"his head blowed off."

V

I recur, then, to my verdict that on the whole there is not a great
revival of the Christian religion at the front. Why is this?

First, war is war, and, what is more, this war is this war. I will not
attempt to paint the picture. Every one must realise by now that the main
concentration of all military effort is directed at creating in the
trenches an ever-intenser inferno of heavy shells. In a great army there
is every degree of risk to be run or immunity to be enjoyed; but at the
very front, where all is stripped and laid bare, modern warfare is at
times a furnace of horror. Its smoke darkens the heavens, thickening the
"clouds and darkness" round about God, and deepening His silence. Its
white heat scorches out human confidence in Him. He does not seem to
count. There are stars in the darkness of war--stars which are the
achievements of man's indomitable spirit. But God-ward there seems
sometimes to be great darkness.

Further, war, despite all the easy things said in its praise, is a great
iniquity. It is, as others have said, hell. As an environment to the soul
it is, for all the countervailing heroisms of men, a world of evil power
let loose.

And, again, war abounds in a number of trials--mostly associated with the
extremes of heat and cold and damp and fatigue--for which, as the phrase
goes, religion seems not to afford the slightest relief. It is a very
physical business, squeezing out or overlaying the spiritual in men,
though powerless wholly to extinguish it. War being what it is, the
absence of religious revival during its course is not surprising. I have
come to be very doubtful whether there is truth in the prevalent notion
that war as such and automatically makes men better.

Secondly, that element in religion which can survive the weather of war
must be a very hardy growth, something deeply engrained and
habitual--something rock-built. And that is just what is lacking among men
of our race. As an Anglican priest I reach here a glaring fact about the
English Church. The war reveals that there are few men in its loose
membership who are possessed by and instructed in its faith. Religion, as
taught by the Church of England, has a feeble grip on the masses. They
hold it in no familiar embrace. And if reasons are sought, they are
partly found in the want of cutting edge to her sober comprehensive
teaching, partly in the characteristics often theoretically so justifi