Then the Church itself must needs take a hand--or that part of the Church which ever cocks an eye at the latest fashions in public opinion, the "blessed fellows," like Poins, that "think as every man thinks" and help to swell every passing shout into a roar. I find among old papers a letter written in Queen Victoria's reign by an unfashionable curmudgeon whose thought would not keep to the roadway like theirs. "I see," this rude ironist writes, "that 'the Church's duty in regard to war' is to be discussed at the Church Congress. That is right. For a year the heads of our Church have been telling us what war is and does--that it is a school of character, that it sobers men, cleans them, strengthens them, knits their hearts, makes them brave, patient, humble, tender, prone to self-sacrifice. Watered by 'war's red rain,' one bishop tells us, virtue grows; a cannonade, he points out, is an 'oratorio'--almost a form of worship. True; and to the Church men look for help to save their souls from starving for lack of this good school, this kindly rain, this sacred music. Congresses are apt to lose themselves in wastes of words. This one must not--surely cannot--so straight is the way to the goal. It has simply to draft and submit a new Collect for 'war in our time,' and to call for the reverent but firm emendation, in the spirit of the best modern thought, of those passages in Bible and Prayer-book by which even the truest of Christians and the best of men have at times been blinded to the duty of seeking war and ensuing it.