announced that I had accepted the invitation to the City Temple, I received a long cablegram from Mr. Bottomley, suggesting that I write for his paper, John Bull, and telling of his admiration for Dr. Parker. Unfortunately, as I did not choose to be introduced to England through such a medium, I could not accept his invitation. Often - especially after my protest against the increase of brewery supplies — he wrote cruel things about me. It did not matter; I should have been much more unhappy if he had written in my praise. He is the captain of the most dangerous and disintegrating elements in Britain, — the mob as distinct from democracy, the crowded public-house, the cheap music-hall, and the nether side of the sporting world. With facile and copious emotions, he champions the cause of the poor, with ready tears for ruined girls preferably if the story of their ruin will smack a little smuttily in his paper. Since the Armistice, his office has been the poison-factory and centre of antiAmerican propaganda, and in playing upon the fears and hates and prejudices of people, he is a master. Alas, we are only too familiar with his type on this side of the sea.)

January 4, 1919. Joined a group to-day noon, to discuss the problem of Christian union, by which they seemed to mean Church union a very different thing. But it was only talk. Men are not ready for it, and the time is not ripe. Nor can it be hastened, as my friend the Bishop of Manchester thought when he proposed some spectacular dramatization of the Will to Fellowship during the war. Still less will it come by erasing all historical loyalties in one indistinguishable blue of ambiguity. If it is artificial, it will be superficial. It must come spiritually and spontaneously, else it will be a union, not of the Church, but of the churchyard. Dicker and deal suggest a horse-trade. No, our fathers parted in passion; in passion we must come together. It must be a union, not of compromise, but of comprehension. If all the churches were made one to-day, what difference would it make?

Little, if any. Something deeper and more drastic is needed. As the Elizabethan Renaissance was moralized by the advent of Puritanism, and the reaction from the French Revolution was followed by the Evangelical Revival, so, by a like rhythm, the new age into which we are entering will be quickened, in some unpredictable way, by a renewal of religion. Then, perhaps, on a tide of new life, we may be drawn together in some form of union. In this country no union is possible with a State Church, unless the Free Churches are willing to turn the faces of their leaders to the wall. So far from being a national church, the Anglican communion is only a tiny sect on one end of the island. Its claim to a monopoly of apostolicity is not amenable to the law of gravitation - since it rests upon nothing, no one can knock away its foundations. Just now we are importuned to accept the 'historic episcopacy' for the sake of regularity, as if regularity were more important than reality. Even the Free Churches have failed to federate, and one is not sorry to have it so, remembering the lines of an old Wiltshire love-song which I heard the other day:

If all the world were of one religion Many a living thing should die. January 12.- Alas! affairs on the lovely but unhappy island of Ireland seem to go from bad to worse, adding another irritation to a shell-shocked world. From a distance the Irish issue is simple enough, but near at hand it is a sad tangle, complicated by immemorial racial and religious rancors, and, what is sadder still, by a seemingly hopeless incompatibility of temperament between the peoples of these two islands. They do not, and apparently cannot, understand each other. It looks like the old problem of what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. Besides, the friction is not only

between Ireland and England, but between two Irelands different in race, religion, and economic organization. If Ireland could be divided, as Lincoln divided Virginia, the riddle would be solved. But no Irishman will agree.

The English people, as I talk with them about Ireland, are as much bewildered by it as anybody else. They do feel hurt at the attitude of South Ireland during the war, and I confess I cannot chide them for it. Ireland was exempted from conscription, from rationing, from nearly all the hardships of a war which, had it been lost, would have meant the enslavement of Ireland, as well as the rest of the world. A distinguished journalist told me that his own Yorkshire relatives were forced into Irish regiments by politicians, to make it appear that Ireland was fighting. The Irish seaboard, except in Ulster, was hostile seaboard. It required seventy-five thousand men to keep order in Ireland, and that, too, at a time when every man was needed at the front. Ulster, in the meantime, did magnificently in the war, and it would be a base treachery to coerce it to leave the United Kingdom. Ulster may be dour and relentless, but it has rights which must be respected. Yet, if England does not find a way out of the Irish muddle, she may imperil the peace of the world. So the matter stands, like the Mark Twain story in which he got the hero and heroine into so intricate a tangle that he gave it up, and ended by offering a prize to anyone who could get them out of it.

January 14.-To-day a distinguished London minister told me a story about the President, for which he vouches. He had it from the late Sylvester Horne, Member of Parliament and minister of Whitefield's Chap el, who had known the President for years before he was elevated to his high office. Horne happened to be in

America America - where he was always a welcome guest before the war, shortly after the President was inaugurated, and he called at the White House to pay his respects. In the course of the talk, he expressed satisfaction that the relations between England and America would be in safe hands while the President was in office. The President said nothing, and Horne wondered at it. Finally he forced the issue, putting it as a question point-blank. The President said, addressing him in the familiar language of religious fellowship: 'Brother Horne, one of the greatest calamities that has befallen mankind will come during my term of office. It will come from Germany. Go home and settle the Irish question, and there will be no doubt as to where America will stand.'

