O Lord, who delivered Daniel from the lions' den, Also Jonah from the tummy of the whale--and then Three Hebrew chilluns from the fiery furnace, As the good Book do declare-- O Lord, if you can't help me, don't help that grizzly bear! Here is an epitome of a far-spreading incredulity about the Bible. It is the higher criticism in its crudest popular form, and men are at the mercy of it. I have known a mess of officers engage in argument about the Bible with a sceptical Scots doctor, cleverer than they. As old-fashioned believers in the Bible they had to admit to being thoroughly "strafed" in the argument, yet they had no way out, such as an intelligent understanding of the Bible affords. One at least of them maintained stoutly that nevertheless he was going to stick to the old view, however indefensible. Such men are not free intellectually to follow the movements of religious revival. They are immobilised by the dead weight of Biblical literalism. Yet if the main verdict to which I have committed myself is to be radically accounted for, it is necessary to reach deeper reasons than any I have mentioned. I sympathise with those who have high hopes of the good effects of Church and Prayer Book and Bible-teaching reforms. Yet such are relatively superficial matters. The main reason for the comparative absence of religious revival among men at the front is that we all have been overtaken by the cataclysm of war in a condition of great poverty towards God. VI