The new regroupings of the future are forming themselves round two clearly defined rallying points. One of these is materialism, which attracts those who have ceased to fix their eyes on a life beyond this life. The other is Christianity, towards which are gravitating those who cannot be satisfied with a materialistic explanation of the world, and who believe that in, and around, and beyond its life lies another and more perfect life, in which we are in some way sharers. The materialist grouping is as yet only a nucleus, but it has a coherent creed, a crusading spirit and definite unity of aim. In strong contrast with this small, active, homogeneous nucleus, steadily extending its circle of influence, is the huge army of Christendom, full of supernatural vitality and heroic effort, but handicapped by internal dissension, reduced sometimes almost to impotence; and unable to move forward in strength and unity on its mission to convert the world to Christ.

Is it any wonder that there is an increasing number of men and women in every one of the many sections into which Christendom is divided, who are turning their thoughts more and more to the problem of reunion? They see that to remain as we are, divided and crippled in our efforts, is not merely to court the disaster of being overwhelmed by the forces of pagan materialism, but is a betrayal of our Blessed Lord’s commission, who has bidden us go and teach all nations, not go bewilder them with the multiplicity of our doctrines and the conflict of our many opinions.

In the course of history the relation of Catholicism and Protestantism undergoes, as it were, physiognomical transformations, which, while they do not affect the inmost dogmatic division, strike deep enough to impress on these two systems new and unforeseeable characteristics in different times and places. The essential division in belief, as a theological phenomenon, remains just what it is; and in view of this, it is impossible—even for men of good will—to explain it away or compromise on it. This undebatable and irreducible phenomenon can only be effaced by unity in the Faith. We do not wish prim, arily to treat of the relation of Catholicism and Protestantism from this purely theological aspect of dogmatic difference and reunion, although even our present consideration can only be read under this explicit proviso, and in view of this final and deepest problem. For if Catholicism and Protestantism are from one point of view and in modern history simply two great historical forces, we cannot on that account act as though the problem belonged only to the sphere of historical research into cultural spirituality. Beyond the scope of history there is an enquiry of theological import.

We take as our starting point the fact that Catholicism and Protestantism appear on the stage of history as two forces, each of which presents a whole system of human cultural values, and so an entire totality of life. Ultimately, in the theological field, Catholicism and Protestantism are incommensurable—though even here some qualification is required. But as formative powers of history, as complete forms and formulas of historical existence, Catholicism and Protestantism are fundamentally commensurable. On this plane, then, we find a series of problems which is common to both. Even their very opposition continually creates a common point of contact for their opposing principles. We find, on this plane, a relation between Catholicism and Protestantism which has proved historically to be manageable and valuable, and which at the present time is well defined—a relation sometimes of enmity, sometimes of cold indifference, sometimes of an inner human nearness and readiness to understand.

It is a characteristic feature of this time of transition in which we are living that the subject of Christian Unity is being discussed almost universally. Catholic and nonCatholic can write of it and proffer suggestions without arousing too serious an outburst of protest. For Methodists and Presbyterians the matter has passed from the stage of discussion to the goal of accomplished fact. Anglicanism with an eye to the future rather than the past is entering a new phase of comprehensiveness by proclaiming itself as a bridge providentially built to span the gulf between Catholicism and Protestantism. Of necessity Catholics remain materially unaffected by the movement, conscious as they are of the complete Unity of the Church in which they are visibly incorporate; nevertheless there remains a wide margin where we can express our views and opinions with regard to Christian Unity and the means of attaining it. Many of us take our views ready-made upon this subject from the Catholic Press, and save ourselves the trouble of thinking any further about it. It is so splendid to be told that we Catholics, standing secure behind the battlements, can look down with happy serenity upon the struggling disorder of warring sects below. If the warring sects cease to struggle, and achieve a formula of unity, what is our reaction? The ‘battlement feeling’ makes us perhaps uneasy because the non-Catholic bodies are not quite playing the game: they should be continuing the struggle, so that we could happily continue to draw the moral!

