I need hardly say what my reply was. Why! to my mind, the world is being redeemed by precious blood again, and this precious blood mingles with _the_ Precious Blood which flowed on Calvary, and becomes part of the redemption of the world. Nothing really cheers the mourners as much as to feel that their beloved ones have made a noble sacrifice, and have not made it in vain. And with that, religion brings in the blessed hope, nay, certainty, of _seeing them again_. How many have I cheered this year with Miss Katharine Tynan's poem called "The Flower of Youth"?-- "Lest Heaven be for the greybeards hoary, GOD, who made boys for His delight, Goes in earth's hour of grief and glory, And calls the boys in from the night. As they come trooping from the War Our skies have many a new gold star." * * * * The poem is too long to quote in full, but it ends with these beautiful lines: "Oh! if the sonless mothers weeping, The widowed girls, could look inside The Country which hath them in keeping Who went to the great War and died, They would rise and take their mourning off, Praise GOD, and say, '_He has enough_.'" But we have no certainty of this without religion, and, as I am conscientiously bound to say myself, without the _Christian religion_. It is very interesting and very helpful that scientific men, one of whom is so leading a light in Birmingham, believe that on scientific grounds they have reason to believe in an existence beyond the grave, and in the continuity of personality. It used to help me greatly in contesting the assertion that all scientific men were opposed to all the tenets of religion; but as one who has often to be with the dying, as well as the mourners, I should like to bear witness to the extreme value of the belief in a real resurrection from the dead, such as the Christian Church has commemorated for two thousand years at Easter. I should feel it quite out of place, of course, to argue with regard to its truth here and now, but to a simple mind--and, of course, religion has to be adapted to simple minds throughout the world, which largely outnumber subtle ones--a single great _Event_ has ten times the power of any amount of theory; and there cannot be a doubt that it is a belief in the Central Fact of the Christian religion which is as a matter of fact redeeming the world of mourners from despair to-day--nay, more than that, filling them with a bright and radiant hope, and a glorious fortitude to hold on with the courage of their own soldier sons or soldier husbands "until the day dawns and the shadows flee away." Well then, I must just leave the matter there. I have never written such a long address in my life, and don't expect ever to do so again; but then it is only once in one's life one has the honour of being President of the Birmingham and Midland Institute.