many of which were soon to be torn by shot and shell. The difference in preaching to men who have seen little of war, and to those who have been in it for two years or more, is very great. I should know the difference if blindfolded. The latter are as hard as nails. Only now and then does the preacher know the thrill of having dug under, or broken through, the wall of adamant in which they shelter that shy and lone ly thing they dare not lose.

February 18. The American camp at Winchester. Preached four times yesterday in a large moving-picture theatre, packed to the doors, and to-day I am as limp as a rag. It was a great experience, talking to such vast companies of my own countrymen - tall, upstanding, wholesome fellows from all over the Union, among them the survivors of the Tuscania, torpedoed off the coast of Ireland. They are in the best of spirits, having lost everything except their courage, as one of them said; every one with a cold, and all togged out in every kind of garb — for those who did not lose their clothing had it ruined by the sea-water.

Spent to-day in Winchester, a city of magnificent memories, about which clusters more of history and of legend than about any city on this island, except London. It is the city of Arthur and the Round Table. Here the Saxon Chronicles were written; here King Alfred lies buried. It is the very birthplace of our civilization. The College and the St. Cross Hospital have about them the air of the Middle Ages. But the Cathedral is the gem of the scene, having the most beautiful nave I have ever seen. Less a cemetery than the Abbey, even an amateur architect can trace the old Norman style, shading into the early English, and then into the later English styles, showing the evolution of the building while enshrining the history of a race. In the south transept I

came upon the tomb of Izaak Walton, and I confess I stood beside it with mingled feelings of reverence and gratitude. Behind the tomb is a noble window, not more than fifty years old, into which the fishing scenes of the New Testament are woven with good effect an appropriate memorial to the gentlest and wisest fisherman who has lived among us since Jesus lodged with the fishermen by the sea.

The afternoon service in the ancient temple touched me deeply, as if those who conducted it were awed by the presence of Eternity, and were carrying for a brief time the Torch of Faith, changing but eternal; a faith natural to humanity, and affirmed and expressed by the ordered beauty around them. Such a building is a symbol of that in man which refuses to be subdued, either by the brute forces of life or by the anarchy in his own heart; an emblem of that eternal resolve to love rather than hate, to hope rather than despair.

March 6. Returning from Edinburgh, I broke my journey at the ancient city of York, where the kindest of welcomes awaited me. Looking out of my hotel window, I saw a music-shop founded in founded in 1768- older than the American Republic. Preached at three o'clock at the Monkgate Methodist Chapel; at five held an institute for ministers; and at seven lectured on Lincoln to a huge audience, Mr. Roundtree, Member of Parliament, presiding. The Lord Mayor presented me with a resolution of welcome, in which the most cordial good-will was expressed for the people of America.

Earlier in the day I was taken to various places of historic interest, including, of course, the beautiful old gray Minster. Also to the grave of John Woolman, the Quaker, a brief biography of whom I had once written. I knew he died while on a mission to England, but I had forgotten that he was buried

in York. Reverently we stood by the grave of that simple man, - daringly radical, but divinely gentle, who was the incarnation of the spirit of Christ, and whose life of love and service, of pity and prayer, made him a kind of sad St. Francis of the new world. York is a stronghold of the Society of Friends the noblest body of organized mysticism on earth. Aye, the war is making men either skeptics or mystics, and wisdom lies, methinks, with the mystics whose faith is symbolized in the beautiful Listening Angel I saw the other day in the Southwell Cathedral.

March 12.-The Prime Minister spoke to the Free Church Council in the City Temple to-day, and it was an astonishing performance, as much for its wizardry of eloquence as for its moral camouflage. For weeks he has been under a barrage of criticism, as he always is when things do not go right; and the audience was manifestly unsympathetic, if not hostile. As no one knew what would happen, it was arranged that he should enter the pulpit during the singing of a hymn.

his

As soon as he rose to speak, stout body balanced on tiny, dwarflike legs, the hecklers began a machine-gun fire of questions, and it looked as if we were in for a war of wits. The English heckler is a joy. He does not deal in slang phrases, but aims his dart straight at the target. In ten minutes the Prime Minister had his audience standing and throwing up their hats. It was pure magic. I felt the force of it. But after it was over and I had time to think it through, I found that he had said almost nothing. On the question of Bread or Beer he turned a clever rhe torical trick, and nothing else. The Evening Star says that the Prime Minister is not a statesman at all, but a stuntsman; and one is half inclined to agree with it. Certainly his genius just now seems to consist in his agility in

finding a way out of one tight corner into another, following a zigzag course. An enigmatic and elusive personality, - ruled by intuitions rather than by principles, - if he never leaves me with a sense of sincerity, he at least gives me a conservative thrill. Despite his critics the record of his actual achievements is colossal, and I know of no other personality in this kingdom that could take his place. Like Roosevelt, he knows how to dramatize what he does, making himself the hero of the story; and it is so skillfully done that few see that the hero is also the showman.

