There is a material side to Christianity as well as the spiritual foundation; and it is on the material side, as it affects our daily lives and our national interests, that my thoughts dwell at the moment. Where does Christianity touch the major problems of to-day: bad trade, unemployment, poverty, lack of general interest in public affairs, wide-spread corruption, indifference to crime and dishonesty, and finally slaughter—I might almost call it human sacrifice—on our high roads? I have no ready made cure to offer for our troubles; nor can I believe that there is a simple and easy path leading out of the complicated tangle of difficulties surrounding the individual and the nation. I am not prepared to join with those who lightly attribute all evils to the war; for it seems to me that the war, with its call for self-denial and a realization of the existence of man’s duty as well as man’s rights, nearly saved the nation from spiritual decadence. I do believe that there is a way out of our troubles, and that the key to all the problems is to be found in discipline.

A nation without religion is a nation without backbone; for sincere religious belief is the only form of discipline by which human nature can be trained to healthy growth. The law, to a certain extent, protects the weak man from his strong neighbour (though this does not apply to-day in the realm of finance): religion protects the weak man and the strong man alike from himself.