The Work of Reconstruction after the War. PRICE - TWOPENCE. iat Ae The ‘Work of Reconstruction after the War Consisting of FOUR PAPERS dealing with THE SPIRITUAL BASIS, HOME LIFE, CHURCH LIFE, and NATIONAL LIFE. Copies of this pamphlet can be obtained from Mrs. MONTGOMERY. ‘‘Bishoosbourne,”” Chiswick. London. Price 2d. (by post 2id.) Orders of two dozen and upward sent post free. (ALL RIGHTS RESERYED), CONTENTS PAGE FOREWORD ... RECONSTRUCTION AFTER THE WAR, ITS SPIRITUAL BAsIs, BY THE RIGHT REV. Bissorp Hook ... HOME LIFE AFTER THE WAR, BY MISS M. C. GOLLOCK ... R THE RECONSTRUCTION OF CHURCH LIFE AFTER THE WAR, BY Miss G. M. BEVAN 16 NATIONAL LIFE AFTER THE WAR, BY THE REV. CANON J. G. SIMPSON ... 25 ” orkain ~N ot & N ) fs 2) & ; eo. AE unl ersit®t z ; 3 Riel. 3 2? s “y <5 - 16 * Ni ; 4 F 4 7 od r, 0 mm 0 QO <=0 a 00 2a] 0 ry b — oI ~~ m 5 FOREWORD. The following papers were read at the Half-yearly Meeting of the Central Committee of Women’s Church Work, June 10th, 1915. They were intended to serve as a basis for discussion by groups of women in various centres, and with that obiect in view, and by the unanimous wish of the Central Committee. thev are now issued. If these papers dealing with the Home, the Church, the Nation, and the Spiritual foundation on which all reconstruction must rest are to be adequate in their general application, they must first be interpreted in an individual sense. The call of God to a restored life and service may be heard by every woman now. That this may be so the spirit of prayer which listens as well as intercedes needs to be spread among us. It is suggested that in conjunction with the use of these papers for discussion, many small groups of women may gather together in a simple manner for corporate prayer, silent or spoken, to seek spiritual strength to fulfil the purposes of God in a time when we have freshly learned our own weakness. :! + ¥ -— oO oN Oo 8 0 ™ 7 c& E Dn Y Ri tg 2 nt ks 5 j6.3 [ r —-0 ts ~ ¥ © QQ ~N 0 - 0 oh] N P ie N TT N CY xs TY iy 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 effort of reconstruction, every part of the revival, every step of hopeful progress must be founded on the firm foundation of a true faith, on the ethic of life as taught and shown by the human life of the Incarnate Son of God. And first we are to consider the fountain and source of all national life. The Home.—It is perhaps largely to the loss of the old home life that preceded these days of easy locomotion of illuminated streets and overgrown populations, to which we may attribute many of the cankers of civilization that have become palpable to the shallowest observer of our national life. I cannot believe that a great revival of faith and character is possible to our huge population without a large return to home life, without the laying down of truer spiritual foundations for the homes of England from which step forth the populations of our vast Empire. Marriage must be restored to its position of honour and dignity that the sources of the nation’s life may be kept clear and clean and under the Divine blessing. Christian homes are primarily the necessity of a Christian nation—not that no life failures have come from such homes, but even then the power of the early Christian surroundings has often recalled the wanderer; and many a mother and father’s heart has been warmed and encouraged by the Master's picture of the prodigal son. O fathers and mothers, know your power, with love, discipline, and devotion to weld together a happy family and ouild the members of it as sure bricks in the fabric of the Empire. Schools, too, must be guarded, as they are necessary for the education of the citizen though only sharing in small part the great responsibility of the home. They must all (not some) have for the foundation of their teaching the full Christian faith. But it is on the home that we must depend for the learning of that reverence for the body— those habits of self-control, those high ideals of Christian responsibility, which go to the building up of a Christian Empire. To attain this result there must be a spiritual foundation; for the realization of sin springs from the knowledge of holiness, and the beauty of self-sacrifice from the truth of the Cross. I hope the subject of the home may be treated in a future paper. With these few words I leave it, with regret, for England’s future depends on English homes. The Church.—It appears to be an unnecessary thing to speak of a spiritual basis to the Church; and yet, in looking forward to the times and opportunity of peace, it does seem necessary that we should regard carefully our position in this matter. There is so much in fashion, habit, tradition, esthetic or morbid constitution, the garnish of respectability, or even the pride of a pew that the true spiritual basis of all real Christian worship is in danger of being forgotten. and the Church is humbled disgraced, hindered by the spiritual failure of its members. The unspiritual Christian is the rotten stone in the walls of the Holy Church on earth. Perhaps, too, the lessons of the war will teach us in the times of peace more care in the field of criticism. Conclusions rapidly come to in an essay may very soon be modified or proved false, but in the meantime thousands of souls have been wounded, the faith of thousands unsettled. We have now before us the warning of whither tends the path of destructive criticism, for we see—with, I hope, compassion as well as horror——the natural conclusion of a Christless ‘‘ Kultur ” marking the whole tone and character of a brave and scientific people. The basis of all Christian criticism must be a devout life and a humble spirit. There will be many eager voices raised in the day of peace for a corporate unity among all who profess to believe in Jesus Christ, not pausing to consider whether it be the Christ of the Gospels, or the Christ of Renan and Trietsche. Unity with diversity; principles held strongly, but with charitable and kindly hearts; the maintenance of all that makes us one with the Holy Catholic Church; the firm hold on the symbols of faith once delivered to the saints; the ministry and sacraments linking us with the Apostolic age—all these form the true and spiritual basis of any further growth and extension. Let us hope that faithful to her trust, strong in the spiritual power of her members the Church will absorb all that is true and faithful in those noble bodies of religion, which even now maintain the line of true faith by contact with the living Church of God. But I am trespassing again on the ground of those who will follow, and I turn to the next item in our consideration of the after-war settlement. The Nation.—First of all, perhaps most important of all, for it includes all, is that the national life must have a spiritual basis. The war has taught us how strong and quick can be the growth of change in national character, and how a few master-minds or a clique of the people can alter a nation’s character and set back by 1,500 years the clock of civilization and faith. National life must not only be, but be known to be on a spiritual basis. Thank God for the growing sense of the necessity of this. The increasing solemnity of the anointing and crowning of our kings, the increasing sense of the power of national prayer of national humiliation (of this too little) and of national thanksgiving; the existing custom in Parliament, of seeking by prayer the Divine blessing on our legislation, the national observance of fasts and festivals of faith, the recognition of the Divine source of all our power and the necessity of Divine aid in all our progress; all this has been wonderfully supported through the outward profession of religion by great men whose lives have touched the multitude. Our beloved King, Gladstone. Hatherly, Coleridge, Roberts, and many another come immediately to our minds, while the noble messages and speeches of the head of our War Office to-day and many a cry from official lips at the front let out the secret of a religious foundation for its work that does exist in a nation foolishly reticent as to its religious sentiment and keenly alert to the least suspicion of hypocrisy. And it is this outwardness of religion that is needed more and more. Men and institutions must question whether hypocrisy does not exist rather in the hiding up of sentiments strongly held, than in the outward witness of a religious desire really felt and which will grow by its expression. The stronger and plainer expression of worship, the desire for greater latitude in her services form the cry of the Church for help in enabling men to give fuller outward expression of the religion that is in them, and to awake in them a sense of the missionary power of their lives. Well will it be if our national action in the world settlement be guided by national conscience founded on religious ideals, and our social settlement be based on Christian principles and be the result of national devotion. Is it Utopian, hopeless to pray that in the more spiritually dangerous times of the coming peace the whole settlement that must follow shall have its firm basis of religious spiritual principle ; that the affairs of the world, the Empire, our native land, our English homes may be firm founded on that spiritual rock which is Jesus Christ? We may pray this if we are