cognize as the cause of the calamities
which have befallen us. It is not only the existence of war that is
rousing the conscience. War is seen to be but a symptom, a horrible
outbreak of malignant forces, which we have nurtured and harboured in
times of peace. These forces permeate the very structure of society. A
new and fierce light beats on our slums, our industrialism, on the old
divisions of class and quality, on the standards of comfort and success.
Poverty, sickness, and child mortality--the whole hideous war of Mammon
through which millions of our fellow-creatures are condemned to the
perpetual service of Want--can no longer conveniently be left outside
the operations of our religious consciousness.

One thing is certain: we can no longer be satisfied with a religion
which pays lip-service to God, and offers propitiating incense to His
wrath, whilst it ignores the misery and the suffering of those who have
no reason to offer thanksgiving. Religious profession and religious
action will have to be unified. The sense of social responsibility is
slowly but surely taking the place of the anxiety to assure one's own
salvation. Some churches are empty, dead; they have no message for the
people, no vision wherewith to inspire the young. They might with
advantage close, and their clergy be employed upon some useful national
service. Ritual and incantations are doubtless useful aids to religious
worship and the necessary quietude of mind, but they are losing their
hold over souls to whom religious life has become a matter of social
service. These are of the order spoken of by Ernest Crosby:

None could tell me where my soul might be.
I searched for God, but God eluded me.
I sought my brother out--and found all three.

The number of "unbelievers" is growing. There are certain doctrines
which we cannot believe because they violate our reason, or our sense of
justice and fair play. Centuries ago it may have been possible to
believe them: that is no concern of ours. To each age its own mind and
its own enlightenment. What is more disquieting to the rulers of
orthodoxy is that we do not care, that we cannot believe in certain
doctrines. Doctrines are at a discount just now. The Church may quarrel
over Kikuyu, or the Apostolic Succession, or the Virgin Birth, or marvel
at the new possibility of a canon of the Church of England preaching a
sermon in the City Temple. We feel that it is infinitely more important
that a fe