WANT OF LEADERSHIP

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21415, 6 March 1935, Page 7

WANT OF LEADERSHIP

TO TBI, EDITOR U» THt PHRPS. Sir,—Your correspondent "Just An Observer," in last Saturday's issue of "The Press" finds himself lamenting that we are without worthy leaders and teachers for human betterment. From a political point of view, if that is his premiss, I cannot reply, not pretending to any sort of skill in political knowledge; and if the inference is that such persons have been, and are not in these days. I would ask this question. If the world has at any time been presented witli real direction for our uplift, why are we where we are to-day, utterly in the dark? For I do not think a sane person exists who will venture to say there has yet been realised the one thing needful to a happy issue out of our afflictions; or that the present state of things is not, all considered, the worst as well as the most hopeless that has ever been. May we not begin to ask ourselves whether our leaders and teachers have perhaps guided us to our destruction rather than our deliverance? They have surely been our gods, while we, the blind followers of their lead, are still where we are.

Look as we will, is there a deal or a scheme afloat or left behind, that can give us any real hope of better things in their end-issue? Unbalance is everywhere and in every endeavour. Now, assuming the rightful interpretation of what has been called the fall of man to be the transgression of a law of life, or universe, or what we will, intended to do for us what we have so vainly striven to do for ourselves, how can we possibly reach our heaven by building more Towers of Babel? Divorced from primal purpose we become no more in effect than a mockery of the Creator. Some years ago, and to the best of my memory, Dr. B. P. Grenfell read before a general meeting of the Egyptian exploration fund certain papers (papyri) found by archaeologists engaged in Egyptian excavations, and said to be from the sayings of Jesus. One of the most remarkable of these was: "Let not him that seeketh cease from his search until he finds, and when he finds he shall wonder; wondering he shall reach the Kingdom, i.e., the Kingdom of Heaven, and when he reaches the Kingdom of Heaven he shall have rest.—Yours, etc A THINKER INDEED. March 5, 1935.