One of the marks of the living Church is its ability to inspire leaders in every age especially fitted to meet the needs of the age. Never has there been a time when the spiritual soil was so infertile that it was unable to produce valiant men and women to answer the challenge of the world. In the past there was a St Dominic, a St Francis, a St Teresa. In later centuries there were names like Pernet and Hecker and Rice. And these are but a few of the thousands from the time of St Paul to our own day raised by God as leaders in their own particular day and hour.

Against this background of inspired leadership we are inclined to think that our own age, especially the years since the end of the first world war, are barren indeed. We see only spiritual aridity, the noxious weed of materialism run riot.