brought to contemplate something more
than the day's enjoyment. It is not then wonderful that the terrible war
which has raged with Europe as the cockpit, and practically all the
nations of the world as participants, should turn the minds of those who
are in the righting line towards thoughts which in times of peace may
never have found entrance there. From all sides one hears that this is
so, yet here again it is too often the case that an "unknown God" is
sought, and from want of proper direction not always found. In a
recently published memoir of one of the many splendid young fellows by
whose death the world has been made poorer during this calamitous war,
there is this moving passage: "I know that many hearts are turning
towards _something_, but cannot find satisfaction in what the Christian
sects offer. And many, failing to find what they need, fall back sadly
into vague uncertainties and disbelief, as I often do myself." We badly
need a St. Paul who will say to these and other anxious hearts, "_Quod
ergo ignorantes colitis, hoc ego annuntio vobis_."

However, it is much more with those who only "stand and wait" than with
those who were actually in the trenches that we are concerned; what
about the lamentable army of wives and mothers, widows and orphans,
people bereft of those they loved or rising every morning in dread of
the news which the day might bring forth; what about these and their
attitude towards the things unseen? That many such have turned to some
genuine form of religion is happily beyond dispute, but it is also
unquestionably true that thousands have turned aside to the attractions
of spiritualism. A recent article in the Literary Supplement of the
_Times_ commenced with the statement that "Among the strange, dismaying
things cast up by the tide of war are those traces of primitive
fatalism, primitive magic, and equivocal divination which are within
general knowledge." The writer of the article in question thinks that
as we have taken a huge and lamentable step backwards in civilisation,
we need not be surprised that we should also have receded in the
direction of those primitive instincts to which he calls attention. This
process had, however, begun long before the war.

The late Dr. Ryder, Provost of the Birmingham Oratory, was a very shrewd
observer of public affairs and a very close and dear friend of the
present writer. It must be more than twenty years ago since he remarked
to me that he tho