March 25. At the Thursday-noon service on the 21st, we had news that a great battle had begun, but we little dreamed what turn it would take. Instead of the long-expected Allied advance, it was a gigantic enemy drive, which seems to be sweeping everything before it. Wave after wave of the enemy hosts beat upon the Allied lines, until they first bent and then broke; the British and French armies may be sundered and the Channel ports captured. All internal dissension is hushed in the presence of the common danger, and one sees once more the real quality of the British character, its quiet courage shining most brightly when the sky is lowering.

London is tongued-tied; people look at each other and understand. If there is any panic, it is among the politicians, not among the people. Resolute, allsuffering, unconquerably cheery, men brace themselves to face the worstit is magnificent! There was no room for the people in the City Temple yesterday; the call to prayer comes not half so imperatively from the pulpit as from the human heart in its intolerable anxiety and sorrow. These are days when men gather up their final reasons for holding on in the battle of life, seeking the ultimate solace of the Eternal.

What days to read the Bible! Itself

a book of battles, its simple words find new interpretation in the awful exegesis of events. Many a Psalm for the day might have been written for the day; the leaping up of fires through the crust of the earth makes them luminous. As we enter the depths, those strange songs follow us. Doubt, elation, anger, and even hate are there perfectly expressed. To-day, as of old, the people imagine a vain thing; the earth trembles; the honor of God is threatened. The Apocalypse, too, has a new force, color, and beauty, as we regard it in the light of burning cities. Its pictures are like the work of some mighty artist on a vast, cloudy canvas, dipping his brush in earthquake and eclipse and the shadows of the bottomless pit. Once more we see the Four Horses riding over the earth. The challenge of the Book of Job is taken up again; Jeremiah is justified in his sorrow; and the Suffering Servant of God is a living figure in this new crucifixion of humanity.

And the Gospels! Never has there been so complete a vindication of the ethics of Jesus. If, the Facts now say, you take the anti-Christ point of view, this is what it means. Repent, or the Kingdom of Hell will swallow you up! Thus the Galilean triumphs, in the terror of denying his words, no less than in the blessing of obeying them: "Thou hast the words of eternal life.'

March 31. Easter Day! Dr. Rendel Harris tells how, in the musty pages of the Journal of a learned society, he came upon a revealing fact. It was there recorded that, on a morning in May, 1797, which broke calmly after a stormy night, it was possible to see from the cliffs of Folkestone even the color of the cottages on the French mainland. In the spiritual world, also, there is the record of such a day of clear tranquillity, when the fierce night of the Passion had passed, and the day of the Resurrection dawned white and serene. On

that Day, and until the Ascension, when the Great Adventurer was welcomed home, the Unseen World was known to be near, homelike, and real.

To-day is the anniversary of that Day of Divine Lucidity, when men - plain, ordinary men like ourselves— saw through the shadows into the life of things. Softly, benignly, the Day of Eternal Life dawns upon a world red with war and billowed with the graves of those who seem doubly dead, because they died so young. Never did this blessed day shine with deeper meaning; never was its great Arch of Promise so thronged with hurrying feet. Blessed Day! When its bells have fallen into silence, and its lilies have faded into dust, pray God there may live in our hearts the promise that, after the winter of war, there shall be a springtime of peace and good-will!

When one thinks of the number of the fallen, and the heartache that follows the evening sun around the world, it is not strange that many seek communication, as well as communion, with the dead-longing to see even in a filmy vapor the outlines of forms familiar and dear. The pathos of it is heartbreaking! Even when one is sure that such use of what are called psychical faculties is a retrogression, since genius is the only medium through which, so far, Heaven has made any spiritual revelation to mankind, it is none the less hard to rebuke it.

Some think Spiritualism may become a new religion, with Sir Oliver Lodge as its prophet and Sir Conan Doyle as its evangelist. No matter; it has done good, and in a way too easily overlooked. Nearly all of us grew up with a definite picture in our minds of a city with streets of gold and gates of pearl; but that picture has faded. Time and criticism have emptied it of actuality. Since then, the walls of the universe have been pushed back into infinity,

and the old scenery of faith has grown dim. Admit that its imagery was crude; it did help the imagination, upon which both faith and hope lean more heavily than we are aware. Now that the old picture has vanished, the unseen world is for many only a bare, blank infinity, soundless and colorless. These new seekers after truth have at least helped to humanize it once more, touching it with light and color and laughter; and that is a real service, both to faith and to the affections. Meanwhile, not a few are making discoveries in another and better way, as witness this letter:

DEAR MINISTER,

Early in the war I lost my husband, and I was mad with grief. I had the children to bring up and no one to help me, so I just raged against God for taking my husband from my side and yet calling Himself good. Someone told me that God could be to me all that my husband was and more. And so I got into the way of defying God in my heart. 'Now and here,' I used to say, 'this is what I want and God can't give it to me.' After a while I came, somehow, to feel that God liked the honesty of it; liked this downright telling Him all my needs, though I had no belief that He could help me. One day I had gone into the garden to gather some flowers, and suddenly I knew that my husband was there with me just himself, only braver and stronger than he had ever been. I do not know how I knew; but I knew. There was no need of a medium, for I had found God myself, and, finding Him, I had found my husband too.

