OF THE WAR ON RELIGIOUS LIFE IN GREAT BRITAIN. 197 



people. Rather they think that the preaching of self-sacrifice, 

 so far from being necessarily a motive to self-sacrificing action, 

 may sometimes be treated as a substitute for it. The aristocracy 

 has rehabilitated itself in the eyes of the people by the spirit in 

 which so many of its members have laid down their lives for 

 the country and the empire. The demagogues who were wont to 

 declaim against the House of Lords, and against all special 

 privilege or dignity, have been practically reduced to silence 

 by the spectacle of nearly a hundred heirs to titles, and 

 many hundreds of youths before whom lay wealth, pleasure and 

 luxury in the world, throwing their lives away with a reckless 

 magnanimity in the crisis of the national history. These young 

 heroes have not preached self-sacrifice, but they have practised 

 it. It is gravely asked whether the leaders of the Church, 

 when they call the nation to self-sacrifice, are themselves 

 prepared, so far as they are able, to practise it. 



The Church of England has, indeed, produced an admirable 

 type of character among her clergy. They have upon the whole 

 been, in the past, men wise, upright, moderate, sympathetic and 

 devout. Their homes have been the nurseries of many gifts 

 and graces which have distinguished the highest and noblest 

 Englishmen and Englishwomen. But among the clergy the 

 element of romance has not always been visible. They have 

 been, or have been thought to be, too much like good average 

 Christian laymen. The Church of Rome, by her demand of 

 clerical celibacy, has imposed upon all her clergy a definite, 

 unmistakable self-restraint. The Xonconformist, or Free, 

 Churches, without making the same official demand, have come 

 to expect that their ministers will be teetotallers. I am far 

 from saying that it is wise to impose the law of celibacy upon 

 a great body of men at an early period in their lives, or that it 

 is always wrong to drink a glass of wine or beer. But the 

 principle that the clerical life should be, in some respects, 

 different from the secular, and lifted above the secular, is 

 essentially sound ; and it has, perhaps, been less widely 

 recognized in the Church of England than it ought to be. The 

 ISTational Mission affords the opportunity, as it enforces the 

 responsibility, of justifying the teaching which is given from 

 the pulpits by the example of the clergy who give it. If the 

 Mission fails, it will fail because the English-speaking world is 

 in some degree sensible of a contrast between the language 

 and the conduct which precede or accompany the Mission. 



It may be not unfairly argued that the chief religious need of 

 the present day is sympathy between the Church and the 



