180 THE RET. CANON JAMES O. HANNAY, M.A., ON 



Institution, wrote to us to know whether the Victoria Institute 

 could give Canon Hannay the opportunity which he desired of 

 addressing a London audience on the religion of our fighting-men 

 and the lessons which it had for the members of the Christian 

 Churches throughout the land. Our Council felt on the one hand 

 that the subject lay outside our statutory programme, but on the 

 other that it was of such importance as to render it our duty as a 

 professedly Christian body to arrange, if it were possible, to give 

 the opportunity^ desired. The Council therefore decided to reply, 

 in efiect, that they felt honoured by the application which Sir James 

 Crichton-Browne had made to them on Canon Hannay's behalf. 

 They have therefore gladly done their best to provide an audience 

 before whom Canon Hannay may feel himself as free to speak as 

 before a Society of which he is himself a member. We who are 

 members of the Institute, on the other hand, meet on this occasion, 

 not so much as an organised body but as a number of Christian 

 men, gathered together for the privilege of listening to the thoughts 

 that have impressed themselves so deeply on a man of Canon 

 Hannay's judgment and distinction, and of learning from his 

 experience. 



The Council has arranged that there shall be no discussion of 

 the subject to-day, as it would be unseemly to have one until the 

 whole of Canon Hannay's message has been delivered. But at the 

 meeting next Monday, January 21, there will be an opportunity for 

 discussion after the conclusion of the second portion of the subject. 



First Address, 



THE title I have given to the two papers I am going to read 

 to you is a bad one. It suggests a discussion of the religion 

 of soldiers. This is a subject which might have been 

 interesting before the w^ar when soldiers were a distinct 

 professional class, like doctors, and might fairly be supposed to 

 have a special religious outlook of their own, a kind of reserved 

 Pisgah from which they got a private \aew of the Church and the 

 promised land. There is no longer a soldier class now. When 

 we talk about the religion of the Army we really mean the religion 

 of the men of the nation. The war has done this for us among 

 other things : it has given us an opportunity, unique I suppose 

 in history, of judging how far the nation has been christianized. 

 Has the Church fulfilled her mission or has she failed ? We 

 ought to be able to give some sort of answer to that question now. 

 Our men have been removed from the surroundings of familiar 

 life. Conventions and habits, the garments of the soul, have been 



