OP THE WAR ON RELIGIOUS LIFE IN GREAT BRITAIN. 195 



future. Such a Mission, whatever may be its exact character, 

 must do some good, and can do no harm. It may be confidently 

 believed, then, to deserve and command the sympathy of the 

 Church as a whole. Xo Churchman is entitled to oppose or 

 disparage it. For of all persons none are so vain as the critics 

 who say that they are eager to see a thing done, so long as it is 

 not done in the only way in which it will or can be done at all. 



But happy as the project of the National Mission is, 

 it might perhaps be made happier. As it is now conceived 

 it must be incomplete. For a Mission which takes place 

 in England, while the war is going on, will clearly not 

 affect the people whose lives and minds have undergone 

 the most revolutionary experience as a consequence of the 

 war. The citizens who have stayed at home, have, no doubt, 

 been moved to new thoughts and new actions by the war ; 

 but they have not been moved in the same degree as the 

 citizens who have seen active service by sea or by land. 

 These citizens the transference from life at home to life abroad 

 has tried in one way, and the re-transference from life abroad to 

 life at home will try them still more keenly in another. If 

 there were ever Christians who, upon returning to their homes, 

 will need an intelligent and sympathetic welcome from the 

 •Church of their fathers, they are the men, who, after two or 

 three years of campaigning under conditions wholly different 

 from any they could have known or dreamt of before, will be 

 called to resume, as far as possible, their old lives in the beaten 

 and rather humdrum tracks of peace. 



There may have been some ambiguity about the scope of the 

 National Mission. But it now seems to be practically defined as 

 a Mission of the Church to Churchmen and Churchwomen. It 

 •does not directly aim at evangelizing the mass of the people 

 who stand outside the regular ministries of the Church. The 

 idea lying behind it is that, if the spiritual awakening of 

 Churchmen and Churchwomen is achieved, it will gradually 

 make itself felt over all, or a large part of, the general secular 

 unchristianized society which encompasses the Church. 



That the more spiritual the Church becomes in the persons 

 and lives of her members, the stronger and deeper will be her 

 influence upon the world, is a proposition which cannot be 

 denied. But a Mission of the Church, if it is directed primarily 

 or exclusively to Church people, is not, perhaps, in the strict 

 sense a Mission at all. It may pass over a country, as over a 

 'City, and, in passing, may scarcely raise a ripple on the general 

 .surface of the country's life. Churchmen and Churchwomen 



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