oes not
purport to vindicate the Churches, yet some of its observations in
connection with the war open out a new page of apologetics. These
clergymen invite all the citizens of their district, on the ground of
the war, to attend church, even if they have not been in the habit of
doing so. On what more precise ground? The able lawyer who received this
invitation, and forwarded it to me, thought it, not the most ingenious,
but the most curious, piece of pleading he had ever known. The citizens
of Hampstead were invited to go to church "to offer up to God a
sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for his goodness to us as a
nation"! At the very time the eminent preachers were writing this, the
darkened city still cowered under the threat of a horrible outrage; the
shattered homes and fresh graves of Scarborough and Whitby reminded us
faintly of the horrors beyond the sea; the maimed soldiers all over the
country, the sad figures of the bereaved, the anxious hearts of a
million of our people, were but a beginning of the evil that had fallen
on us. We had in fourteen years, since the last war, been obliged to
spend a thousand millions sterling in preparation for a war we did not
desire, and we were entering upon an expenditure of something more than
a thousand millions in a year. All this we had incurred through no fault
of ours. And these clergymen thought it a good opportunity to invite us
to go to church to thank God for "his goodness to us as a nation."

Another manifesto is signed by a body of archbishops and bishops of the
Anglican Church. It enjoined all the faithful to supplicate the Almighty
on January 3rd to stop the war. This was to be done "all round the
Empire." I will not indulge in any cheap sarcasm as to the result,
though one would probably be right in saying that, if the end be
deferred to the year 1917, they will still believe that their prayers
had effect. What it is more material to notice is that the prelates
think that "these are days of great spiritual opportunity." It seems
that "the shattering of so much that seemed established reveals the
vanity of human affairs," and that "anxiety, separation, and loss have
made many hearts sensible of the approach of Christ to the soul." It is,
perhaps, unkind to examine this emotional language from an intellectual
point of view, but one feels that there is a subtle element of apology
in it. These spiritual advantages may outweigh the secular pain; may
even justify