How strange, how tragic, if, having kept America out of the war for more than two years, since nearly all Irishmen are in the party of the President, - Ireland should also keep America out of the peace, and defeat, or at least indefinitely postpone, the organization of an effective league of nations! Yet such may be the price we must pay for the wrongs of olden time, by virtue of the law whereby the sins of the fathers are visited upon generation after generation. Naturally the English people do not understand our urgent interest in the problem of Ireland, not knowing how it meddles in our affairs, poisoning the springs of good-will, and thwarting the coöperation between English-speaking peoples upon which so much depends.

January 16. At the London Poetry Society - which has made me one of its vice-presidents-one meets many interesting artists, as well as those who are trying to sing the Everlasting Song in these discordant days - Masefield, Noyes, Newbolt, Yeats, Mackereth, to name but a few, with an occasional glimpse of Hardy. Nor do I forget May

Doney, a little daughter of St. Francis, walking The Way of Wonder. A reading of poetry by Sir Forbes Robertson is always an event, as much for his golden voice as for his interpretative insight. The plea of Mackereth, some time ago, for poetry as a spiritual teacher and social healer, was memorable, appealing to the Spirit of Song to bring back to hearts grown bitter and dark the warmth and guidance of vision. The first time I heard of Mackereth was from a British officer as we stood ankledeep in soppy mud in a Flanders trench. If only we could have a League of Poets there would be hope of a gentler, better world, and they surely could not make a worse mess of it than the 'practical' men have made. If the image in the minds of the poets of to-day is a prophecy of to-morrow, we may yet hope for a world where pity and joy walk the old, worn human road, and 'Beauty passes with the sun on her wings.'

January 19.-The Peace Conference opened with imposing ceremony at Versailles yesterday, and now we shall see what we shall see. An idealist, a materialist, and an opportunist are to put the world to rights. Just why a pessimist was not included is hard to know, but no doubt there will be pessimists a-plenty before the job is done. Clemenceau is a man of action, Lloyd George a man of transaction, and what kind of a man the President is, in negotiations of this nature, remains to be revealed. The atmosphere is unfavorable to calm deliberation and just appraise ment. The reshaping of the world outof-hand, to the quieting of all causes of discord, is humanly impossible. Together Britain and America would be irresistible if they were agreed, and if they were ready for a brave, large gesture of world-service

but they are not ready. America had only enough of the war to make it mad and not enough to subdue it; Britain had enough to

make it bitter. As a penalty of having no axe to grind, America will have to bear the odium of insisting upon sound principles and telling unpalatable truths, and so may not come off well. We shall see whether there is any honor among nations, whether the terms of the Armistice will be made a 'scrap of paper,' and whether there is to be a league of peace or a new balance of power a new imperialism for the old. Meanwhile, all ears will be glued to the keyhole, straining to hear even a whisper of 'open covenants, openly arrived at.'

January 30.-On my way back from Scotland I broke my journey at Leicester, to preach in the church of Robert Hall Hall the Pork-Pie Church, as they call it, because of its circular shape. In the evening I lectured on Lincoln. Leicester, I remembered, had been the home of William Carey, and I went to see his little Harvey Lane Church, where he dreamed his great dream and struggled with drunken deacons. Just across the narrow street is the red-brick cottage where he lived, teaching a few pupils and working at his cobbler's bench to eke out a living. It is now a Missionary Museum, preserved as nearly as possible in its original form and furniture, its ceiling so low that I could hardly stand erect. There, in his little back-shop, little back-shop, with its bench and tools, like those Carey used, a great man worked. Pegging away, he nevertheless kept a map of the world on the opposite wall of his shop, dreaming the while of world-conquest for Christ. There, too, he thought out that mighty sermon which took its text from Isaiah 54: 2, 3, and had two points: Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.

1792

No other sermon of that period had only two points, and none ever had a finer challenge to the faith of Christian men. We need the vision of

April 8. The City Temple mailbag entails an enormous amount of labor, bringing almost a hundred letters a week; but it is endlessly interesting. There are letters of all kinds a series from Manchester proving that the world is hollow and that we live on the inside and from everywhere: China, India, France, America, and all over Britain. If an American says a naughty thing about Britain, a copy of it is sent to me, underlined. If it is the other way round, I am not allowed to forget it. There are letters from ministers whose faith has been shaken, and from others who want to go to America; pitiful letters from shell-shocked boys in hospitals; letters from bereaved parents and widowed girls - heroic, appealing, heart-breaking, like that from an old woman in the north of England whose life of sorrow was crowned by the loss of her two grandsons in the war. In closing she said: 'Me youth is gone, me hope is dead, me heart is heavy; but I neglect no duty.' To which I could only reply that, though God had taken everything else, in leaving her a love of righteousness He had left her the best gift He had.