one and all true to our faith, for if this be so we too may have right to the Apostolic boast—*‘ I can do all things through Christ Who strengtheneth me.” HOME LIFE AFTER THE WAR. By Miss M. C. GOLLOCK. The task of reconstruction so far as our homes are concerned is simpler than it seems, partly because the essential part of it— the power to do it—is beyond our blundering touch, and partly because the rest of it lies within our immediate reach and is the setting of our daily life, and partly because we ourselves are being borne onward by the tide of human progress and the Christian faith towards that Kingdom of God where His will is to be done on earth. What we want to do is in fact what we are in the process of being made to do whether we will it or not. We want to resume our home life—the basis of all social [ife—after the war as a trust for the Church, for the nation, for the world. For this purpose it does not matter who comprises the home—the family, whatever its components, makes the home. There may be the completeness of father, mother and children, the arrested perfection of husband and wife alone, or the dismembered unity of children left without parents; yet in all cases the power of living together to fulfil corporate functions is attested, and such a combination of individuals is the ground for hope of an ultimate unity of the human race. The home potentially is what we want the world to be. When we talk of reconstruction of such home life we are not suggesting that it can be accomplished by any mechanical or scientific means. We cannot pick out from other social institutions those ingredients we might think best, blend them together in suitable proportions and say, “This according to the best modern ideas—this is home life, improved and up to date!” But we can get back into the gentle light of Nazareth and the meaning of the Holy Incarnation and see the new in the old and learn where we have lapsed and fallen short in all the attainment that was possible to us. We want to reconstruct our home life as a trust for the Church because we want religious sanctions to regulate morals, govern conduct, and hallow practices. For instance, we shall be more careful about family prayers, grace at meals, Sunday occupation, church attendance, the choice of professions for our sons, the moral standard of the men our daughters marry. Asa trust for the nation, we want our home life to be the school of integrity and duty and a democracy of fellowship that shall prepare us for a place in national life. For instance, we shall be particular about the type of tradesmen we employ and the way they treat their workers, the prices we pay for all goods supplied us, the way we carry out our family undertakings and engagements, the people we let our children know and visit, the value we set on social position as distinguished from social virtue. As a trust for the world, we believe that our homes should produce men and women set free from racial antagonisms and petty prejudices by the daily “rough and tumble” of tolerated varieties of character and temperament. From the Aundred and one gigantic problems which rack our brains concerning international free trade, nationalization of armaments, neutralization of the seas, democratic control and such like, we can turn to our simple homes knowing that in them we have in embryo these problems and their solutions, and behind our own closed doors—for mercifully we still have doors to our homes— we can patiently work out our share in the trust. And though there is and ever must be a home sanctuary reserved to the family only, yet the war has shown us that no longer are our homes our own merely, in the beauty of individual love, but are ours for others, for the Church, the nation, the world. . The single aim of this paper is to stir thought and arouse discussion. It does not venture to offer counsel nor advice. Before anyone can do this we have got to arrive at our own ideas of reconstruction through honest, painful efforts at rethinking the whole situation. The worst thing that could befall us would be to adopt the views of one which might have the merit of novelty, or to adhere to the views of another which had a time-honoured, traditional value. Placid satisfaction or apathetic dissatisfaction must be abandoned for convictions which we have made our very own, not sparing ourselves in so doing, and ever having the future of our individual homes in mind when we think of the homes of the land. For purposes of discussion and thought I am treating the subject according to four relationships, the values of which are in the balances now. These are (1) marriage relationships, (2) parental relationships, (3) master and servant relationships, {4) hospitality relationships. I. Marriage Relationships.—Here is our greatest anxiety, for granted that these be right the rest we desire will follow. The estimation in which true marriage relationships are held is commonly sound, but there are a sufficient number of violent exceptions, a sufficient number of reputable inadequate exhibitions of marriage relationship, and a sufficient number of insidious encroachments upon the marriage -bond and evasions of its consequences in existence to make us apprehensive. In days when the irksomeness of mere convention has become intolerable to many of us, and when there is an honest if often undisciplined attempt to arrive at truth, it is not to be marvelled at that the institution of marriage as we have upheld it should be assailed. When some of our greatest writers have treated it either in their works or on the stage with a new freedom, we cannot wonder that experiments have been made under the supposed shelter of modern thinking which are subversive of moral standards. Nor again in the totally different circles of average life, when the inadequate exhibition of a true union between husband and wife is manifest, can we be surprised if boys and girls grow up to think that they do not wish to be tied to a life-long incompatibility, since these are days in which we have swung far towards freedom in our reaction from unreality. Also the predetermined limitation of families, arising from various causes such as lack of consideration on the one side or unwillingness for suffering on the other, the increase of the cost of living, and a higher standard of comfort, is one of the evasions of consequences which the war with its terrible death roll has brought acutely before us. At a time such as this and in conditions such as these we have to work out the disturbing influences of the Women's Movement with all it connotes as to political suffrage and economic independence among women, whether of the well-to-do or of the industrial classes. We need not have any fear as to the issues. The Women’s Movement is only a part, and an essential, inevitable, and noble part, of the whole present rush of renaissance in the world. 1 think we ought to apply to it some of Dr. Illingworth’s words—'“ A great historical movement in religion or politics will often begin blindly —stuttering, stammering, striking at random—till in process of time it awakes to its own true meaning and grows intelligent, articulate, effective, the recognized expression of a grand idea.” All theories apart, we know that marriage and giving in marriage will continue to the end. What we want to secure is that they should continue in their highest possible form, and if we do not strive for this we may find that marriage will take on anew meaning. It seems that what is open to us now is to hold with a fearless tenacity to the sacramental and ideal aspect of marriage with all its spiritual and physical consequences as sanctioned by the Church in all ages, and then to work out with equal fearlessness on the practical plane, those other aspects of it where there is room for mutual compromise, concession and the exercise of a greater discipline. We must attempt this in the setting of our own age. Many conceptions of twenty-five years ago have withered—do not let us cling to their husks. We need to lend ourselves in sympathy to our own age, maintaining equally the extreme of generosity and the extreme of faithfulness, for marriage is so high a thing that only extremes will meet in it. The practical aspects of modern marriage will not be worked out | | by us in a day. We must allow them time, and we must always remember that marriage is a mystery to be fully interpreted only by those who have entered into its bonds. 