as
he steadied himself on his crutches, "he sang the very same song over
again, just to show us that he could do it again and meant every word
of it, and it gave me a queer feeling. It seemed to show me that the
lark had the straight of it, and we were all wrong. But," he added,
after a pause, "nobody knows how wrong it all is like the men who've
been there!"

Of course we know that the world did not suddenly go wrong. Its
thought must have been wrong all the time, and the war is simply the
manifestation of it; one of them at least. But how did it happen? That
is the question which weary hearts are asking all over the world. We
all know what is wrong with Germany. That's easy. It is always easier
to diagnose other people's cases than our own--and pleasanter. We know
that the people of Germany have been led away by their teachers,
philosophers, writers; they worship the god of force; they recognize
no sin but weakness and inefficiency. They are good people, only for
their own way of thinking; no doubt they say the same thing of us.

Wrong thinking has caused all our trouble, and the world cannot be
saved by physical means, but only by the spiritual forces which change
the mental attitude. When the sword shall be beaten into the
ploughshare and the spear into the pruning-hook, that will be the
outward sign of the change of thought from destructive, competitive
methods to constructive and cooeperative regeneration of the world! It
is interesting to note that the sword and spear are not going to be
thrown on the scrap-heap; they are to be transformed--made over. All
energy is good; it is only its direction, which may become evil.

It is not to be wondered at that the world has run to blind hatred
when we stop to realize that the Church has failed to teach the
peaceable fruits of the spirit, and has preferred to fight human
beings rather than prejudice, ignorance, and sin, and has too often
gauged success by competition between its various branches, rather
than by cooeperation against the powers of evil.

At a recent convention of a certain religious body, one sister, who
gave in her report as to how the Lord had dealt with the children of
men in her part of the vineyard, deeply deplored the hardness of the
sinners' hearts, their proneness to err, and the worldliness of even
professing Christians, who seemed now to be wholly given over to the
love of pleasure. She told also of the niggardly contributions; the
small cong