RELIGION AND WAR.
[To MR EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Some of your readers may be grateful to have their attention drawn to the following passage from George Eliot; which occurs in the last chapter but one of Daniel Deronda.—I am, Sir, &c., " There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their own lives—when the slow urgency of growing generations turns into the tread of an invading army or the dire clash of civil war, and grey fathers know nothing to seek for but the corpses of their blooming sons, and girls forget all vanity to 'make lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands. Then it is as if he Invisible Power that has been the object of lip-worship and lip-resignation became visihle, according to the imagery of the Hebrew poet, making the flames his chariot, and riding on the wings of the wind, till the mountains smoke and the plains shudder under the rolling fiery visitation. Often the good cause seems to lie prostrate under the thunder of unrelenting force, the martyrs live reviled, they die, and no angel is seen holding forth the crown and the palm-breech. Then it is that the submisSion of the soul to the Highest is tested, and even in the eyes of frivolity life looks out from the scene of human struggle with the awful face of duty, and a religion shows itself which is some- thing else than a private consolation."—Daniel Deronda, chap.lxix.
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