190 THE REV. CANON JAMES O. HANNAY, M.A., ON 



dispersing. Before the tumultuous applause of the last comic 

 song had died away, the chairman gave out a hymn. He meant 

 well. He had the men there and felt that if he could only keep 

 them some good might be done. As a matter of fact the feeling 

 aroused was one of resentment against unfair treatment. And 

 the attendance at prayers depends very largely on the state of 

 the war at the moment. My experience is of base camps, but 

 the same thing is true at the front. If things are quiet and 

 there is little fighting going on most men become indifferent 

 to religious services. During a push, when great things are 

 happening, men will pray with extreme earnestness for the 

 things they want, for courage, for victory, for the safety of 

 themselves and their friends, for help for the wounded, 

 for comfort for those at home, for peace. I shall never forget 

 the prayers every evening during the early days of the Somme 

 push. I shall not attempt to describe to you — I could not do 

 it if I did attempt it — the long hut crowded with anxious men, 

 the tense silence, the amen which meant assent of heart and mind. 

 That experience was proof enough for me that the bulk of our 

 men are neither materialists nor indifferent to rehgion. The 

 very fact that the religious spirit is most evident in times of stress 

 seems another proof of its reality. It is in hours of extreme trial, 

 of high hope and deadly fear, that it is most clearly seen where a 

 man's trust is indeed placed. 



There are other evidences which I might offer you of the 

 existence of the religious spirit in our men, not in the confessedly 

 religious men only, the regular communicant, the instructed 

 churchman, but in the mass of ordinary men. But this would 

 only be the same kind of evidence which I have already given 

 you, personal, therefore of a subjective kind, unconvincing to 

 anyone who wants figures or tangible facts. 



There remains one question which I must touch before I sit 

 down. How far is this purely natural religion ? How 

 far has the Church had a share in the making of it ? It is an 

 extraordinarily difficult question to answer. Indeed, to answer 

 it at all some estimate would have to be made of the general 

 tendency of the teaching of the Church for a long time back, a 

 century or two, perhaps. We should have to find out, not what 

 the formularies and creeds are, but where the emphasis of the 

 teaching has faUen ; what it is that the average parish priest 

 has, by example, private exhortation, and preaching, actually 

 taught his flock. We should then, looking at our men, see how 



