Church and Nation / The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1914-15

CHURCH AND NATION
THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES FOR 1914-15
DELIVERED AT THE GENERAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK
WILLIAM TEMPLE
HON. CHAPLAIN TO H.M. THE KING
Rector of St. James's, Piccadilly, Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury Formerly Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, and Headmaster of Repton
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1915
COPYRIGHT
TO MY MOTHER WHO FELL ASLEEP AS GOOD FRIDAY DAWNED APRIL 2, 1915
PREFACE
When I received and accepted the invitation to deliver the Paddock Lectures for the season 1914-1915, no one imagined that these years were destined to have the historical significance which they must now possess for all time. I was myself one of those who had allowed concern for social reform, and internal problems generally, to occupy my mind almost to the exclusion of foreign questions. I was prepared to stake a good deal upon what seemed to me the improbability of any outbreak of European war. For all who took this view the events of recent months have involved perhaps a greater re-shaping of fundamental notions than was required by people who had thought probable such a catastrophe as that in which we are now involved. I found it impossible to concentrate my mind upon any subject wholly unconnected with the war, while at the same time it would have been in the last degree unsuitable that in my lectures to American Theological Students I should deliver myself of such views as I had formed concerning the rights and wrongs of the war itself, or the questions at stake in it.
These lectures, therefore, represent an attempt to think out afresh the underlying problems which for a Christian are fundamental in regard not only to this war but to war in general—the place of Nationality in the scheme of Divine Providence and the duty of the Church in regard to the growth of nations.