he table as I write a modest periodical called
THE NORTHERN BRITISH ISRAEL REVIEW, illustrated with portraits of
various clergymen of the Church of England, and of ladies and gentlemen
who belong to the little school of thought which this magazine
represents; it is, I should judge, a sub-sect entirely within the
Established Church of England, that is to say within the Anglican
communion of the Trinitarian Christians. It contains among other papers
a very entertaining summary by a gentleman entitled--I cite the unusual
title-page of the periodical--"Landseer Mackenzie, Esq.," of the views
of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Obadiah upon the Kaiser William. They are
distinctly hostile views. Mr. Landseer Mackenzie discourses not only
upon these anticipatory condemnations but also upon the relations of the
weather to this war. He is convinced quite simply and honestly that God
has been persistently rigging the weather against the Germans. He points
out that the absence of mist on the North Sea was of great help to the
British in the autumn of 1914, and declares that it was the wet state of
the country that really held up the Germans in Flanders in the winter
of 1914-15. He ignores the part played by the weather in delaying the
relief of Kut-el-Amara, and he has not thought of the difficult question
why the Deity, having once decided upon intervention, did not, instead
of this comparatively trivial meteorological assistance, adopt the
more effective course of, for example, exploding or spoiling the German
stores of ammunition by some simple atomic miracle, or misdirecting
their gunfire by a sudden local modification of the laws of refraction
or gravitation.

Since these views of God come from Anglican vicarages I can only
conclude that this kind of belief is quite orthodox and permissible in
the established church, and that I am charging orthodox Christianity
here with nothing that has ever been officially repudiated. I find
indeed the essential assumptions of Mr. Landseer Mackenzie repeated in
endless official Christian utterances on the part of German and British
and Russian divines. The Bishop of Chelmsford, for example, has recently
ascribed our difficulties in the war to our impatience with long
sermons--among other similar causes. Such Christians are manifestly
convinced that God can be invoked by ritual--for example by special
days of national prayer or an increased observance of Sunday--or made
malignant by neglect or levity. I