190 ET. REV. BISHOP J. E. C. WELLDON, T>.D. } ON THE INFLUENCE 



strongly for the faith of Jesus Christ. His addresses to his 

 sons at their Confirmations were, I think, models of a father's 

 Christian piety. He has been himself on his yacht the preacher 

 of Christian sermons. Yet it is he who has debauched and 

 debased the German people, or allowed them to be debauched 

 and debased under his auspices, by the lust of bloodshed and 

 conquest, until they have broken all the laws of God and man, 

 to say nothing of their own recent and solemn pledges, and 

 until there is no crime of which an impartial judge could say 

 that Germany would not commit it, if it offered her the promise 

 or the prospect of victory in the war. Republican France, on 

 the other hand, has been, if not atheistic, yet professedly 

 agnostic and anti-Christian. She has built, or rebuilt, her social 

 life upon a purely secular basis. That the Church is fully as 

 responsible as the State in France for the alienation and the 

 antagonism between them is a lamentable truth. Too long she 

 has fought against the principles of truth, freedom and charity. 

 She has associated the pure faith of Jesus Christ with 

 beliefs and teachings which the honest reason of cultivated 

 humanity rejects. She has stood on the wrong side in the 

 critical hours of moral decision. France will never forget that 

 the Church left the defence of the Calas to Voltaire and the 

 defence of Dreyfus to Zoln. But the sad truth remains that, 

 while France was ostensibly Christian under the monarchy or 

 the Empire, she was warlike, aggressive and immoral, and that 

 under the secular Republic she has been pacific and honourable, 

 in the relations of public life. Whatever may be justly alleged 

 against the condition of private morals in France, it must be 

 surpassed by the statistics of " degenerate Germany," as they 

 are recited in the book of Mr. de Halsalle. 



Again, in regard to the ethics of warfare, Mohammedan 

 Turkey has fought with cleaner hands than Christian Germany. 

 Soldiers who have confronted the Turks at Gallipoli or in 

 Mesopotamia may be tempted to forget the atrocities in 

 Armenia. 



There are many Christians who have prayed and hoped that 

 they might see the day when the great Church of S. Sofia in 

 Constantinople — now a mosque — would be reconsecrated to 

 Christian worship. They have longed to see a Christian 

 Sovereign receiving the sacrament of Christ's body and blood 

 on the very spot where the last of the Roman Emperors 

 received it a few hours before the Sultan Mohammed II., dis- 

 mounting from his horse at the western door of the church, 

 marched to the high altar, and, as he sat upon it, summoned the 