2. Parental Relationships. Home life in our age is most sharply questioned here and criticism is equally applicable to rich and poor. Selfish and independent children, daughters out of sympathy with their mothers, sons whose confidences g0 to friends rather than to parents are subjects of common talk. And while the facts are by no means universally applicable, they exist to a sufficient extent to take us anxious. It is no use deploring them, they must be faced. The difficulties are hot apparent early, for probably there never was a time when children in general were more beloved, nor when young unmarried men in particular showed more devotion to them. In parental relationships the dissonance appears later on, and chiefly because in a rapidly moving age the child moves more rapidly than the parent who carries the handicap of parenthood, while the child is stripped of load to run the race. External influences also invade home life, such as books with their new explicitness of the facts of life, sports and amusements which have thrown boys and girls together in a new way outside their homes. Girls now do not think only of marriage, but watch for ““ careers” as a possible alternative, at any rate for a time, and they exhibit unexpected propensities for wage-earning. There is a strong probability that boys and girls feel themselves to be sensible men and women outside their homes and somewhat foolishly youthful and inexperienced within them. It must honestly be said—and always remembering the exceptions—that when such conditions produce trouble the parents are chiefly responsible. It lies with us all to move and have our being in our own age, to see with young eyes as well as with old, and to continue our own education in so doing. Half the resistance to change that we present is the resistance of inertia not of conviction, and no one knows this better than the children, and where such is true of us we are rendered incapable of offering the right resistance to the wrong change when need arises. What we call lack of parental control is the great charge flung against parents to-day only to be flung back again, as a wave from a headland, with the counter-charge of unresponsive children. But there is at least one illustration of the justice of this charge which we cannot put aside without notice. The altogether abnormal conditions caused by the presence of military camps and the excitements of the war have brought to light the unrestraint of quite young girls to an unexpected degree. Little though we want to exaggerate what is probably only an aggravation of a problem always with us, vet the significance of / its appearance now must appeal to us all of every age and class of life. There is some lack in control, some lack in parental education, some lack in moral conscience, some lack in sympathetic religious instruction, or we should not have been driven to work outside the camps or on the streets as now is needful. The old question is up before us acutely—who is to teach and prepare the child for life ?——parent, school, or Church, and if our answer be “all three” then it seems as if it were needful for the Church to help parents and schools alike to deal with all the facts. of life with healthier explicitness and in a truer perspective. We, with our outlook on the wide world, with all our modern ideas of the race, of eugenics, and of hygiene, must surely see down the long line of life with its high lights of morality and its soft tones of human possibility and provide better things for those who follow us than we have provided for those with us now. These are days in which to gain those new conceptions of religion, morals, and ideals in our homes which will give us the parental celationships we want, and provide the mutual sympathy and respect that are essential. 3. Master and Servant Relationships.—We have the whole question of labour and capital, worker and master potentially here, and the solving of it greatly (and usefully) disturbs our material comfort. Perhaps if we could apply ourselves unselfishly and strenuously to the lesser—the domestic problem—we should nave some genuine wisdom to bring to bear on the larger issue. Here, however, is our own position. We may state it thus—in a trade where women are more employed than in any other and where women are virtually the employers, we have the least well regulated system of all and the most perennial discomfort on both sides, even if it be too feeble to become a state question. None of us seems to be really grappling with it, and yet the strength of our power as employers on the negative side is evidenced by the fact that no Domestic Servants Trades’ Union has yet survived. While surely such an institution should not be necessary in the privacy of our homes, yet some measures we shall have to take to re-establish the wholesome, honourable calling of domestic service in the esteem of the younger working women. We all deplore the flock of quite young girls who ought to be doing housework at home, partially educated, now thronging to the city as clerks or even making their appearance in the bookstalls of railway platforms, though this latter pursuit may be a temporary necessity because of the war. They take up a calling in which they are not destined to make a true or healthy success, and are absolutely illprepared for a future home life of their own and early accustomed to undue publicity. We all admire the domestic servants known to all of us who under happy conditions of service share the family [3 life, imbibe the family standards of refinement, lay by money, marry suitably, and become the fathers and mothers of a sturdy race. But these are the exceptions in the great mass of domestic service. Personally I do not believe we should have so much of the moral trouble which is round us if domestic service were made more honourable and more attractive to girls of fifteen and upwards. The fault does not lie primarily with the servant, but with the employers who employ on a system that none other of the organized working classes would accept as regards hours and restrictions of liberty. There is a call for great fairness here, and it will be a happy thing if the needed reform can come from within and not from without. We know the difficulties of small households, we know the difficulties of making a reform if we insist on regarding our standard of living as rigidly fixed, but if we see a gleam of light, as we do in one direction at least, in the purpose of many daughters to take a new share in household things, may we not expect also that we shall be able to see more clearly in other respects? We must let nothing that is merely presupposition or traditional practice hinder us from justice as to fresh air, recreation, and proportion of work, or no idleness of will or lack of earnest attempt allow us to slide along tolerating and bemoaning a condition which goes very far to strip our homes of the atmosphere of rectitude and happiness. Perhaps a word ought to be said here about another class of private employment. The woman governess is often in an invidious position. She ought to be regarded as a professional woman and her place in a home ought to be at least as good as the place of a tutor. Her loneliness and social discomfort are not creditable to us. 4. Hospitality Relationships.—Hospitality is the power of receiving others and giving them the best of your best. It is of international importance. If we understand it rightly it stands for the peace of the world. And yet we are told and we know that true hospitality has either lapsed or certainly is on the wane. If as we expect, all our incomes will be greatly reduced by war taxes, is this not a strong suggestion that we have before us the chance of restoring true hospitality and of breaking through the artificial ideas of entertaining which have come among us? Surely we ought to be more interesting to our friends and acquaintances than the food we give them to eat in a hotel or the seats we give them at a play, for which they will subsequently make us an equivalent return. We can purchase such food and pleasure for ourselves, we cannot purchase the sheer human pleasure of living in the midst of a happy family group alive with their own interests and courteous as to ours, even if we have to face the proverbially dull leg of mutton and the solid rice pudding. But this rather than an effort at complicated digestion followed by an effort of concentrated amusement would be entertainment indeed, and we should be delivered from that remorse which must one day face us if we have eaten and urged others to eat far more than is needed, while some 30 per cent. of our fellow creatures even in this land were always on the verge of hunger. Ideally and actually the war should help us to a simple, genuine hospitality. Conclusion.—All that has been said can have little appeal to us unless we see home life in a new setting because of this war. If to our thinking the war is merely a repetition on a vastly larger scale of the wars of other generations when men settled down again to former ways on the declaration of peace to live lives modified in minor respects by their losses, then we shall have lost the greatest opportunity of expiation, purgation and progress that will ever come to us as a people. If on the other hand we see this war as an evidence and not a cause of a deep disquiet among us, then we shall recognize that we are in a great upheaval of ideals of civilization and we shall be in touch with the thoughtful in all the nations in perceiving that the conflict is not the mere clash of arms, but the clash of principles and of the relation of man to man. There is nothing before us henceforth as alternatives, but the haunting of ruins or the strenuous pursuit of newness of life. Perhaps in our quiet retired way we are being asked for a courage and fearlessness to admit and face the new circumstances of modern life which is comparable in a dim way to the courage and sacrifice of our brothers in arms. To some of us it is painful to be detached from former neutral positions—cosy corners—f{rom which we could look out on the movements of life with complacent approval or comfortable regret. But progress is inevitable, and not an honest