CONFESSIONS OF FAITH
FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT, a Confession of Faith in the form of an anthology, by Victor Gollancz; Victor Gollancz, English price 15/-. ERE’S richness-even more and even richer than in A Year of Grace. As in the earlier book the words in this | are others’ but the argument they make | very much Victor Gollancz’s; and it is | arranged to be read right through. It’s | called a "confession of faith,’ something more positive than the "mood" which | A Year of Grace claimed to express; but this doesn’t mean it is a theology, in any dogmatic sense. If it were. it might be thought inadequate in some respects. The faith confessed here is a subjective experience; but one man’s subjectivity, deeply felt and honestly expressed, often gives a clearer glimpse of some part of, the truth than one man’s rational argument; especially when he has some four hundred others to help him. | "I have always felt a life and a bliss |in everything," Gollancz himself says in a passage quoted from one of his own Timothy books. The darkness of the title has its place, but the light is the firm reality, and that here and now. St. Francis and William Penn appear many times in this book, St. Augustine seldom (and those his more comfortable sayings), Calvin not at all. There are Catholics, "Protestants, Atheists, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Taoists. Blake appears most often: Amiel, Aurobindo, Berdyaev, Coleridge, Plato, Plotinus, Kathleen Raine, Romain | Rolland, Bernard Shaw, Tagore, Tra- | herne, very frequently. It adds up to a splendidly whole- | hearted book, rejecting half-measures ; and casuistry, refusing to believe we are | required to give anything less than total love, total goodness, even if it leads to | worldly disaster, as pacifism might. How | Gollancz the mystic and Gollancz the crusader hold their peace with Gollancz the successful publisher I don’t know, but as he makes some rude remarks himself about this I don’t feel called
to add to them.
R.D.
McE.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 895, 28 September 1956, Page 14
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331CONFESSIONS OF FAITH New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 895, 28 September 1956, Page 14
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