As nearly all the City Temple sermons and prayers are published, both hearers and readers write to agree or disagree, or, more often, to relate difficulties of faith or duty. The mail-bag is thus an index to the varying moods of the time in respect to matters of faith, and I learn more from it than I am able to teach others. Every time a sermon has to do with Christ, it is sure to be followed by a shower of letters, ask

ing that the subject be carried further. In spite of the agitations of the world, -perhaps because of them,- What think ye of Christ? remains the most absorbing and fascinating of all questions.

Somehow, in spite of my practice for the last ten years, I have always had a shrinking feeling about writing and printing prayers. Yet, when I receive letters telling how perplexed and weary folk are helped by them, I relent. Public prayer, of course, is different from private devotion; it is individual, indeed, but representative and symbolic, too. One speaks for many, some of whom are dumb of soul, and if one can help others to pray, it is worth while. Yesterday, in the Authors' Club, a man took me aside and told me this story. He was an officer invalided out of the service, having been wounded and smitten with fever in the Mesopotamian campaign. He took from his pocket a tiny book, it looked like a notebook, saying that it contained the bread, the meat, the milk, all that had kept his soul alive on the long marches and the weary waits in the hospitals. I thought it was, perhaps, a copy of the New Testament, or the Imitation of Christ; but, on opening it, I found ten of my little prayers cut from the paper and pasted in the book. Such things help me to go on, even against a shrinking I cannot define.

April 16. The hearings of the British Coal Commission, in the King's Robing-Room, some of which I have attended, look and sound like a social judgment-day. Never, I dare say, has England seen such pitiless publicity on the lives of the workers, the fabulous profits of the owners, running up as high as 147 per cent, and the rigging' of the public. It is like a searchlight suddenly turned on. No wonder the country stands aghast. Nothing could surpass the patience, the cour

age, the relentless politeness of Robert Smillie, who conducts the case for the miners. He has had all England on dress-parade-lords, dukes, and nobles - while he examined them as to the titles to their holdings. They were swift and often witty in their replies, but it means much that they had to come when summoned by a miner. They were bored and surly, but they humbly obeyed. Truly, we are in a new England; and though their lordships may have a brief success in the King's RobingRoom, they are in fact already defeated and they know it. They win a skirmish, but they lose a battle.

May 10. What the Free Catholicism may turn out to be remains to be disclosed; so far, it is more clever and critical than constructive. W. E. Orchard is its Bernard Shaw, and W. G. Peck its Chesterton. At first, it was thought to be only a protest against the ungracious barrenness of Nonconformist worship, in behalf of rhythm, color, and symbolism. But it is more than that. It seeks to unite personal religious experience with its corporate and symbolical expression, thus blending two things too often held apart. As between Anglicans and Nonconformists, it discovers the higher unity of things which do not differ, seeking the largeness of Christ in whose radiance there is room for every type of experience and expression. It lays emphasis on fellowship, since no one can find the truth for another, and no one can find it alone. Also, by reinterpreting and extending the sacramental principle, and at the same time disinfecting it of magic, the Free Catholicism may give new impetus to all creative social endeavor. For years it has been observed that many ultra-high Churchmen - for example, Bishop Gore, who is one of the noblest characters in modern Christianity have been leaders in the social interpretation of Christianity. Perhaps, at

last, we shall learn that it was not the Church, but Humanity, with which Jesus identified Himself when He said: "This is my body broken for you.' The great thing about Christianity is that no one can tell what it will do next.

June 2. Have been down in Wales for a day or two, lecturing on Lincoln, and also feeling the pulse of the public sentiment. I found it beating quick and hot. Indeed, not only in Wales, but all over the north of England, there is white-hot indignation - all due to that wretched election last autumn. One hears revolutionary talk on all sides, and only a spark is needed to make an explosion. When I see the hovels in which the miners live, squalid huts, more like pig-pens than human homes,

I do not wonder at the unrest of the people, but at their infinite patience. Physical and moral decay are inevitable, and the spiritual life is like a fourth dimension. I asked a Labor leader what it is that is holding things together, and he replied: 'All that holds now is the fact that these men went to Sunday School in the churches and chapels of Wales years ago; nothing else restrains them.' Thus a religious sense of the common good, of communal obligation, holds, when all other ties give way. But the churches and chapels are empty today, and in the new generation what will avert the 'emancipated, atheistic, international democracy,' so long predicted? Religion must do something more than restrain and conserve: it must create and construct. If ever we find the secret of creative social evolution, it will be in a deeper insight into the nature and meaning of religion as a social reality, as well as a private mysticism. This at least is plain: the individual and the social gospel belong together, and neither will long survive the shipwreck of the other. Never, this side of heaven, do I expect to hear such singing as I heard in Wales!