mind among us could dare be content with things as they were. {t is on our homes that the blow of war has fallen first and most; it is there that we must become alive unto God, and it is because they are so good that they must be so much better. Fathers, husbands, brothers, sons have not hesitated to leave them in order to preserve them, for a grim task stripped of all its glamour. As brave men go deep down to dig up coal or raise a sunken ship they have soberly and unquestionably gone to war as a terrible duty. On the battlefields their simple religious faith has been apparent to us all. The Bishop of London tells us that it has been learned “in quiet English homes.” They have received the Holy Communion to their comfort at all hours and in all places before facing their death in action, and time and again we are told that when they had fallen it was the loved names of those in the home that were last upon their lips. Those left behind—fathers, mothers, wives, and sisters—have been worthy of their great ordeal. They have proved their heroism by their silence, even when pent up anxiety has almost forced them to complain. Girls have been called to bear bereavement that ordinarily only comes to the mature or middleaged. Their lovers have been added to the Roll of Honour one by one in a pitiful succession, and they have come to know that even if they would they could never marry, yet they have rallied, borne up, and gone on, and we older people marvel at them. The families have been worthy of the homes. Among the working classes, of whose homes we know too little, the same heroism exists, and our respect—mutual it is to be hoped—grows in the common sorrow. To some of them in the large cities, in a life of constant stress, the war is but one sorrow more they tell us, and never must we allow ourselves to think that because they may have more money to spend at the moment it is any more compensation to them than it would be to us—our hearts are made of the same stuff. The future is ours to recreate and reoccupy our homes for God. There is not a question about them that we must shirk, not a doubt in our hearts that we must fear to examine, not a practice or indulgence that we must be willing to cover. The Spirit of Truth is with us and He will show what must be done to make them places where He can dwell alike with husband and wife, parents and children, master and servant, host and guest, in undisputed authority and clearest light. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF CHURCH LIFE AFTER THE WAR. By Miss G. M. BEVAN. When we set ourselves to consider the reconstruction of Church life after the war we recognize that the Church is entering on a new phase of her history, that Church life as we have known it hitherto is no longer sufficient for the great needs of to-day and the great tasks of to-morrow, and that far-reaching changes are necessary. We all desire that out of the overwhelming catastrophe which has befallen us our Church life should be built up into something stronger, purer, more spiritual than before. But if we are to take our part worthily in that great work we must keep clearly before our eyes what it is that we should aim at, where our Church life is defective, and what are the changes which we should endeavour to bring about. Some of us may have dreamed a year ago that the Church’s task was to bring in an era of peaceful progress, in which all men would be united in a universal brotherhood which should remove all inequalities, and, as far as possible, eliminate trouble and pain from human life. The war has shattered that and many another illusion, and since last August disappointment has been very freely expressed that the Church which seemed to have achieved so much has proved powerless to avert the war, or to mitigate the ferocity with which it is being waged. And some are asking in perplexity : ‘ Has Christianity proved a failure ?”” The question implies that Christianity has failed to carry out the purpose for which it came into the world, and has held out expectations which it has not fulfilled. We should then do well to ask: * What was Christianity expected to accomplish ?”' It is no new thing to hear of “the failure ” of the Church, and if indeed the Church ought to have succeeded in making the whole world Christian in heart and in life, then truly she has failed. But if we look at the New Testament we can see no ground for any such expectation. There the Church is regarded as the salt of the earth, the wheat growing among tares, the light shining in darkness. And whilst we recognize the paramount duty to carry out to the utmost of our power the command: ‘Preach the Gospel to every creature,” we dare not forget that He Who gave the command also said: “ Many are called, but few are chosen.” But those who speak of the failure of Christianity would perhaps say that they are referring to the failure of the Church to impress her principles upon the world. * The Church exists to be a living witness to other-worldliness, to self-sacrifice, to { fellowship, and to maintain an unceasing conflict against evil; and they see that the war is due to causes which are in absolute opposition to these great ideals. And there is much more reason for such disappointment. But where should we seek for the cause of this failure? Is it not that the Church has to so large an extent lost sight of her own principles? If so, then it is no matter for surprise that the world has not been much impressed by them. *‘ If the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men.” Had we forgotten that to be a Christian means to follow Him Who said: “I came to cast fire upon the earth; and what will I, if itis already kindled ? ” Had we forgotten the great demands He makes and the hard conditions He attaches to discipleship ? ““ If any man cometh after Me, and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” ‘When the promised power came from on high to the Church, it was not ‘in semblance of a dove,” but as a rushing, mighty wind, and in tongues of fire. It was that fire that burned in S. Paul and in many another disciple, and drove them over land and sea, from city to city, bearing the Gospel of Christ. Where is the fire of the Church to-day? Had it burned so low that it must needs be rekindled by the fierce tribulation of these dreadful days? If our efforts for reconstruction are to be a building up of the gold that endures, not of hay and stubble, we need to be stirred out of our complacency, and approach our task in the spirit of penitence—to face boldly our failures in the past, and go forward with renewed courage for the future. Hence I trust that I shall be forgiven if any words of mine seem harsh, or spoken without due consideration. In the brief time at my disposal I can do no more than touch upon a few points, and tentatively put before you a few suggestions. I am fully conscious how very defective is any attempt I can make to deal with so great a subject. I must also ask that it should be borne in mind that in what I am about to say I am thinking, not of the Church as a whole, but only of that hranch of the Church which I know best. How then have the four great principles of which I have spoken been carried out in our modern Church life? How may we carry them out in the future ? (a) Other-worldliness.—Can we imagine someone altogether ignorant of the character of our Christian Faith coming amongst us for the first time, and seeking to learn from what he could observe of the everyday life of the Church what are the things to which she attaches the most importance? Would he gather from the lives of most Christian men and women that they belong to a spiritual realm, in which another scale of values prevails from that which is recognized by those whose aims and desires are bounded by this world? Would he perceive that the things of life and of death are regarded in a different light, and measured by a different standard? Would he, for example, notice any marked difference in such matters as the scale of luxury in their households, the care they bestow upon dress, the amount of holidays which they take? Would he realize that Christians are followers of Him Whose Kingdom is not of this world, Who taught that the material conditions under which we live are of small account, that comfortable circumstances even constitute a peril to the true life, that they are most blessed who hunger and mourn, who are reviled and persecuted ? Have not even Christian philanthropists too often sought to heal the hurt of their people by preaching the gospel of ease and comfort and not the Gospel of the Cross, by appealing to the lower instincts instead of to the spiritual nature, because they supposed that only by such means could men ‘be attracted to listen to a higher call? And during these past ten months we have been witnessing the constant spectacle of men readily sacrificing all that is most dear—the joys of home life, the prospects of advancement, and wealth, and ease, and life itself—because they could not fail to answer the call which bade them seek a yet higher prize, a prize often to be won only through death. To many of us life and death will henceforth wear a different aspect. (6) Self-sacrifice.