new Age of the Holy Spirit, leading the world further into the light of God. Few modern men have had such endowments, of learning, honesty and love, to justify the right of prophecy. And history's vindication of this hope may even now be near. Already, whatever weakness may appear to attach to institutional and corporate Christianity, a general, notable and efficacious diffusion of its Spirit is undeniable.

Whatever happens, we should surely be on our guard lest we fail to read the signs of the times. We should watch as well as pray lest any exclusive ecclesiasticism, any obscurantist mediæval mentality, blind us to the value of a reviving sense of the essential meaning of true Religion, or abate our welcome of a re-Christianised public opinion at all events in one direction, and one of momentous importance.

The contention that the attitude of Churches, and the tone of the clergy, have some cogency with public opinion, and may thus affect National decisions on Peace and War, is supported by a recollection of the influence admittedly exercised (though more especially on the other side of the Atlantic) less than twenty years ago, when a peculiarly fratricidal war between England and America was happily averted. But it is the organised, persistent, and widely simultaneous pressure, which holds the promise of the future. The recently formed "Associated Councils of Churches in the British and German Empires, for fostering Friendly Relations between the Two Peoples indicates the kind of work which is most full of hope. And the noble address by probably the most widely influential religious thinker in Europe, Professor Adolf Harnack of Berlin, delivered

in London at the British Inaugural Meeting,' should certainly provoke us to emulate its spirit until the nations are so inoculated with friendliness and fraternity as to be entirely immune from War-fever, however poisonously engendered or sensationally provoked.

Surely the bare possibility of combined and effective action on the part of the clergy even tending to prevent Statesmen from finding themselves under the dire compulsion to declare war, should suffice to give eagerness to our endeavours. As Clausewitz has only too truly observed: "Even the most civilised nations may burn with passionate hatred of each other." And "it is quite possible for such a state of feeling to exist between two States that a very trifling political motive for war may produce an effect quite disproportionate, in fact, a perfect explosion." But have the clergy, acting under "holy orders" from the Prince of Peace, received no charge concerning this, wherever their lot be cast? Christ's fundamental message to the world was the Brotherhood of Man, founded on the Fatherhood of God. "Love your neighbour as yourself: do to others as you would they should do unto you." These were the words of this Teacher we hold to be Divine.

Are "His ministers " ministering His principles ? Have they taken account, not only of the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil, but of the Tree of Life whose "leaves are for the healing of the nations ? "

What will Filioque clauses, or Homoousion orthodoxy, avail when Christ asks why, after two thousand 1 At Queen's Hall, February 5, 1911.

66

years of Christian ministry, it is still possible that even the most civilised nations may burn with passionate hatred of each other"? ? What the Churches have done by precept and example in the unholy past to encourage the spirit of division and disdain is written in chronicles which the twentiethcentury conscience shudders to peruse. But that conscience is now clamant that at length and at last, and always henceforth, primary Christian instinct should have free course-that men should resolutely shed "the Light of the World" upon the most difficult problem of the age, and pursue its solution with every power of head and heart with which the God of Peace has endowed them.

If the clergy hold commission from Him Who came "not to destroy men's lives but to save them," how can they fulfil it without doing all that in them lies to elevate the public sentiment in this tremendous affair? Ought they not to feel "straitened" until something further is accomplished, and the nations, instead of spending and being spent in "making provision to bite and devour one another, are enlisted in a holy army and launched on a new crusade for the unifying and compacting of the common civilisation, and for an organised international rescue of the still desecrated Temple of Peace. For thisthis novum salutis genus indeed the old war-cry may well be raised again, and with infinitely greater truth: Deus vult! Dieu le veult! God wills it!

The reproach of being impracticable attaches by right not to those who insist on resolute, persistent and uncompromising effort to remove abuses, but to a very different class-to those, namely, who are credulous enough to suppose that abuses, and bad customs, and wasteful ways of doing things, will remove themselves.1

Our doubts are traitors,

And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.2

The tide is flowing, the expenditure is increasing. What we have to look for is any beneficent movement which will go to the root of the matter, and so affect Public Opinion, not in one country but in all, that it may lead first of all to the tide ceasing to flow, then turning, and, I hope, ebbing. Public Opinion has been stirred. The number of arbitrators is increasing. But you must take a long step further yet, before the increase of Arbitration will really affect this increase of expenditure on armaments.3

1 LORD MORLEY.

2 SHAKESPEARE.

3 SIR EDWARD GREY.

66

SOME answer to this question, in our present application of it, has already been supplied. But as everything immediately practicable in the direction of securing Peace on earth" must largely depend upon the kind of thought and feeling current in the world, the purpose of these pages seems to call for some more definite attempt to summarise the existing outlook. That outlook has two salient features. One a Contrast; the other a Contradiction. The retrospect reveals a most encouraging contrast; the prospect a very discouraging contradiction.

I. First, then, the Contrast. I refer to the mental attitude of civilised mankind to-day toward Peace and War, compared with that of even less than a century ago. To realise the greatness of the change, we need not go back to pre-mediæval times, when war was so incessant that the very shortest Treuga Dei was eagerly established by way of limiting the time available for bloodshed; nor to the seventeenth century, when the very title of the historic work of Grotius (published 1625), De jure Belli et pacis, implies the predominance of War. The contrast is almost equally marked if we compare now current thoughts with those prevalent even eighty or ninety years ago. In the great book of Clausewitz, On War