The season will shortly be coming round when, in sympathy with the resurrection of life around, some ebullience in the blood moves all sorts of people to be on the wander. Some will be lacing on nailed shoes and gripping sticks to get up into the hills; some will be fitting out small boats to be away to sea; some will be throwing handbags into dickys and luggage racks, or climbing, armed with a day’s rations, into charabancs. But one and all are moved by the same pleasantly impatient spirit: Wanderlust.

This brings to our mind one of the Church’s ‘Canonizations,’ one of the triumphs of that triumphant humanism by which it admits even the life we share with the animals to partake in acts of worship which it teaches have an eternal significance. It has canonized Wanderlust by the institution of pilgrimages to shrines. He is now ‘Saint Wanderlust.’ He has lesser forms in the everyday desire to be up and moving, if it be only up the hill or about the town, which the Church has canonized by such institutions as processions, or the round of the Stations in Rome, or the Stations of the Cross up the hill at Pantasaph —with the view at the top. He has one supreme form in the Spring Wanderlust, which the poet noted when he said that spring was the time of pilgrimages. So he has been taught the way to shrines.

There are, of course, things much more profound that lie behind the institution of shrines than this harnessing of a mere stirring in the blood. Sometimes, as at Lourdes, they are of immediate divine institution. Sometimes even when of human institution they are the occasion of the granting of many favours, even of the working of miracles, as is apparently the case at Carfin; and hence of a great increase of devotion.

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.

At the end of the last century there were two homes of tragedy which, to the young of those days, seemed to be built upon imperishable and not altogether antagonistic principles; they were the Lyceum (of Henry Irving, actor) and the Adelphi (of Andrew Melville, playwright). The former patronised by the middle, high-brow, and upper classes, while in the latter oranges were still sucked in the gallery and spitoons provided in the corridors. In the one we saw actors, usually in fancy dress, exploiting their own talents; in the other we met unreal but conventionalized characters in ordinary clothes—the villain who never quite killed the hero, and the heroine who always escaped from the net of evil woven for her fall. This Adelphi realism was different in kind from that of the Lyceum, and still further removed from the emotional’ type of more recent years. It was bound by convention, even to the necessity of a hooknosed swarthy villain and a fair-haired, muscularly Saxon hero.

In the Adelphi an audience was never at a loss as to the course of events and took a much fuller part in the proceedings than one which is kept guessing. There was an intimacy between stage and gallery now unthinkable. The modern hero is not cheered as he liberates the heroine— though the play is often interrupted by applause personal to the actor; the modem villain is not hissed; on the contrary, he will receive the same acknowledgment for personal success as the hero. I cannot now imagine an adult audience so engrossed in the play that, when the villain is denying his promise to marry the girl, an indignant voice from the ‘gods,’ as I once heard it, could shout, ‘I’eard yer, yet bounder !’ without sounding unreal and superfluous.

In an admirable artide on the Spanish situation by the Dominican Father H. Munoz these words occur: ‘What Spain needed was an intelligent organizer who could coordinate all the disjointed elements into a united front against the destructive forces of irreligion and anarchy.’ On reading this it is impossible not to reflect that this is an echo of what many English Catholics have been saying about their own country for a long time.

The present position of Catholics in England is not so very far removed from that of Catholics in Spain just before the revolution. Indifference and lack of organization sold the pass and allowed the forces of an anti-religious Socialism to seize power. And not till the Catholics of Spain found their diurches pillaged, convents burned, schools secularized, religious orders expelled and a sheaf of anti-Catholic laws on the statute book did they wake up to the realities of the situation and organize themselves into a force which now promises to be the salvation of Spain.

In England, a generation of ever-increasing indifference in matters of faith and morals has enabled the anti-God propaganda of Moscow to make tremendous progress. The traditional Conservative and Protestant party, product of the Reformation, exists in a fog. In matters of faith and morals they simply do not know where they stand, having neither standards nor guidance. And from not knowing to not caring is but a short step.

Liberalism no longer counts. The more extreme Liberals have gone over to Labour. A few have thrown in their lot with the Conservatives. The rest plough a lonely furrow in the wilderness.