—The question is sometimes asked : ©‘ How is it that so many who are brought up within the Church drift away when they attain manhood and womanhood ? Where are all those who as children received a Christian education in our public schools, our elementary Church schools, our Sunday schools?” May not one answer be: “The Church lost them because she failed to demand enough of them.” The war has given abundant proof that our people will respond if sufficiently great demands are made. And many of these have heard for the first time that call to sacrifice. They knew that the Church expected them to attend some of her services, and perhaps to give a fraction of their income to her funds, but had they been taught that she demands their personal service, the complete surrender of body, soul, and will? We may listen to many sermons and never hear this call to personal service and sacrifice. So much is provided for us, so little demanded of us. We luxuriate in our wealth of religious privileges—our daily services, the beautiful music of our paid choirs, our courses of sermons. Do we ask ourselves at what a cost these are provided? Do we reflect that the demand for frequent services necessitates the employment of a large proportion of our none too numerous clergy, that we are thereby maintaining a system which makes it impossible in some parishes for the priest to carry out the work of visiting his people, which keeps our clergy at home and deprives thousands of our fellow citizens abroad of any services at all, and leaves multitudes of the heathen in ignorance of the message of the Gospel ? It is because we value so highly our opportunities for worship, and in the very measure in which we value them, that we should be ready to forego some of them, to lose our souls, if need be, that we may find them, because we feel it to be impossible to withhold from others what we know to be of such great worth. Now if ever is the opportunity for sacrifice, and in that sacrifice the Church should lead the way.* (c) Fellowship.—Our insular position and our strong national tendency to individualism make it peculiarly difficult for us to realize all that is implied in our membership in the Catholic Church. Church life to many of us means little more than the services of the church we attend and the small activities of our own parish, whilst for the wider life of the Church beyond its limits we feel little concern, e.g., are some of us more than dimly conscious of the existence of the Churches of the East—of the great Church of Russia with its 90,000,000 members ? What responsibility do we feel for the work of the Church in other lands? What interest do we take in movements outside our own immediate circle in the Church at home? Whilst we waste our energies on petty controversies, and attack one another in the columns of the press, how is it possible for the world to realize chat the Church is the living fellowship of those who are all members of one Body, and that in her corporate life all those ideals of mutual service and brotherhood meet after which men are groping ? One result of the war may be to foster the aspiration for unity which has found expression in various ways during the last few years, and particularly to draw us closer to our brethren of the Russian Church; and it is to be hoped that no attempts to conciliate other Christian bodies at home will imperil our closer relationship with the Churches of the East. (d) The Church stands for the unceasing conflict with evil. Our Lord by His coming into the world drew a sharp dividing line between righteousness and unrighteousness. There are no sterner words in the Bible than those which fell from the lips of sur Saviour. He “ came not to bring peace, but a sword,” and the New Testament is penetrated with the conviction of that stern conflict against the powers of darkness to which the Church is committed. But in our anxiety to avoid over-severity we have been ready :0 make excuses for wrong-doing till our sense of moral distinctions * Might it not in some cases be found possible for the churches in the same district to make some common arrangement for providing a sufficient number of services to be held, sometimes in one of the churches of the district, sometimes in another, thus economizing he time of the clergy, and bringing together the congregations of the various parishes fo heir mutual advantage ? 0 bas become dulled. We shrank from speaking of the punishment of sin here or hereafter. We had almost lost the fear of God. and so could not persuade men. And now we have been brought face to face with evil in its most hideous form. The noblest achievements and the darkest crimes stand out before us in glaring contrast, which we cannot fail to see, and are never likely to forget. What is it which has compelled thousands who had no liking for war to take up the sword? The knowledge of intolerable wrongs committed; the conviction that true peace can only be attained by vanquishing evil, that there is not and never can be any agreement between light and darkness. No, the great principles of the Church are not discredited. They receive fresh confirmation from all that has happened since last August, and it is upon them that we must build our hopes for the future. Whatever the military issue of the war may be, spiritual forces will rule in the end. What then must we hope will rise out of the ruin that is all about us? The old world as we knew it ten months ago has passed away for ever. We are face to face with a new world, and never had the Church a greater opportunity than she has in that new world which is arising. Perhaps we have not for the most part realized how stupendous a task we are called to undertake, and that methods which were suitable enough for the days of Queen Elizabeth or for the uneventful days of our youth are utterly inadequate for the great times in which we are living, and for the world-wide claims which the Church is called to meet. A new world must mean new methods, and these will be very startling and painful to some of us. But if our Church is a living Church she will respond as all things living do to their environment. She must make her choice, either to grow and develope in those new conditions, or to be left on one side as a fossil belonging to an age that is past. Therefore, let us not be in a hurry to denounce as dangerous innovations these new developments. It may be that they are not 50 new as they appear to be. In any case it is advisable that those who desire to follow “ Catholic practice ” should be quite clear as to what the practice of the Catholic Church actually has been and is. Out of the impenetrable darkness which veils the future of the world from our eyes one fact seems to be emerging, It is that which concerns us most closely as an assembly of Churchwomen. Women are called to take a much larger and more responsible part in the life of the Church than they have been wont to take in modern times. And the largest part will necessarily be taken by the younger women. The new world upon which we are entering is their world. They will see it through their modern eyes. They will eagerly go forward in new paths, and we older women should regard with the most sympathetic welcome their readiness to take up their burden. Bat if the Church has need of the best of our younger women, there should be no reluctance to accord them the full responsibility which would be theirs if they were to enter secular professions. It is difficult to understand the position of those: who are content that women should take so large a share in the work of the Church, but would deny them access to the councils of the Church. Bishop Lightfoot, commenting on certain passages in the Epistles of S. Paul which refer to the ministry of women in the Apostolic Church, says that “If their testimony had not been blotted out of our English Bibles” by imperfect translation, ‘ our English Church would not have remained so long maimed in one of her hands.” The Gospels show us that in an age and country which assumed the inferiority of women our Lord chose His friends and His followers from men and women without distinction. Women accompanied Him during His ministry. Women were charged to be the heralds of the Resurrection to the Apostles. Other early Christian writings show that women occupied an honoured place, both in the charismatic ministry, particularly as prophetesses, and in the official ministry, If the Church had been mindful of the Apostolic warning: ‘‘ Quench not the Spirit, despise not prophesyings,” may be the charismatic ministry and women’s part in it would not have been lost to the Church. Is it possible that the stress of the times through which we are passing may help us to recover that lost gift ? References to the position of women in the official ministry are very numerous, e.g., the order of deacons in New Testament times and onwards includes both men and women. Women presbyters are also occasionally mentioned among the other -orders of the clergy. There is, of course, another aspect of the subject, but it cannot be considered apart from the social conditions which imposed certain limits to women’s work in the Church in the early centuries and have now undergone a profound change. Our new conditions must demand a readjustment for which the circumstances of the ancient Church offer no precedent, and the Holy Spirit is ever leading the Church in untried paths. The war which has swept off to the battlefield the most