lie wished the clergy would stress this more.
-As apostles of a Christian civiliseloll, and as Englishmen with a Christen heritage, we are very much on the iefensive Patriotism is a bulwark of eltristianity, and it is no mere coincidence that our opponents in the fight or the preservation of Christianity are Ike internationalists. international is, in this connection, virtually the same as anti-national. Those who would pull 'own the English flag and replace it with another, are those who pull down the Cross to replace it with the symbol of anti-Christ. Of the various spheres of our traditional way of life that they would de-Anglicise, not the least important is that of recreation. Our entertainments, our wireless and cinema, are distressingly un-English. We must, whenever possible, patronise native
concluded with the elinlnestesretinaginnimoreMtliggr. Knox.