[Time of Need] is written out of a belief that Western man has exhausted his dynamo, that the time of need is now. The pride which once drove us to place the human alongside the divine—even if in the process the divine must give way and crumble to dust—has turned into sickness and self-doubt. Man's journey away from the primitive began with the Enlightenment, which promised to rid him of superstition and fear. At the same time the scientific revolution began to put into his hands the keys of the physical world. He has, so far, used those keys only for robbery and blasphemy. It was all right as long as man could see himself as being in cahoots with God, but when in the 19th century this partnership dissolved, man looked round and found himself alone. The shock was a profound one, and with the...