only fully
appreciated when we realise that it depends for its value on the
contrast between a man whose business is the comedy of grimace and
one who is concerned with very serious things. That in itself is a
popular judgment. Religion is a solemn business, and the church
stands against the picture house in sharp contrast; the resemblance
between chaplain and Chaplin being no more than an accident of sound.

There are other stories--not "best sellers," but with a respectable
circulation--which throw more light on the way the padre is regarded.
For instance, a certain fledgling curate was sent to visit a
detention camp. He returned to his senior officer and gave a glowing
account of his reception. The prisoners, no hardened scoundrels as he
supposed, had gathered round him, had listened eagerly while he read
and expounded a chapter of St. John's Gospel, had shown every sign of
pious penitence. Thrusting his hand in his pocket while relating his
experience, this poor man found that his cigarette case, his pipe,
his tobacco pouch, his knife, his pencil, and some loose change had
been taken from him while he discoursed on the Gospel of St. John.

I like to think that men will tell a story like that about their
clergy. The padre, an ideal figure, who is the hero of it, will fail
to win respect perhaps. He will, if he preserve his innocence, win
love. There will come a day when even those prisoners will----. See
Book I of _Les Miserables_ and the Gospel generally.

A chaplain, this time no mere boy, but a senior man of great
experience, was called on to hold a service for a battalion which was
to go next day into the firing-line. This particular battalion was
fresh from England and had never been under fire. It wanted a
religious service. The chaplain preached to it on tithes considered
as a divine institution.

I am sure that story is not true. It cannot be. No human being is
capable of so grotesque an action. But consider the fact that such a
story has been invented and is told. It seems that men--in this case
hungry sheep who look up--actually find that the sermons preached to
them have no conceivable connection with reality. About to die, they
ask for words of life--they are given disquisitions on tithes.

"Well, sir"--I have had this said to me a hundred times--"I am not a
religious man." If religion is really presented to the ordinary man
as "tithes," or for that matter as a "scheme of salvation," or "sound
churc