d
beyond its own local congregation, which is bad enough; or still worse,
in our towns, content to wander from congregation to congregation,
owning no discipline or loyalty at all.

And yet in the same breath as we say, "I believe in God," we also say,
most of us, "I believe one Catholick and Apostolick Church." It is a
crowning mercy that we do say it; that we do bear witness so outright to
the state of sin in which we dwell; the clause does keep the mind of
Christ and our own duty before us, of establishing as the first, perhaps
the only hope of this sin-stained, war-stained earth, the brotherhood of
believers which shall be one.

Then came the war, and in many ways the war, which has in every
direction cleared vision, and both deepened and simplified thought, has
brought home to every Christian both the disaster of disunion, and the
imperative need of attempting unity.

You will expect me to give some account of the reaction of the chaplains
and the Church in France to this conviction. Perhaps I should make clear
my own position. Folk probably term me an "advanced High Churchman." I
should call myself "a Catholic"--an English Catholic, if you like--, at
any rate, one who cannot fairly be accused of ignorance of the details
and depths of our divisions; nor of underestimating their real
importance.

The priests who went out as Chaplains to the Forces had an experience
somewhat similar to that of colonial or missionary priests--they
exercised their ministry under totally new conditions, and in a new
atmosphere. So did the Roman Catholics, Nonconformists, and
Presbyterians, but of course I do not speak for them in what follows.
But all the Church of England padres--high, low, broad--tell exactly the
same tale of their experience; between them there has been no division;
they have worked together in perfect harmony and keenness, largely
appropriating each other's methods. In a word, they have discovered how
false and artificial is the partisan atmosphere of home religion; and
when they return, will find it hard to tolerate any continuance of it.

The Church of England is as a matter of fact divided roughly into three
sections, by no means corresponding to the "high, low, and broad," of
the church journals. Most Church of England men scarcely know what these
terms mean. No, it consists of a devoted inmost section, regular
churchgoers and communicants--and you will pardon me for thinking them
the best instructed, the