Strong political differences up to the point which each man’s honest convictions allow, but therewith a great unity of ultimate aim, and a genuine desire to find agreement--these, it seems to me, should be the attitude for all of us. Mr. Lansbury generously allows me to introduce his book in what may well seem this half-hearted way; and I am able to ask for it the sympathetic and respectful attention of my fellow-Churchmen and fellow-citizens almost as warmly as if I were more fully agreed than is likely to be the case. EDW. WINTON. Farnham, Nov. 20, 1916. INTRODUCTION The National Mission organised by the Church of England is an effort to arouse men and women who care for religion to a higher sense of their corporate responsibility for the well-being of the nation. The old idea that a man or woman should accept the teaching and sacrifice of our Lord as a means of escape from the torments of hell, or as an admission to a future heaven beyond the clouds, has proved quite futile as a force for regenerating mankind. We all agree now that this life is a much more serious thing, and that it cannot be dismissed and put out of account by the very comfortable belief that, no matter how wicked a person may have been right up to the last hour of life, if at that moment he accepts the sacrifice of Christ’s death all will be well with him throughout eternity. I do not here discuss the theological question, but I do insist that, in the experience of those of us who have lived through the last half of the nineteenth century, the doctrine of salvation, as taught in almost all the Churches, has been, in its effect on life and conduct, a ghastly failure. This failure of Christendom to redeem the world is writ large on the blood-stained battlefields which to-day stretch across Europe, Asia, and Africa. But it is written still deeper on the social life of all those nations who profess to serve God and to believe in the teaching of His blessed Son.