promising of our younger men must seriously affect the supply of clergy for years to come. And if the work of the Church is to be maintained, much more if it is to advance, it seems that some of the activities which have hitherto been regarded as specially the province of the clergy will have to be carried on by women. Various functions which have no necessary connection have now come to be accumulated on the same individual. The parish priest is expected not only to lead the worship and perform the rites of his church, but to be a preacher and teacher; not only to visit his people, but to control the organizations in his parish for the relief of the poor, the care of the sick, the education of children, etc. The result is that in many cases he is overburdened with work which he has not the time, and possibly not the capacity, to perform. Might one solution of the difficulties which confront us be found in returning to a subdivision of these offices? Without attempting to discuss whether it would be desirable or not to commit any one of them to suitable women duly appointed, I must confine myself to two or three to which the war directs special attention. Pastors. Those of us whose business it has been during the last ten months to work among the families of our soldiers and sailors have had opportunities for proving the advantages and the drawbacks of our parochial system. Our work has taken us into parishes where the clergy are the friends and pastors of their people. But in others we find not a few people—the wives and mothers who have given their men to die for the country—who appear to be untouched by the Church, unvisited, uncared for in their sorrow and loneliness. And the effect of the parochial system may be that just those who have a regard for Church order feel themselves precluded from initiating work for the Church in these parishes where they see it is most needed. Are the people to remain unshepherded, or might it be possible in such cases that the Pastoral care of the women and children should be entrusted to well qualified women appointed by the Bishop ? Teachers. The war has shown how great a responsibility. rests upon those who preach and teach for forming the ideals and aims which raise or degrade the conscience of the people. Theirs perhaps will be the largest part in the task of reconstruction, and if the Church is worthily to lead in this great task special attention should be given to the office of the Church teacher. In other departments of knowledge we naturally seek instruction from those who are experts in their subjects. The modern distaste for sermons is surely not wholly due to indifference on the part of the laity, but largely to the fact that the Church has been too slow to recognize that for giving religious instruction also special qualifications are required—spiritual insight, trained powers of thought and expression, sufficient intellectual equipment. It is not reasonable to demand this of those whose time is mainly occupied with activities of a very different kind. A body of specially qualified teachers is required who can make this most responsible work their chief concern. The Archbishop of Canterbury has marked his sense of its importance by according to women who have received special training a licence and authority to teach theology, thus giving to the office of the woman teacher a recognized place in the organization of the Church. Foreign Missions. And when we look away from our own land to the vast needs and perplexities of the world, we hear through all the tumult of the war the call that is going forth to our Church for the best that she can give. What return are we going to make to our Colonies and to India for their magnificent loyalty in our hour of need? Our Colonies have given to us the best of their manhood. India has shown that though blunders and misunderstandings may have sometimes marred our administration, yet she is able to recognize England’s ideals of justice and mercy, and feels herself one with us. And China and Japan? Are they to form their judgment of Christianity from the spectacle of warring hosts, or can we show them that the Christian ideals of fellowship and sacrifice are something more than a splendid dream ? Weare called to face problems of unspeakable complexity and magnitude. How are we preparing to meet them? What is to be our attitude towards the movements which are stirring the lands of India and the Far East—to their desire to adapt to their own needs the knowledge and the civilization of the West? And more particularly, what is to be our attitude to the development of the churches which are growing up in those lands? Have we an intelligent comprehension of their different habits of thought and life, a wise sympathy with their aspirations? Are we prepared to see them develope on the lines congenial to them, with their own ministry, their own forms of worship, not modelled strictly after the pattern of our English Church and limited to the use of our Prayer Book, penetrated as it is with our Western modes of thought ? The war will raise the most momentous questions in India. It is giving an impetus to aspirations and to movements which must have far-reaching issues beyond anything that we can foresee. We desire that our Church should take her rightful part in the solution of these and many another of the problems which lie before us. She can only do so by giving them the most careful and patient consideration. But we recognize with shame that, notwithstanding her position and her great resources, she falis far behind not only the Roman Church, but the Protestant bodies, with respect to the number of missionaries she can put in the field. And it is humiliating in the highest degree that her Foreign Missions can only be maintained by ceaseless appeals, by resorting to every device which ingenuity can suggest for collecting the necessary funds. The women of England must feel at such a time a very peculiar obligation to the women of India, many of them the widows of men who have shed their blood for England. Will the parents who have so readily given their sons to the service of the country show the same readiness to give their daughters to the service of the Church? Will they not only encourage them to offer themselves, but provide them with the means for training, which they would provide as a matter of course to educate their sons for a secular profession ? If the younger women are worthily to discharge the tasks which await them it is of the first importance that opportunities should be afforded them of obtaining the very best training which it is possible to provide. Is it too much to hope that we may some day have a central college for the special training of Church workers? Such a college should be on as broad a basis as the Church itself, embracing considerable variety ‘of thought, and providing considerable varieties of training, suited to-the special work for which the student is preparing. It should by preference be situated in London, on account of the opportunities which can be more easily obtained there for education in special subjects, and experience of widely different types of life and thought. It should be conducted by a staff of highly qualified teachers of wide outlook, who would make it their aim to maintain a full and vigorous Church life among the students, and at the same time to give them scope for the free development of their powers and their personality. Every effort should be directed towards aelping them to train themselves by prayer and study, by the full exercise of their mental powers, by strenuous application to their work, to become fit to take positions of responsibility, Might not the existence of such a college bring home the dignity of Church work to some of the best women who now turn to other work because they think that the Church has no use for what they have to offer ? Many women are now learning for the first time the reality of living, the joy of effort and selfsacrifice, the satisfaction of work well done. When the war is over much of the work in which they are now engaged will cease. It is our part to convince them that the Church needs them as urgently as the country needs them to-day, and that it is worth while to offer to her service all their quickened powers, all their enthusiasm, and all their devotion. 