with the result that very many are Pillars of the Church who are not near to the Kingdom.  Out of the two battalions which I have known as a private soldier, I should say that not more than five per cent were vitally related to any of the Christian communions.  It is useless making plans for the time when the boys come home, unless the Church rediscovers her Lord and Master.  The Spirit-filled Church is more necessary than any modifications of organization.”

Is not the whole war a call to deep humiliation to the Church of Christ and should we not all stand convicted of sin before it?  So far as our saving the world is concerned and our bringing in the Kingdom of love and peace, which Christ came to establish, does not the war write in flaming judgment against us, “Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting”?  Are we not all, like the Pharisees of old, too ready to throw the first stone at someone else who we may think caused the war, instead of admitting our own guilt?

As Arnold Freeman, in his lectures at Sheffield University, says: 

“We persuade one another that it was the Kaiser, through his lust for self-glorification, who made this war.  Would it be possible for one man to transform all Europe into a slaughter-house unless that same Kaiser-spirit found its response in human nature in every corner of this continent?  It is the ‘Kaiser’ in each one of us that makes wars possible.  It is because we have in every nation, and in every class, multitudes of men and women who neglect the service of their fellow-creatures in a desire for self-indulgence and self-aggrandizement, that this catastrophe has fallen upon us all.  It is a case of devil-possession, and our only hope is to exorcise ourselves of the evil spirit.  Our avowed intention is to cast out ‘Kaiserism’ in Germany by brute force.  We must be no less resolute to cast it out of this country.”

The Bishop of Carlisle has well said that if we were really Christians this war would not have happened.  If the defense of its citizens is the work of the State, and the redemption of the world is the task of the Church, no one can deny that the State has done its work far better than the Church.  In the face of this, the most pathetic spectacle that the Christian world ever witnessed, must we not wring our hands with shame and cry, “Why could we not cast it out?” The divisions, the impotence, the worldliness, the coldness, the sin and failure of the Church stand revealed in the lurid light of this war.

What a self-righteous spirit the war has bred in many of us, and what a hatred of our enemies!  One has but to read the secular and religious press on both sides of the present conflict to see our sin writ large before us.  Since we have such a keen vision for the mote in our brother’s eye and such an eager perception of every flaw in our enemy, we can recognize this spirit most readily if we look for it first in Germany, but in doing so let us clearly recognize