I send out this little and fragmentary book with the consciousness that it
calls for apology. I have had to write it hastily during a short period of
leave. Yet it touches upon great subjects which deserve the reverence of
leisurely writing. Ought I not, then, to have waited for the leisure of
days after the war? I think not. Such days may never come. And, in any
case, _now_ is the time for the Church to think intently about the war and
its issues, and to learn from them. The Church is far more than a
department of 'the services,' the resources of which it is convenient to
mobilise as so much more munition of war. She is the perpetual protagonist
in the world of the Kingdom of God. War for her, if for nobody else,
should be an apocalypse, that is, a vision of realities for which at all
times she is bound to fight, of which, nevertheless, she is apt to lose
sight during the engrossments of peace. It is as lit up by the cruel light
of war's conflagrations that the things concerning the Kingdom must be
seized anew. If anybody has thoughts which he feels he must share with
others, he should not postpone doing so. He should communicate his
thoughts to others in order that he may learn from their comments and
criticism. I can claim, whilst asking pardon for whatever may offend in
them, that the thoughts represented by the following pages have not been
come by hastily, but have been growing in my mind during the long months
at the front since the beginning of the war. They have, so to say, been
hammered out as metal upon the anvil of war.
They are thoughts about religion. Nothing is so important as religion;
nothing is more potent than true ideas in religion. Deep fountains of real
religion--of simple and unself-prizing faith--have been unsealed by the
convulsion of war. Yet this religion is weak in ideas, and some of the
ideas with which it is bound up are wrong ideas. Men of our race are very
sure that it matters more what a man is than what he thinks. British
religion is deep and rich, but it is, characteristically, deeper and
richer in what it is than in what it knows itself to be. It sorely needs
a mind of strong and compelling conviction. If these pages were to help
ever so few readers towards being possessed anew of the truth of the
Gospel of God in Christ, their appearance would be justified.
I have written, perhaps, as one who dreads saying 'Peace, where there is
no peace.' I would rather err on the side of emphasising criticism and
difficulty than the other way. There is, indeed, little room for
complacency in a Christian, still less in an English Churchman, at the
front. Yet in 'padres' hope and expectation should predominate, and these
as based less upon results achieved than upon the mutual understanding,
respect, and indeed affection which increasingly unite them to the men
whom they would serve. And in them, too, if they are 'C. of E.,' there
should be growing, along with an unevasive discontent, a sanguine loyalty
to their mother Church. For all that she now means so little to so many
she will yet win a more than nominal allegiance from many of her wandering
children. For there is in her, beneath the surface of her sluggish
confusion, a living heart and candid mind, upon which is being written
afresh the good news in Christ. She is being vivified, as perhaps no other
part of Christendom, into readiness for the future.