titude is that of patronage and not of
allegiance. The preacher must be an echo of their voices or they will
have none of him. There must be no preaching of stern duty or of
judgment to come--that is antiquated! When they come to church there
must be the gospel of soothing rest--fulsomely administered in a
saccharine form! Religion must be a narcotic; its end that they may
forget. But even then it must be in the smallest doses and at long
intervals. Thus their places in church are getting emptier and
emptier, and the day of worship saw their cars stand in serried rows by
wayside inns. They have created for themselves a grey, dull world.
'If they do abolish God from their poor bewildered hearts, all or most
{165} of them,' wrote Carlyle, 'then will be seen for some length of
time, perhaps for some centuries, such a world as few are dreaming of.'
And that is what they were fast doing when the thunder of the guns
echoed doom. They were without God and without hope in the world.

To some this may appear an exaggerated and distorted picture. It may
in fact be pointed out that in these last years there was a greater
activity of social service directed towards the help of the poor and
miserable than ever before. That is true. But it is true also that it
was wholly ineffective. It was the activity mainly of ignorance. It
was the throwing of half-crowns to the starving; it was not the giving
of love. They gave charity; they did not give themselves. They
acquiesced with hardly a protest in the social organisation which
inevitably swelled the ranks of the poor and increased the burden of
their misery. By that social organisation many of them profited. They
gave doles; but it was {166} to pacify their poor consciences. They
instituted 'charity organisation societies,' making charity as it were
a deal on the Stock Exchange. If only they had thought of it they
would have instituted a 'Divine Spirit Organisation Society.' The one
would not be more irreverent than the other; for charity is the fruit
of the Spirit. They were to have charity without the Spirit--so they
adopted the methods of the market-place. By means of ledgers and
visitors they were to separate the deserving poor from the undeserving.
Their charity was to be directed towards the deserving. They forgot
that there could not be such a thing as charity for the deserving--only
justice! There was the noise of much machinery, but the noise was made
by