ld habits of thought reasserted themselves.
While we enjoyed peace and prosperity, the credulity of the public found
its chief outlet in various systems of faith-healing and in the
time-honoured pretensions of priest-craft. But the devastation which the
war has brought into countless loving families has turned the current of
superstition strongly towards necromancy. The 'will to believe,' no
longer inhibited and suspected as a reason for doubt, has been allowed
to create its own logic. A few highly educated men, who have long been
playing with occultism and gratifying their intellectual curiosity by
exploring the dark places of perverted mysticism, have been swept off
their feet by it, and their authority, as 'men of science,' has
dispelled the hesitation of many more to accept what they dearly wished
to believe. The longing of the bereaved has created for itself a
spurious and dreary satisfaction.

One cause of this strange movement cannot be emphasised too strongly. It
proves that the Christian hope of immortality burns very dimly among us.
Those who study the utterances of our religious guides must admit that
it is so. References to the future life had, before the war, become rare
even in the pulpit. The topic was mainly reserved for letters of
condolence, and was then handled gingerly, as if it would not bear much
pressure. Working-class audiences and congregations listened eagerly to
the wildest promises of an earthly utopia the day after tomorrow, but
cooled down at once when they were reminded that 'if in this life only
we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.' Accordingly,
the clerical demagogue showed more interest in the unemployed than in
the unconverted. Christianity, which began as a revolutionary idealism,
had sunk into heralding materialistic revolution. Such teachers have no
message of hope and comfort for those who have lost their dearest. And
they have, in fact, been deserted. Their secularised Christianity was
received with half-contemptuous approval by trade unions, but far deeper
hopes, fears, and longings have now been stirred, which concern all men
and women alike, and on the answers to which the whole value of
existence is now seen to depend. Christianity can answer them, but not
the Churches through the mouths of their accredited representatives. And
so, instead of 'the blessed hope of everlasting life,' the bereaved have
been driven to this pathetic and miserable substitute, the