One this or another occasion the bishop--he
boasts that he himself is a healthy bachelor--lavished his eloquence
upon the Fall in the Birth Rate, and the duty of all married people,
from paupers upward, to have children persistently. Now sex, like diet,
is a department of conduct and a very important department, but _it
isn't religion!_ The world is distressed by international disorder, by
the monstrous tragedy of war; these little hot talks about indulgence
and begetting have about as much to do with the vast issues that concern
us as, let us say, a discussion of the wickedness of eating very new and
indigestible bread. It is talking round and about the essential issue.
It is fogging the essential issue, which is the forgotten and neglected
kingship of God. The sin that is stirring the souls of men is the sin of
this war. It is the sin of national egotism and the devotion of men to
loyalties, ambitions, sects, churches, feuds, aggressions, and divisions
that are an outrage upon God's universal kingdom.
2
The common clergy of France, sharing the military obligations and the
food and privations of their fellow parishioners, contrast very vividly
with the home-staying types of the ministries of the various British
churches. I met and talked to several. Near Frise there were some barge
gunboats--they have since taken their place in the fighting, but then
they were a surprise--and the men had been very anxious to have their
craft visited and seen.
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