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THE WAR AND RELIGION
THE WAR AND RELIGION
It was not until I had had a little correspondence with the Secretaries that I decided upon the subject for my address as "The War and Religion." I was very anxious not in the slightest degree to violate any canon expressed or unexpressed with regard to the subject of these addresses, and I think I can assure any in this audience who may have their doubts upon this matter that they will leave the hall without having their consciences offended in the slightest degree, even if they may profoundly disagree with the conclusions to which I may come. And I am encouraged in saying this by a little incident which occurs every year. I am Visitor of Queen's College in Harley Street, founded entirely by the influence of Frederick Denison Maurice, and it is my pleasant duty to give the girl members of it an annual address. My subject, at their special request, is always Religion; and although quite a large proportion are Jewish girls, I find that they look upon me in after life as quite as much their friend as the others, and come to me in their troubles, and they prefer that I shall speak to them out of the deepest convictions of my heart, rather than offer them some trite and colourless observations which mean nothing.
After all, there is great truth in the proverb that "the shoemaker should stick to his last," and it cannot be entirely without purpose that apparently about once in five years an ecclesiastic is brought on to the scene here in his plain and sober raiment amid the glittering galaxy of Generals and actors and scientists and other distinguished men who in other years fill this distinguished office. I have this summer had the high privilege of visiting every battleship, battle cruiser, and most of the smaller ships of the Grand Fleet of Great Britain, and the thousands of sailors I addressed instantly caught the idea that of course I came to represent "Religion." I told an East-End story which appealed at once to the lower deck, so many of whom come from places like Bethnal Green, Poplar, Stepney, and similar localities at Portsmouth and Chatham. A rather shy East-End curate, on knocking at a door, heard a voice from the wash-tub at the back ask in a shrill voice, "Well, Sally, who is it?" and was rather depressed to hear Sally shriek back, "Please, mother, it's religion." But, as I told the sailors, my invariable advice to such a man is this, "Don't be ashamed of representing religion; you were not dressed in a pudding hat and a dog collar and a long black coat to talk about the weather."
I make no apology then for plunging at once into the question of "The War and Religion." It is very striking to notice the different way in which the War has affected different minds with regard to religion. While I have had some poor young widows throw down their Bibles and (for a time) give up their prayers when their husbands were killed, I have found others who in their sorrow have found the comfort and force of religion for the first time; again, on the battlefield, while some express themselves coarsened by the "beastly work," as they express it, which they have to do, others write, "Nothing does any good out here but prayer and trust in God; we all feel it. War is a great Purge." Or again, "There are no atheists out here; there are few of us who do not put up a prayer in the trenches."
1. Let us look then first at the case against religion, and then the special case against the Christian religion as deduced in many minds by the existence of the present War.
(1) I take Religion, as the word implies, to be a TIE which binds us to someone, and I am further assuming that to have any religion worth the name, that "Someone" must be good and just and Righteous.