We of course feel the greatest sympathy with both these
appeals for prayer in order that we may be saved from the supreme evil that can overtake any community. We trust, however, that those who call for prayers and those who pray them will remember that their duty cannot end here, and that, as always, the reality and sincerity of the prayer must be tested by the willingness of the person who prays to make every effort in his power to support his prayer. No true prayer is ever a merely passive instrument. Those who pray must also labour, i.e., act. A special duty in the matter of action is, in our opinion, cast upon those who have influence with the Liberal leaders owing to their being members of the Liberal Party. We do not by this suggest for a moment that they should ask the Liberal leaders to abandon their policy, but only that they should ask that that policy shall be carried out in the way which will be the least likely to provoke civil war. To be specific, they should ask their leaders either (1) to make civil war impossible, as they can make it by the exclusion of Ulster from a scheme of government which the Ulstermen detest ; or else (2) before they have recourse to the coercion of the local majority in Ulster by force of arms, to make use of that bloodless instrument of coercion, a General Election—an instrument which, whatever the Ulstermen may say in hot blood, must affect them as it affects all portions of the community.
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