The most powerful impulse, however, behind the new spiritualism has come from the staggering loss of human life in the Great War. Never before in the world’s history has the cry of human bereavement been so loud and bitter, for the vast majority of the millions who perished in the conflict were young men leaving behind them a heritage of sorrow incomparably greater than that which follows from the loss of the old, who in far greater numbers die every year in the ordinary course of nature. Nor has the poignancy of their grief for the loss of sons and brothers been lessened for those among the survivors who have reached the conviction that these vast armies of the world were led to the slaughter on false pretences, and that the soldiers died not, as most of them honestly believed, to promote justice, peace, and freedom, but to subserve the same vile motives of imperialist and commercial greed which have promoted every other modern war. In earlier ages the Christian religion did indubitably inspire in the minds of its adherents a genuine conviction of a life beyond the grave and a future recognition of those lost awhile. But Protestantism in its violent rejection of earlier tenets has so far attenuated the doctrine of a future existence that its harsh interdicts on prayers for the dead and its vague and inconsistent beliefs as to the state of the departed have to a large extent ceased either to attract or convince. At Omdurman the writer saw thousands of men advancing against the most terrific fire of the century’s warfare with the name of God upon their lips and real conviction of a future life in their hearts――but these men were not Christians. The carelessness, timidity, or corruption of the Churches have served to devitalize not only the ethical precepts of their Master but also that immortality which He brought to light. But, although the old springs of comfort have to a large extent ceased to flow, the needs of the human heart remain, and are turned to those fresh sources of assurance and consolation which are so lavishly offered by modern Spiritualism. * * * * *