April 15.- No spring drive is equal to the drive of spring itself, when April comes marching down the world. Kew Garden is like a bit of paradise, and neither war nor woe can mar its glory. How the English love flowers! Even in the slums of London-which are among the most dismal and God-forsaken spots on earth one sees in the windows tiny pots of flowers, adding a touch of color to the drab and dingy scene. At the front, in dugouts, one finds old

--

tin cans full of flowers, gathered from no one knows where. Each English home is walled in for privacy, unlike our American way, and each has its own garden of flowers, like a little Eden. One of the first things an Englishman shows his guest is the garden, where the family spend much of their time in summer. April sends everybody digging in the garden.

And such bird-song! The day begins with a concert, and there is an anthem or a solo at any hour. They sing as if the heart of the world were a mystic, unfathomable joy; and even a pessimist like Thomas Hardy wondered what se cret the 'Darkling Thrush' knew that he did not know; and, further, what right he had to sing in such a world as this. After listening to the birds, one cannot despair of man, seeing Nature at the task of endlessly renewing her life. His war, his statecraft, his science, may be follies or sins; but his life is only budding even yet, and the flower is yet to be. So one feels in April, with a lilac beneath the window.

April 20. Housekeeping in England, for an American woman, is a trying enough experience at any time; but it is doubly so in war-time when food and fuel conditions are so bad. Until the rationing went into effect, it was a problem to get anything to eat, as the shops would not take new customers. Even now the bread tastes as if it had been made out of sawdust; and butter being almost an unknown quality, the margarine, like the sins of the King, in Hamlet, smells to heaven. Shopping is an adventure. Literally one has to deal, not only with 'the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker,' but with the fish-market, the greengrocer, the dry grocer, - everything at a different place, so it takes time and heroic patience, and even then one often comes home empty-handed. As a last resort, we fall back on eggs and peanuts,

monkey-nuts, the English call them, to both of which I take off my hat. It is impossible for one person to keep an English house clean it is so illarranged, and cluttered up with bric-àbrac. There are none of the American appliances for saving labor-no brooms; and the housemaid must get down on her knees, with a dustpan and handbrush, to sweep the room. There is enough brass in the house to keep one able-bodied person busy polishing it. Arnold Bennett has more than one passage of concentrated indignation about the time and energy spent in polishing brass in English houses. It is almost a profession. One compensation is the soft-voiced, well-trained English servants, and often even they are either thievish or sluttish.

April 25. Twice I have heard Bernard Shaw lecture recently, and have not yet recovered from the shock and surprise of meeting him. My idea of Shaw was a man alert, aggressive, selfcentred, vastly conceited, craving publicity, laying claim to an omniscience that would astonish most deities. That is to say, a literary acrobat, standing on his head to attract attention, or walking the tight-rope in the top of the tent. But that Shaw is a myth, a legend, a pose. The real Shaw is no such man. Instead, he is physically finicky, almost old-maidish, not only shy and embarrassed off the platform, but awkward, blushing like a schoolgirl when you meet him. He is gentle, modest, generous, full of quick wisdom, but suggesting lavender, and China tea served in dainty old-world cups. The most garrulous man in Europe before the war, he was smitten dumb by the insanity of it, having no word of comfort or command. Unlike Romain Rolland, he could not even frame a bitter condemnation of it. So, after one or two feeble protests, he went back into his drawing-room, pulled the blinds down,

and drank China tea out of his dainty cups, leaving the world to stew in its own juice. Who can describe the fineness, the fatuousness, the futility of him! Whether prophet or harlequin, he has shot his bolt and missed the mark. Of course, the artist will live on in his work - most vividly, perhaps, in his sham-shattering wit.

April 30. Few Americans realize what the Throne and the Royal Family mean in the life of the British people. Our idea of the King is colored by our republican preconceptions, to say nothing of our prejudices-not knowing that England is in many ways more democratic than America. The other day, in the City Temple, an American minister spoke of the King as 'an animated flag,' little dreaming of the thing of which he is a symbol and the profound affection in which he is held. There is something spiritual in this devotion to the King, something mystical, and the Empire would hardly hold together without it. The Royal Family is really an exaltation of the Home, which is ever the centre of British patriotism. Never, in their true hours, do the English people brag of Britain as a worldpower, actual or potential. It is always the home and the hearth, — now to be defended, and nowhere is the home more sacred and tender. Of every Briton we may say, as Bunyan said of Greatheart: 'But that which put glory of grace into all that he did was that he did it for pure love of his Country.' This sentiment finds incarnation in the Royal Family, in whom the Home rises above party and is untouched by the gusts of passion.

"Their gracious Majesties' is a phrase which exactly describes the reigning King and Queen, though neither can be said to possess, in the same measure, that mysterious quality so difficult to define which, in King Edward and Queen Alexandra, appealed so strongly to the