RELIGION.
The author of this thoughtful and suggestive book is under no delusion as to the present religious situation :—
" Christendom is leaving the Church. In some parts of the world the process is nearly complete ; few among our official bodies realize how rapidly the process is advancing in our own country. It is not easy for ministers of religion to see what is going on outside their own small circles ; indeed, it is common to hear the clergy speak of the greatness, or even of the triumph, of their own party, when all the time not five per cent. of their adult parishioners come near their own parish church."
One great cause of this is, he believes, the survival of obsolete notions of prayer, which is primarily neither petition nor intercession, nor even worship, but the personal com- munion of man with God." The aim of The Church at Prayer is to make churchgoing a " reasonable service." And here " the man outside can help us : he sees that all our controversies are a little mad. Indeed, the clergy do tend to lose their sanity of outlook without the laity—and most of the laity are now outside." The future of the Churches depends on their regaining this estranged element—a difficult, a very difficult, thing to do.
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