OK THE WAR ON RELIGIOUS LIFE IN GREAT BRITAIN. 201 



and the Students' Christian Union at Swanwick, have shown 

 how much can be done, without sacrifice of principle, to foster 

 sympathy of spiril and conduct. A new world will be bom 

 after the war. It will be a world in which the duty of the 

 individual to the State will be far more keenly felt than it has 

 been hitherto. The idea that a citizen, although he owes his 

 safety and prosperity in life to the civilized society which is 

 called the State, is entitled to get as much as he can for himself 

 from the State, and to give it as little as he can in return, will 

 have come to seem an anachronism, if not an absurdity. It will 

 be the office of the Church to sanctify the new conception of 

 citizenship. If she brings any message to the nation, it must lie 

 that the claims, whether of the State or of the individual 

 citizen, must be determined by the mind of Jesus Christ. The 

 clergy will need, by the revision of the Prayer Book, and, still 

 more, by some mitigation of the terms of subscription, to be set 

 free from the barriers which now exclude a number of the most 

 religiously minded sons of the Church from Holy Orders. For 

 the influence of the Church upon the nation will be proportion- 

 ate to her success in enlisting the service of the most intellectual 

 and the most spiritual Churchmen in her ministry. In particular 

 she will be called to define the limits of a just and true socialism. 

 For the war will have done much to abolish social inequalities ; 

 but it will afford no guarantee for the safe rebuilding of society 

 upon anything like a basis of equal opportunity. 



It is possible that the war will, directly or indirectly, affect 

 the educational problem. For as the unity of the nation becomes 

 more and more a commanding ideal, it will be felt that whatever 

 forces tend to segregate children, during their most impressionable 

 years, in different theological or ecclesiastical camps are more 

 or less hostile to the true interest of the State. The State cannot, 

 indeed, justly require its citizens to ignore their theological 

 differences, but it may require them not to ignore their national 

 unity. For it is not, and cannot be, conducive to the strength 

 and safety of the State that any one body of citizens should be 

 taught and trained to regard other bodies, on religious grounds, 

 with any sentiment but respect and sympathy. 



But whatever the issue of the educational problem may be, 

 there can be little doubt that in the Church, as in the State, the 

 position of womanhood will be vitally affected by the war. 

 " The Christian religion," as the Comte de Montalembert says, 

 " has been the true country of woman " ; and after the war it 

 will no longer be tolerable that women, who have in all the ages 

 been the loyal and faithful servants of Jesus Christ, should be 



