Church and Nation: The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1914-15Temple, William
Religion
Church and Nation: The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1914-15
Temple, William
Church and state
Produced by Al Haines.
CHURCH AND
NATION
THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES FOR 1914-15
DELIVERED AT THE GENERAL THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARY, NEW YORK
BY
WILLIAM TEMPLE
HON. CHAPLAIN TO H.M. THE KING
_Rector of St. James’s, Piccadilly,
Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury
Formerly Fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford, and
Headmaster of Repton_
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1915
_COPYRIGHT_
TO
MY MOTHER
WHO FELL ASLEEP AS GOOD FRIDAY DAWNED
APRIL 2, 1915
*PREFACE*
When I received and accepted the invitation to deliver the Paddock
Lectures for the season 1914-1915, no one imagined that these years were
destined to have the historical significance which they must now possess
for all time. I was myself one of those who had allowed concern for
social reform, and internal problems generally, to occupy my mind almost
to the exclusion of foreign questions. I was prepared to stake a good
deal upon what seemed to me the improbability of any outbreak of
European war. For all who took this view the events of recent months
have involved perhaps a greater re-shaping of fundamental notions than
was required by people who had thought probable such a catastrophe as
that in which we are now involved. I found it impossible to concentrate
my mind upon any subject wholly unconnected with the war, while at the
same time it would have been in the last degree unsuitable that in my
lectures to American Theological Students I should deliver myself of
such views as I had formed concerning the rights and wrongs of the war
itself, or the questions at stake in it.
These lectures, therefore, represent an attempt to think out afresh the
underlying problems which for a Christian are fundamental in regard not
only to this war but to war in general—the place of Nationality in the
scheme of Divine Providence and the duty of the Church in regard to the
growth of nations.
But in a preface it may be permissible to say what would be
inappropriate in the Lectures themselves, and first I would take this
opportunity of reiterating certain convictions which have formed the
basis of a series of pamphlets issued under the auspices of a Committee
drawn from various Christian bodies and political parties, of which I
have had the honour to be Editor:
1. That Great Britain was in August morally bound to declare war and is
no less bound to carry the war to a decisive issue;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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