The way in which this war is stirring the deepest thoughts of our people has received a striking illustration during the last three weeks in a discussion in the pages of the _Westminster Gazette_. In that able journal religious questions have not ordinarily so congenial a home as in the _Spectator_, and it is the more illustrative of the tone of the public mind that, since August 28th last, hardly a day has passed without the appearance in its columns of letters of great earnestness on the subject of “Religion and the War.” The discussion was opened on that day by an anonymous article under that title, which opened with these words: “‘Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.’ The words of the Prophet come back to me when I hear the preachers trying to reconcile the terrors and horrors of this war with the idea of an all-powerful and all-beneficent Creator”; and around the difficulty thus started the whole discussion has turned. The writer says he has listened, during the last few months, to many sermons, and read many of the articles and pamphlets and books “in which Divines and Philosophers have endeavoured to plumb these deep waters,” and he states briefly the principal arguments that he has found in them. It is not necessary for the present purpose to quote them all, especially as I think the writer has been unfortunate in his pulpits and his books. Several of the pleas he quotes are mere platitudes, such as “that the ways of God are unfathomable, and that one must walk in faith and believe that things are somehow good.” The point to which he reduces the question is that under the strain of our present experience “people see suddenly that the doctrine of an omnipotent and all-loving Creator, as commonly expounded in pulpits, is at war with the plain facts of the visible world.” To this problem all the subsequent letters are directed, and they afford impressive and painful evidence of the distress with which many men and women seem to be groping in perplexity. There are many striking and touching observations in them, and sometimes, as by Lord Halifax, the central principles of the Christian Faith are applied to the problem. But it is disappointing to find that it is not in the Bible or in the Christian Faith that most of the writers seek for a solution of their difficulties. Too many of them seek refuge in philosophical discussions of matters like the Divine omnipotence and the abstract problem of evil. The first writer comes to the conclusion that “theology remains tangled up in its own conception of omnipotence--which brings us at best to the conclusion that God has so limited His own power as to permit the existence of evil, and at worst invests Him with attributes which are the reverse of benevolent,” and to this philosophical question writer after writer returns. The consequence is that the light which is thrown upon the whole problem by the Scriptures and by our Lord Himself is obscured in a maze of philosophy and words.