ne appointment."
Strange as the conviction seems, it is sure that the conviction of
conscience in the southern army that it was right in waging war against
the government of the country was as clear as the conviction, on the
other side, of the duty of defending the government. The southern
regiments, like the northern, were sent forth with prayer and
benediction, and their camps, as well as those of their adversaries,
were often the seats of earnest religious life.[348:1]

At the South the entire able-bodied population was soon called into
military service, so that almost the whole church was in the army. At
the North the churches at home hardly seemed diminished by the myriads
sent to the field. It was amazing to see the charities and missions of
the churches sustained with almost undiminished supplies, while the
great enterprises of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions were set on
foot and magnificently carried forward, for the physical, social, and
spiritual good of the soldiers. Never was the gift of giving so
abundantly bestowed on the church as in these stormy times. There was a
feverish eagerness of life in all ways; if there was a too eager haste
to make money among those that could be spared for business, there was a
generous readiness in bestowing it. The little faith that expected to
cancel and retrench, especially in foreign missions, in which it took
sometimes three dollars in the collection to put one dollar into the
work, was rebuked by the rising of the church to the height of the
exigency.

One religious lesson that was learned as never before, on both sides of
the conflict, was the lesson of Christian fellowship as against the
prevailing folly of sectarian divisions, emulations, and jealousies.
There were great drawings in this direction in the early days of the
war, when men of the most unlike antecedents and associations gathered
on the same platform, intent on the same work, and mutual aversions and
partisan antagonisms melted away in the fervent heat of a common
religious patriotism. But the lesson which was commended at home was
enforced in the camp and the regiment by constraint of circumstances.
The army chaplain, however one-sided he might have been in his parish,
had to be on all sides with his kindly sympathy as soon as he joined his
regiment. He learned in a right apostolic sense to become all things to
all men, and, returning home, he did not forget the lesson. The delight
of a fellowsh