fire upon London. These visions became
Apocalyptic. The Zeppelins came to England with the new year, and with
the close of the year came the struggle for Ypres that was so near
to being a collapse of the allied defensive. The events of the early
spring, the bloody failure of British generalship at Neuve Chapelle,
the naval disaster in the Dardanelles, the sinking of the Falaba,
the Russian defeat in the Masurian Lakes, all deepened the bishop's
impression of the immensity of the nation's difficulties and of his
own unhelpfulness. He was ashamed that the church should hold back its
curates from enlistment while the French priests were wearing their
uniforms in the trenches; the expedition of the Bishop of London to
hold open-air services at the front seemed merely to accentuate the
tub-rolling. It was rolling the tub just where it was most in the way.

What was wrong? What was wanting?

The Westminster Gazette, The Spectator, and several other of the most
trusted organs of public opinion were intermittently discussing the same
question. Their discussions implied at once the extreme need that
was felt for religion by all sorts of representative people, and the
universal conviction that the church was in some way muddling and
masking her revelation. "What is wrong with the Churches?" was,
for example, the general heading of The Westminster Gazette's
correspondence.

One day the bishop skimmed a brief incisive utterance by Sir Harry
Johnston that pierced to the marrow of his own shrinking convictions.
Sir Harry is one of those people who seem to write as well as speak in
a quick tenor. "Instead of propounding plainly and without the acereted
mythology of Asia Minor, Greece and Rome, the pure Gospel of Christ....
they present it overloaded with unbelievable myths (such as, among
a thousand others, that Massacre of the Innocents which never took
place).... bore their listeners by a Tibetan repetition of creeds that
have ceased to be credible.... Mutually contradictory propositions....
Prayers and litanies composed in Byzantine and mediaeval times....
the want of actuality, the curious silliness which has, ever since the
destruction of Jerusalem, hung about the exposition of Christianity....
But if the Bishops continue to fuss about the trappings of religion....
the maintenance of codes compiled by people who lived sixteen hundred
or two thousand five hundred years ago.... the increasingly educated
and practical-minded wor