15 NATIONAL LIFE AFTER THE WAR. By THE Rev. CANON J. G. SIMPSON. My subject, as I understand the request which has been addressed to me, is to offer some thoughts upon the reconstruc. tion of the national life after the war, and that with an eye to the part which women especially will be required to play in that momentous task. In one sense this is impossible. No one can say under what conditions the nation will emerge from the war, the issues of which, so far as we can see, are not vet even approaching a decision. But the end may be very much nearer than is apparent, and it is folly not to recognize that the real task only begins with the conclusion of peace. What we shall then have to do is to set about bravely building up the civilization which the ruthless hand of war has destroyed. But God forbid that we should build the new city upon the insecure foundations of the old. The war will have taught us very little if it has not burned into our conscience abhorrence of the old principles of rivalry and competition, of which the horror of thick darkness which now besets us is the logical outcome and appropriate Nemesis. There is a widespread conviction that the conflict in which we are engaged is a war against war. Thousands upon thousands of our brave boys have thrown their whole heart into the struggle because they believed that liberty and all that makes life worth living for the great mass of civilized mankind, that, in a word, the progress of mankind and the opportunities of future generations were endangered by the irresponsible outbreak of a people that delighted in war. The newspapers are never weary of reminding us that we are out to crush militarism. This conviction has no doubt inspired most of what is best in the devotion and sacrifice which keeps us from despairing of the world when we contemplate the destruction that has been wrought on the earth. But I hope we shall remember that it is one thing to use these appeals to justice and righteousness when we are confronted with the immediate necessity of restraining the madness of an infuriated foe, and quite another to keep in remembrance these divine ideals when, exhausted by the drain of warfare, we are face to face with the still more gigantic task of restoring the old wastes. It is one thing to cut the claws of militarism ; itis another to make it impossible for the claws to grow again. We must keep our head cool and our temper calm. Moral indignation, righteous wrath, holy anger are very dangerous weapons to play with. They are natural sentiments and, in so far as they testify to a deeply rooted hatred of evil, thev witness ye Me) to the inherent dignity of human nature. They furnish recruits, but a stern discipline is necessary before those recruits can be made steady and good soldiers. And when the work to be done is not the mere destruction of evil, but the reconstruction of society, no atmosphere is less likely to produce solid and effective work than fiery indignation. It is scarcely possible for any but God Himself so to be angry that sin is excluded and salvation achieved. Those of us who have been engaged in social reform, in opposing the power of the drink traffic or the abomination of white slavery, know only too well how passion darkens counsel and gives the advantage to the very enemies that we are endeavouring to defeat. I am certain that at the present moment Christian workers will show themselves the truest patriots by kindling in the heart of the nation the fire of redemptive love, which is the very motive of that Cross on which the Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works of the Devil. The task of reconstruction must be begun now in the building ap of that habit of mind in which alone, when the war is over, the reconciliation of a bruised and battered world can be achieved. Pray do not imagine that in what I say I am presuming to touch the question, when we may rightly consider that the danger of a speedy recrudescence of the present conflict has been averted. We are all at one in believing that no stone should be left unturned to make it impossible that, if nothing further is accomplished, our children and our children’s children should be involved in the horror which has darkened the lives of the present generation. But might can never prove that might is not right. ‘We should only show how uncertain was our faith in the righteousness of the cause for which we stood if we accepted defeat at the hands of a stronger enemy as a settlement of the question which provoked the conflict. If I grapple with a burglar it is only because I can see no other way of protecting my goods. If he overcomes my resistance, I do not admit his right of pillage. But it will be acknowledged that, if I can succeed in convincing him of the error of his way, I have conferred a lasting benefit upon society, such as I could never have accomplished by knocking him down. And there is only one way of crushing militarism, which so long as it is unconvinced will remain as a standing menace to all social and international reconstruction, and that is by separating the reason and sentiment of mankind from the folly which is ready to put the fabric—painfully reared, it may be, through decades or even centuries of persevering labour—at the hazard of a few months, or it may be days, of senseless destruction. We cannot, therefore, set about the work of reconstruction with any hope of a success which will lift the whole life of the world to a higher plane, if we are content to leave the problem of war just where we found it, trusting to such success as may have been granted to our arms, to a better organization of our fleets and armies, and to the old methods of diplomacy and the balance of power to avert a disaster like that which has overwhelmed the world into which we were born. If S0, we shall only once more be building our cities on the edge of a volcano. We must, I say it advisedly, hate war. We must exorcise its spirit. We must cease to believe that it can ever be redeemed by the chivalry it evokes, the sacrifices it inspires, the discipline it entails. Discipline, sacrifice, and chivalry are splendid capacities of human nature with which war has nothing to do. Men and women will still be required to die for their country, for the human race, and for God when war is no longer recognized as a legitimate incident in the life of nations. They will be needed, they are needed every day, because we are not so foolish as to identify the cessation of war with the advent of the millennium, or to suppose that the age-long conflict between good and evil will ever cease until the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Messiah. But war, as we know it, is based upon the ultimate assumption that one nation is necessarily the rival of another.” It means that Bernhardism is not confined to one nation, but enters in varying degrees into the ideals of all. To demand its abolition is not to assume that in an imperfect world aggression will never be attempted by a country that develops anti-social tendencies. It does not mean that we are at once to disband armies, disperse fleets, dismantle defences, and then capitulate to violence whenever it is offered. We know that lawlessness will raise its head among the family of nations, as it still does among the citizens of states. But can anything be more unlike the use of force in the administration of a nation’s justice than the spectacle which this great war presents? The repression of the murderer and the thief does not involve the dislocation of the national life, the infliction of suffering on a multitude of innocent persons, the loosing of rage and hatred, the inevitable mixture of less worthy motives with the desire to vindicate truth, the absence of all judicial process, and of the arraignment of the offender before a calm and competent bar. The elimination of force as a factor in the control and progress of the world can only occur as the growth of a higher conscience renders it obsolete. But there is no reason why force should not be brought under discipline and made the handmaid of law and not the instrument of passion for nations no less than for individuals. We are bound to seek out some method of restraining the wrongdoer which shall not let slip the hounds of hell. We can only do this if we are prepared to set our faces against every form of patriotism which can only be pursued through jealousy of other countries, and patiently to adopt a policy of mutual trust which refuses to believe in any national rivalry save in the contributions R which each people can make to the advancement of the human race. It is only the general goodwill of the citizens that makes the magistrate effective for the punishment of what is practically recognized by all as wickedness and vice. The burglar knows he is a felon. England and Germany both believe that the other fulfils that réle. And it is only as we renounce war, which is still the normal relation of one nation to another even when no gun is fired, that the end, which we profess to reach by its means, can really be attained. It will be criminal folly if, with the bitter experience before us of its incredible and ridiculous waste, we do not start upon our schemes of reconstruction, the sad but glorious necessity which is now laid upon our shoulders, with a fixed determination to banish, I do not now say the institution but the spirit of war, and an unwavering faith that the work is not impossible. And it is just here that you women can help us. I believe women can break the bow and knap the spear in sunder. At last you are coming into your inheritance. Who knows but that you are come to the kingdom for such a time as this? No one now doubts your heroism, not merely that heroism which has always been a marked characteristic of your sex, but a heroism such as that which wins the Victoria Cross. No one henceforth can accuse you of desiring peace merely because the horrors of war are shocking to your sensibility, or because you shrink from wounds and blood. But you know and understand out of the fulness of your own experience the meaning of that principle which goes deeper into the heart of existence than any other, and which finds its fullest human expression in motherhood. It is now many years since the late Henry Drummond insisted with the wonderful charm of his graceful