All this horror, and misery, and bloodshed, and ruin has sprung out of the materials--out of the civilized materials--provided by Europe itself, and it must be some internal disease, some original vice and corruption which is revealed to us in the ghastly spectacle which is now presented by so large a part of the most favoured lands of the world. Some one perhaps may be tempted to say that this indictment applies to the countries which have provoked this war, but not to Europe at large; but that, I am sure, would be, if not unjust to those countries, at least not candid with respect to ourselves. Is it not the case that, to an increasing extent of late years, the civilization of Europe has been united, and marked in the main by similar characteristics? Have not the literature and many of the ideas of Germany penetrated the literature and the thought of France and England? Has there been conspicuous among us any protest against the habits of thought, the tendencies of religious belief or unbelief, the luxuries if not the waste of living, which have prevailed elsewhere? If the life and civilization of Europe has ended in this great catastrophe, can we honestly stand aside and claim to be free of all blame, and to have had no share in the tendencies and evils which have produced so horrible a result? We shrink from them in their full development, we denounce them, we resolve to fight against them to the last, and to re-establish sounder and more Christian principles of public and social life, but dare we say that we have not dallied with them? Can we honestly claim to have repudiated them at their source, so as to be free from any part or lot in sins and errors which have led to so hideous a result? I will not try to drive such painful questions further home. I will only say that if we are honest with ourselves, we shall not venture to adopt the Pharisee’s attitude and exclaim, on a day like this, “God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are, or even as this German.” In a word, we have had some share, at all events, in the tone of thought and life which has prevailed in Europe for the last two generations, and we shall be more true to God and to ourselves if we are content, on this day of humble confession and intercession, simply to exclaim “God be merciful to me a sinner.”