The bishops in general seemed inclined to take the same view. At the meeting of Diocesan Bishops of England and Wales in January 1932 Archbishop Lang, 'in summing up' a discussion of the Oxford Group, 'said that there is a gift here of which the Church is manifestly in need',10 and two years later a further 'informal conference' presided over by Archbishop William Temple of York 'thankfully recognised that various movements, and notably the Oxford Groups, are being used to demonstrate the power of God to change lives and give to personal witness its place in true discipleship'.11

Buchman believed in the incalculable impact of people with a fresh experience of God, who expected to change further each day and to pass on their experience to others. He was confirmed in this by his friend Archbishop Söderblom of Uppsala, Sweden, one of the first ecumenists, who wrote that he feared the ecumenical movement was being choked by 'human arrangements ... in thoughts and plans'. 'There must be, as you write, and as you act, a deeper unity,' he wrote Buchman. '. . . We need that individual renewal and that deepening of our Christian unity to an utmost degree.'12 In a message written shortly before his death, he added, 'You are concerned with the only thing that matters in religion and life - Christ's absolute ruling in our hearts and words and deeds. A changed life is more eloquent than lots of sermons.'13

‘No one can guess which way the live cat on the hearthrug will jump,' Buchman used to say. 'No one expects anything of the china cat on the mantelpiece.' He thought no one - himself included - exempt from this need for further change and inspiration. He responded with sympathy to the cleric who told him, 'I have become like a physician who hands out flowers and good cheer to his patients, but never cures anybody,' because he had known the same condition in himself.

He took no one, however eminent, for granted. Thus when Dr Foss Westcott, the Metropolitan of India, Burma and Ceylon, was coming to the 1933 Oxford house-party, he called a few undergraduates together. He did not let on that he had known the Metropolitan since the early 1920s, but asked them about him. Someone who had been in India told of the Metropolitan's saintly life, how he lived mainly in a kind of hut on the roof of his palace, did not smoke or drink or indulge himself in any way, was one of the few Englishmen whom Gandhi trusted, and was famous for his sermons. 'Yes,' said Buchman, 'that's all true. But he cannot diagnose people.'

He then said, 'I want you to see a lot of him. Tell him how you found your way from agnosticism to faith, how you are fishing for men, how you are learning to bring cure to drunks and straighten out an intellectual's living - and thinking. You might even mention that if one is not winning people to Christ, one is sinning somewhere along the line.'

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