After all, there is great truth in the proverb that "the shoemaker should stick to his last," and it cannot be entirely without purpose that apparently about once in five years an ecclesiastic is brought on to the scene here in his plain and sober raiment amid the glittering galaxy of Generals and actors and scientists and other distinguished men who in other years fill this distinguished office. I have this summer had the high privilege of visiting every battleship, battle cruiser, and most of the smaller ships of the Grand Fleet of Great Britain, and the thousands of sailors I addressed instantly caught the idea that of course I came to represent "Religion." I told an East-End story which appealed at once to the lower deck, so many of whom come from places like Bethnal Green, Poplar, Stepney, and similar localities at Portsmouth and Chatham. A rather shy East-End curate, on knocking at a door, heard a voice from the wash-tub at the back ask in a shrill voice, "Well, Sally, who is it?" and was rather depressed to hear Sally shriek back, "Please, mother, _it's religion_." But, as I told the sailors, my invariable advice to such a man is this, "Don't be ashamed of representing religion; you were not dressed in a pudding hat and a dog collar and a long black coat to talk about the weather." I make no apology then for plunging at once into the question of "_The War and Religion_." It is very striking to notice the different way in which the War has affected different minds with regard to religion. While I have had some poor young widows throw down their Bibles and (for a time) give up their prayers when their husbands were killed, I have found others who in their sorrow have found the comfort and force of religion for the first time; again, on the battlefield, while some express themselves coarsened by the "beastly work," as they express it, which they have to do, others write, "Nothing does any good out here but prayer and trust in GOD; we all feel it. War is a great _Purge_." Or again, "There are no atheists out here; there are few of us who do not put up a prayer in the trenches." 1. Let us look then first at the _case against religion_, and then the special _case against the Christian religion_ as deduced in many minds by the existence of the present War. (1) I take Religion, as the word implies, to be a TIE _which binds us to someone_, and I am further assuming that to have any religion worth the name, that "Someone" must be good and just and Righteous. Well, now, can we not easily see what a strong _prima facie_ case could be made out against the existence of a really strong and good and Righteous Supreme Being in the light of the appalling suffering and the at present unpunished wickedness on a gigantic scale which is being witnessed at the present time.