The evil of the institutions which now hold back the progress that must be made towards social recovery and the Great Peace, is far less the quality of wrongness in themselves and the ill influence they put in operation, than it is the revelation they make of personal character.  It is not so much that newspapers are what they are as that there should be men who are pleased and content to make them this, in apparently honest ignorance of what they are doing, and that there should be others in sufficient number to make them profitable business propositions by giving them their appreciation and support.  It is not so much that government should be what it is as that character should have so far degenerated in the working majority of citizens that these qualities should show themselves as a fixed condition, and that there should be no body of men of numerical distinction, who regard the situation with sentiments much more active than those of indifference and amused toleration.  It is not so much that the industrial situation should be what it is, as that there should be on both sides moral wrong, and that this condition could not have come about, nor could it still be maintained, except through character degeneration in the individual.  It is not so much that many forms of religion are what they are, as it is that they should progressively have become this through their exponents and adherents, and that there should be so many who are still willing to defend them in this case.

Every ill thing reveals through its very quality the defects of the individual man, and as upon him must rest the responsibilities for the fault, so on him must be placed the responsibility for the recovery.  The failures we have recorded, the false gods we have raised up in idolatry, even the Great War itself, are revelations of failure in personal and individual character.  We may recognize this, but recognition is not enough.  We may found societies and committees and write books and deliver lectures, but corporate action is not enough, nor intellectual assent.  There is but one way that is right, sufficient and effective, and that is the right living of each individual, which is the incarnation and operation of faith by the grace of God.

It is my desire to close this course of lectures not with my own words but with those of one of the great personalities revealed by the war.  First, however, I wish to say this.  If there is any thought or word in what I have said that seems to you true, then I ask you to use it not as a matter for discussion but as an impulse toward personal action.  If there is anything that is of the nature of explicit error, then I pray that the Spirit of Truth may make deaf your ears that you hear not, and blot out of your memory the record of what I have said.  If there is anything that is not consonant with the Christian religion, as this has been revealed to the world and as it is guarded and interpreted by the Church to which these powers were committed, then I retract and disavow it explicitly and ex animo.