204 THE RE7. CANON JAMES 0. HANNAY, M.A., ON 



with an awe-struck face : " Sir, this is a miracle ! " As he told me 

 this, with obvious sincerity, I felt that, if there was this one gallant 

 man who felt that there was a power in prayer, you could assuredly 

 multiply him by thousands in the English Army. Call them 

 Church of England, call them Nonconformists, call them Jews, it 

 is these men who are the salt of the earth. It is these men who are 

 our hope for the future of the English-speaking race. 



Mr. Joseph Graham : I do not think I can be contradicted when 

 I say that the great majority of the men know nothing of faith in 

 a Supreme Being. An incident came to my notice the other day 

 direct from the Front. There were some men in a trench, and a 

 shell came over and narrowly missed them, landing just on the 

 other side. One of the men said to his fellow : " How do you 

 account for that ? How do you account for the number of shells 

 which have gone over us — some to the right and some to the left, 

 and just missed us ? " The other man said : " That was Provi- 

 dence." The other concealed his real notion for a moment, and 

 then asked his fellow : " What is Providence ? " and the man 

 wriggled and twisted and tried to explain the point in various ways, 

 but the one thing he would not do was to say it was God. It was 

 Providence. So after this man had argued with him for a time, 

 he said : " Oh I see, you mean it is God." The man agreed, and 

 not only that, but he was grateful to the other for bringing the thing 

 to a point ; and once the ice was broken the two talked quite easily 

 on the subject. That illustrates the point. Where the Church has 

 failed has been that she has not brought her children up in familiarity 

 with the idea of Christ and Christ's great redemptive work. They 

 have not made Christ a personal friend. 



Among other speakers were Rev. John Tuckwell, Colonel Alves, 

 and Mr. Sidney Collett. 



Lecturer's Reply. 



In his reply, Canon Hannay said : I thank you very much for 

 the kind way in which you have received my paper, and in which 

 many of you have criticised some of its shortcomings. I should 

 like to say something to those who have discussed it, but my time is 

 very short, as I have to catch a train to Ireland. I want to say to 

 Dr. Schofield, that the point to which he drew special attention is 



