RECONSTRUCTION AFTER THE WAR, ITS SPIRITUAL BASIS.

By THE RicHT REV. BISHOP HOOK.
Even while the war with all its horrors is with us, while the
mighty struggle for the freedom of the world still progresses
with varied success, there is one conviction in our hearts that
right must at last prevail and that a power, unrestrained by the
moral code of Christian civilization, must succumb at last to the
united force of Christian Europe.
Peace will come we believe and pray. But it will come to
as, as a nation, with the loss of the flower of our manhood,
with institutions unsettled and changed. There will be
confusion at home and abroad, there will be a necessary
readjustment of our political and social ideas, old nations will
spring into new life abroad and clamour for the fulfilment of their
aspirations, while at home we shall have to face a reorganization
of society on fairer, broader lines.
1t is well even now to think of these things and to realize
at least faintly some of the broad Christian principles upon which
this reconstruction must be based if the warnings of the war
are heeded and we determine that the new national life shall
rest on the only firm foundation—the true, full Christian faith.
Thank God for the many tokens that our Christianity as a
nation has not utterly broken down—nay, that it has asserted
itself often where least expected, and rough natures unused
 to religious acts have shown that the atmosphere of
Christianity by which their lives have been surrounded has
sunk deep into their souls. But we should be wrong not to
realize that there is needed a very great revival, and we may well
pray that out of the Calvary of war there may be a true
resurrection to a fuller faith, a fuller grasp of the meaning of
redemption and all that follows in the way of Christian character.
But we may not look for a miracle of Divine power. God trusts
the extension of His Kingdom to the frail arm of man. But just
as this war is a war of peoples not armies and that nations are
made up of individuals, so the struggle of the future must be the
struggle of the army of the saints, and the power of that army
depends on the sanctified individual lives of its members. If
resurrection is to follow Calvary, if a reign of peace is to follow
the reign of terror, if the nation is to come out strong from the
cleansing flood of its adversity, if our Empire is to accomplish
faithfully the work for which it is commissioned, then every