184 THE REV. CANON JAMES O. HANNAY^ M.A., ON 



educated the Bavarians and Austrians into the spirit of the 

 Sermon on the Mount. 



What we have arrived at is not an indictment of this creed or 

 that, or even of creeds in general, certainly not a conviction that 

 one kind of organization or system of discipline is superior to 

 another ; but a feeling, vague and puzzled but real, that 

 Christianity as presented to the world by the various, and some- 

 what quarrelsome, successors of the Apostles, has failed us. 

 Religion ought, so we feel, to have given strength and comfort 

 to a nation of mourners. But very many of the mourners are 

 without clear hope to ease their heartache. It ought to have 

 given calm to the anxious. Too often they get through the days 

 with no better help than a stoic setting of the teeth, wondering 

 if the passing of another month of it will leave them sane. 

 Religion, so we feel, ought to have made Crusaders of our men. 

 It seems to have done no such thing. Never was there a greater 

 contrast than between " Tommy,'' blasphemous and cheerful, 

 and the knights of Mallory's chivalry at prayers before battle 

 in a forest hermit's chapel. Religion, above all, should have made 

 plain to the general conscience the distinction between right and 

 wrong, the rights and wrongs of the war, rights and wrongs in 

 the conduct of it. Christendom is sharply divided on these 

 ethical questions. No voice has spoken with the authority which 

 compels and wins. 



This is what has come home to the mind of the thinking man. 

 The man who does not think reaches much the same position, 



" The Padre ! He's a good sport, and he don't preach too long. 

 But what I say is, if there's one for me it'll hit me and I don't 

 see that a man's religion makes much odds when there's high 

 explosives knocking around. Not that I'm against religion, 

 mind you, I'm not. Only I'm not what you'd call a religious 

 man, not in a regular way." 



Is the mind of his wife at home very different ? 

 " Parson, he talks about the sacrament of the altar and that's 

 all right. Only I never had much time for sacraments and such, 

 what with having a man to do for and the children coming one 

 after the other so quick. And now Bert's gone — on the Somme it 

 was — and it won't be easy to manage for the children, let alone 

 sacraments ; though I do try to keep Maud and Alf regular at 

 Sunday School and they was all baptized proper in church, even 

 young Bert, what was born a week after I got the news about his 

 father." 



