THE CHURCH AND THE ARMY. 



185 



Most interesting of all is the way the confused puzzledness 

 has laid hold on the minds of the recognized, so to speak 

 ojfficial, representatives of religion, the clergy and the pious laity. 

 Even before the war these were not wholly satisfied with the 

 Church's position. There were demands on the one hand for a 

 restatement of the Christian dogmas, some kind of fresh inter- 

 pretation of ancient formularies which would render them 

 intelligible to the mind of the world of to-day. There were com- 

 plaints that the Church was not getting hold of the working man — 

 a sufficiently obvious fact — and clamorous suggestions that she 

 should fling herself into the battle for social reform, or devote 

 more energy to definite church teaching, or appeal to the senses 

 of the half-educated with more striking and elaborate ritual. 

 But the earnest and hardworking clergyman was not much 

 affected by the voices of prophets and reformers. His hands 

 were very full, his time completely occupied, with work which had 

 to be done, organizations to be founded or kept going. He 

 worked and he had not time to think. It is just this man, the 

 essential backbone of the Church, whom the war has affected 

 the most. He served at home or he made his way out to France 

 as a Chaplain to the Forces for a year or so. At once he found 

 himself "up against it.'' He was plunged into strange, deep 

 waters. He struggled, spluttered, splashed, grasped at one after 

 another of the various life-saving devices on which he had always 

 relied, which were still floating about round him, but seemed to 

 have lost their power to support. With an effort he squeezed 

 the water out of his eyes and looked up. The sun was there 

 in the sky as it always had been. He blinked at it and wondered. 



It was necessary for the parson, priest, padre, whatever he 

 chose to call himself, to arrive at some understanding of his 

 experience ; far more necessary for him than for anyone else. 

 His self-respect and his peace of mind, the future of the Church 

 he belonged to, the very existence in him of the faith he was 

 sworn to defend, depended on his reaching an explanation of the 

 facts which pressed on him. 



Out of this confused welter, this bewildering breaking up of 

 what once seemed firm and strong, two things, as it seems to me, 

 emerge clear and unmistakable. From these two, as foundations, 

 we must start whatever building up or rebuilding there is to be 

 done of the Church's life after the war. The first is this : the 

 average Englishman, the man of the workshop of yesterday, of 

 the trenches of to-day, wants religion. He has not said, with 