eloquence that the ascent of man was not based, as the superficial observers of the evolutionary process had carelessly come to believe, on the merciless struggle for existence which human ingenuity might mitigate, but could never prevent. On the contrary, the final and ultimate law was self-surrender for the good of others, the sacrifice of life in order that others might live, the maternal instinct which was the noblest expression of the eternal love of God. Some of us remember how this reading of the history of development, based as it was upon the recognition of those silent facts, whose voices were too readily drowned by the turbulence heaving upon the surface of change, rekindled hope and gave a new stimulus to unselfish devotion. Love was after all the greatest thing in the world, in the light of which pain and conflict and even evil must ultimately be read. “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” This is the spirit of the true hero, and even though, as, thank God, during these terrible months, it has been commonly g manifested under conditions of strife, the spirit of the hero is fatal in the long run to the spirit of war. Notice, I beg you, hat I speak of the spirit rather than of the institution of war. I do so not because my faith will not allow me to contemplate the disappearance of the institution, and that more rapidly than those whose illusions have been rudely scattered by the outbreak of the greatest war that the world has ever seen dare to imagine. What this European conflagration has surely shown us is that war can never be henceforth regarded as a problem to be considered in isolation from the conditions of which it is a part. A pacifist, who from morning to night is at strife with his neighbours and shrinks only from those ghastly manifestations of its meaning, which mangle his own flesh and strip him of his accumulated spoils, can never hope, and does not deserve to be allowed to expect, to be shielded from “red ruin and the breaking up of laws.” You and I are out for reconstruction, and we must see to it that reconstruction goes right down to the heart of things and involves that drastic reform in all human relations— in the family, the industrial community, the world of commerce, the fellowship of the sexes, the internal affairs of the State, of which the brotherhood of nations is the highest and most perfect flower, and which will antiquate what we call war because it has dealt with its causes. If we are to prepare ourselves for the healing work of reconstruction, we must look into that future which lies beyond the uncertain date when the last cartridge shall have been fired, and which our minds seem almost too full with the pressing concerns of to-day and to-morrow even to attempt to envisage. But we must look back also behind the immediate circumstances which plunged us in this appalling desolation. We have to ask why it was that the world was suddenly faced with a crisis which, however deeply they might abhor the thought, gave to many of the nations no alternative but war; why to England, as it then was, the only possibility, which she was free to refuse, was not the maintenance of a noble peace, but only the acceptance of a base and hypocritical neutrality. It is no answer to say that a wild beast, a madman—use what term you will to describe the nation and government with whom lay the immediate responsibility —had broken loose in the midst of a civilized Europe. The real question is, what was the value of that civilization which could render such an outbreak possible ? Why was it that at the fatal hour there was for none of us a place of repentance ? It is when we begin to ask these questions that the matter is driven home to ourselves. We believe firmly in the justice—nay, the sacredness—of the cause which we ‘epfesent; and impartial history may abundantly attest our claim and bear witness that, if Britain's sons and daughters at home and beyond the seas had not vied with one another in a nN magnificent effort of sacrifice and service, a disaster might have fallen upon the world which could never have been retrieved. But will that inexorable court of cold investigation be able to say that we had no responsibility for the conditions which have precipitated this Day of Judgment; that for ten, twenty, fifty years we had ceased to be a people that delighted in war ? Our first task is to reconstruct the nation. We have to zxorcise the spirit of war from our own domestic life. In a company of women I make no apology for recalling that great sex movement, the sad manifestations of which but a year ago had filled our minds with perplexity and amazement, but which to most of us now appear almost as a dream when one awaketh. Nothing was easier under stress of that bitter conflict than boldly to assert that force is no remedy, and that militant methods in the long run defeat their own end. It was, I repeat, a short and easy method of extricating ourselves from the difficulties in which the controversy had involved us, to wash our hands of a business that had resulted in violence, which is the negation of the very foundations upon which society rests. But there were some who were willing to incur resentment by appearing to condone actions which they condemned perhaps more deeply than their detractors. They believed profoundly in spiritual methods. Nor would they to-day be found as exponents of that bellicose attitude, which is by some mistaken for true patriotism. But they saw, or they thought they saw, that to range themselves unreservedly on the side of those who, in the name of law and order, called for nothing but repression was really to take their place as combatants in a war that was rending the national life. And the same was true, I think, of those great labour wars—the coal strike, the transport strike, and the like—which were shaking the social fabric to its very basis, and the further progress of which nothing but the terrible preoccupation of the European struggle has interrupted. Men could denounce with vehemence the want of discipline, the envy, the malice of those sections of the population which were demanding a fuller recognition in the body politic, or a larger share in the distribution of material wealth, and no one could say that their denunciations were entirely devoid of truth. But what they could not see was that deep in the heart of our vaunted civilization there were principles, which were the fruitful parents of disorder, just because they were essentially anti-social and gave the semblance of law to the spirit of war. Well, for the present at least these troubles are a thing of the past. But of this we may be certain that, unless we as a nation are determined to go right down to the foundations upon which social justice and the common welfare of the community rest, the economic depression, which a great war is bound to leave in its wake, will revive the old evils in an aggravated and, it may be, revolutionary form. Are we really prepared to reconstruct? The new comradeship between classes of society which scarcely knew one another before, the common service of master and man, of landlord and tenant, of rich and poor, of men and women, in resistance to a foe whose insolent aggression threatened equally the life of all, ought surely to have produced a sympathy, a recognition, a love of one another, and above all, a devotion to the common weal, which should make national service (of course, I do not use the word in the sense of conscript armies), a true brotherhood and sisterhood, a respect for life and not goods as the ultimate standard of value, the inspiring principles upon which industry, commerce, the distribution of the common resources and opportunities shall henceforth rest. Discipline, labour, education, development, duty—on these we must insist as we have never done before, but for the good of all and without loss to the freedom of any. I speak of these ideals as principles of the national life, of that reconstruction to which we are to address ourselves with brave hearts and good will, not as results which are going to be attained without struggle and without cost. We are not victims of that strange delusion that social conditions will regenerate the hearts of men; but neither are we going to subscribe any longer to that proposition, which is too often nothing more than an excuse for indolence, that it is the pigs which make the sty. Because selfishness is deep rooted in our fallen human nature, that is no reason why society should lend itself to the vices of mankind by refusing to organize itself upon principles to which we all find it hard to rise. No, this work of reconstruction will not be easy. It will demand the exercise of all those qualities which almost with amazement we have found to be still present in the great mass of our fellow countrymen, unspoiled by luxury and not atrophied by a century of peace. All that makes a good soldier will be needed in yet greater measure for those who are engaged in the yet nobler task of rebuilding England and renewing the world. We want men and women who pine for “the crowded hour of glorious life”; whose faith will never fail and cry that “the struggle nought availeth”; whose patience will not be exhausted by reverses, who will endure suffering and face death itself in redeeming life. 250002)024090 I hake 206$08931135