drivers, who much resented the use of "their" Y.M.C.A. hut for such
religious purposes. A Wesleyan minister had charge of it, and got far
more of their blunt language than I the visitor did; but he worked
undismayed and unreservedly for all he was worth, for the National
Mission and for me. The alliance was natural, real, inevitable. He and
I, and some five or six men of that camp, were clearly on one side, and
the rest of it on the other, of an exceeding broad gulf. With this as a
daily experience, a man's values changed rapidly; and it became quite
obvious that, even to begin to fight the battle of Christianity in the
modern world, Christians must be united.

This assurance was reinforced by the quite extraordinary scandal that
the mere fact of religious disunion caused both to officers and men. It
was the big, obvious "damper" on the very threshold of
Christianity--"see how these Christians hate one another." Officers
would throw the taunt up again and again in the Mess, and the men lying
down to talk themselves to sleep in their comfortless barns would begin
to talk about religion with at heart a wistful longing to understand it
and know its help and power. At once, someone would bring up the picture
of squabbling denominations, and the wistfulness and hope would be slain
by scorn. Next day and every day, the glaring scandal would be laid
before the chaplain; who had little enough to answer. Of course, it is
quite false to suppose that the existence and continuance of division
are due to the clergy. Our English schisms have been caused at least as
much by over-eager laymen as by over-eager clergy; and I think if it
were left to the clergy alone the process of reuniting would be very
rapid. In our Division, for instance, the three Nonconformist Chaplains
to the Forces and I used to talk over the whole question; one was an
orthodox Wesleyan, another a Primitive, and the other a United
Methodist; and they did not hesitate to say that Methodist reunion had
taken place more than ten years ago if it had been left to the ministers
alone. But the average Englishman naturally blames the official
representatives of religion, their ministries, for the obvious and open
disgrace of division in the religion of love; he is ignorant of the
excuses that history, and the real importance of the matters in dispute,
afford; he only sees the evil fact; and it is quite enough by itself to
excuse his closer association with so harsh a con