I came back from
my visit to the Somme battlefields to find the sylvan peace of Essex
invaded by a number of ladies in blue dresses adorned with large
white crosses, who, regardless of the present shortage of nurses, were
visiting every home in the place on some mission of invitation whose
details remained obscure. So far as I was able to elucidate this
project, it was in the nature of a magic incantation; a satisfactory end
of the war was to be brought about by convergent prayer and religious
assiduities. The mission was shy of dealing with me personally, although
as a lapsed communicant I should have thought myself a particularly
hopeful field for Anglican effort, and it came to my wife and myself
merely for our permission and countenance in an appeal to our domestic
servants. My wife consulted the household; it seemed very anxious to
escape from that appeal, and as I respect Christianity sufficiently
to detest the identification of its services with magic processes, the
mission retired--civilly repulsed. But the incident aroused an uneasy
curiosity in my mind with regard to the general trend of Anglican
teaching and Anglican activities at the present time. The trend of my
enquiries is to discover the church much more incoherent and much less
religious--in any decent sense of the word--than I had supposed it to
be.
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