regard as important. Looking over the current issues of the religious press, I notice a sermon on the war by Professor Clow, in which the Allies are, in harmony with his test, described as "the vultures of God." Germany, it seems, is the prey, and Germany's sins are painted black. Professor Clow, it is true, shrinks from the very natural implication of his words, but he clearly intimates that he sees the action of God in the military conduct of the Allies, and to that extent he is hardly less revolting, in view of his culture, than the archbishop. Could the God of Professor Clow find no other way of removing Germany's arrogance than to sear and blast it with a world-war and involve millions of innocent along with the guilty in his lakes of fire and blood?
More important, however, is a sermon delivered before the recent National Free Church Council by one of the most esteemed Nonconformist preachers, the Rev. J. H. Rushbrooke, and reproduced admiringly in the Nonconformist journals. The cloud of war, naturally, brooded over this gathering of ministers. Some of them heroically closed their eyes to it and went on with their clerical business as usual. But most of the speakers seem to have felt that all other issues were thrust aside in the minds of their followers just now, and that a grave and soul-shaking question possessed them. As a result we have, I suppose, the finest efforts of Nonconformity to meet that question and save the prestige of the Churches.
Mr. Rushbrooke frankly described the war as an overwhelming catastrophe, gravely disturbing the religious mind. It bore witness, he said, to "the failure of organised, or disorganised, Christianity." He conceived it as "God's judgment upon the Church's failure
