T I AST week about one hundred and twenty progressive members

of the Church of England, clerical and lay, were assembled in Conference at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, to discuss the great questions of Christian ethics which have of late become burning. It was a great opportunity. To hear such questions as the relations of conscience to authority, the popular objections to Christian ethics, or the duties of individuals to the Church discussed by such authorities as Canon Rashdall, Dr. Jevons, Miss Dougall, Professor Caldecott, Dr. Tollinton, Mr. Alfred Fawkes, and • others was almost a liberal education. The present writer heard the papers, which are to be published in the Modern Churchman, and the discussions. But if he tried to give a mere abstract of them he would become intolerably dull. He prefers to note a few points.

The Conference was arranged by the Churchmen's Union for promoting liberal thought in the English Church. Hence there was a certain homogeneity in the views of all or most. There seemed on some points to be an agreement. It was felt that a progressive view as to the nature of the Christian society and its inspiration involves also a certain view as to ethics. Those who believe that, although Christianity is built on historic foundations and is summed up in the person of the Founder, yet Christianity is a thing which lives and grows through the ages, and accepts light from every quarter, must also feel that the ethic of the New Testament needs expansion and reinterpretation to fit it to new circumstances. Conditions in the world change ; and it is the spirit of Christianity rather than the letter of the positive directions of the Gospels and Epistles to which we must appeal. Love to God and to man, the spirit of Christ in the Church, are essential; but some aspects of the inspiration are more necessary to one age and some to another.

We can more fully than our fathers appreciate the dominance of law and order in the human and ethical world. We recognize that conduct is continuous, that both nations and individuals reap as they have sown, that punishment is always on the track of violations of the moral order. This does not exclude belief in Divine providence and in prayer, but it modifies such belief, and induces a disposition to disbelieve in sudden or arbitrary interventions of Divine power, even when men seem fully to deserve them. Also we now realize, more fully than we did even a few years ago, the solidarity of humanity and human societies. Morality is not an affair of the individual only, but it belongs also to societies, such as the city, the State, and, above all, the Christian community. Conscience is an invaluable monitor ; but it is not infallible, its dictates have to be checked alike by reason and by sympathy.

But agreement on these points by no means excluded a certain amount of divergence of opinion. Mr. Fawkes was disposed to attribute to reason and experience far more authority in the deter- mination of what is right than to feeling and enthusiasm. Mr. Major was disposed, on the other hand, to maintain that any utilitarian calculation is hardly in accord with the spirit of Christianity. Professor Caldecott and Mr. Gamble brought forward nine points in which, as they thought, the reasoned ethics of the moral philosopher were in disaccord with Christian morality : for example, Christianity encourages an amount of sympathy with, and attention to, illness, weakness, and folly greater than philosophic reason would approve : it accepts suffering as a part of the Divine order, and a Heaven-sent means of growth ; whereas philosophy would wage unceasing war against it. Christianity seems to underrate aesthetic beauty and charm, both in nature and art. Moral philosophy, in opposition to Christianity, rules out from consideration a future life. And it maintains that to accept the Founder of Christianity as a concrete and realized ideal tends to do away with the progressive nature of virtue. It was clear that the decision of Professor Calde- cott in these painful clashings would be on the side of Christianity : but he confessed that it was not easy to justify such a decision on grounds of reason. But some subsequent speakers were disposed to maintain that a reconciliation between these opposed views. was not impossible. And others thought that, although there was an ultimate opposition between a philosophic view of ethics and much that at present passes in the popular mind as Christianity, yet there is no final clashing between a philosophic view of ethics and a more thoughtful and less emotional form of Christian morality. The.whole discussion was of unusual interest, and the results have a very practical bearing, touching our daily life and feelings. The fact is that if we regard the morality of the Sermon on the Mount and the Pauline Epistles as giving us principles of action rather than literal directions, there is opened up a great field of ethical investigation. And no one, not even the most conservative Quaker, does now follow the legislation of the. New Testament quite literally. The subject of the relation of Christianity to international ethics was a stirring one. Mr. J. M. Thompson maintained that the ethics of the original preaching of Christianity applied as much to States as to individuals ; but to most of his auditors he seemed to go too far, for, while bitterly condemning war, he did not appear sufficiently to acknowledge the Christ-like character of the self- renunciation of-those who are willing to make great sacrifices and. to risk wounds and death for the sake of a high and unselfish cause. And since it is of the very essence of the teaching of the Gospels that active virtue is a greater thing than mere negative avoidance of evildoing, those who give up ,everything to serve their country, are more in the line of the higher Christian life than those who through scruples, however respectable, refuse to do se.

There were also differences of view, as is natural when some; natures are optimistic and some pessimistic, as to the possibility of any inanwliate or complete amelioration of social and economic. conditions. Christianity is, in fact, a combination of optimistic and pessimistic views : a Kingdom of God stands as an ideal, but it can only be reached through much tribulation.

Such were some of the questions which. divided and aroused the Conference. But few can have been present who did- not feel both enthusiasm and thought stimulated. In the afternoon ser- vices, held in Wadham chapel, a liturgy was sometimes used, compiled by Mr. Handley, which translated the petitions of the Litany, beautiful in themselves, into prayers more actual, having closer relations to the feelings and temptations of the twentieth century. It was a bold attempt; but to some at least among those present it seemed to give fresh meaning and force to the Prayer Book.

This meeting at Oxford was the third of the annual Conferences of the Churchmen's Union. Each shows more clearly than the last that there are many, both among. the clergy and the laity, who are longing to break through the crust of a too rigid con- vention, and to bring the services and the teaching of the Church nearer to modern thought and aspirations.

'riiii GOOD SIDE OF "MILITARISM."

IHAD a letter the other day from an Oxford friend. In it was this phrase—" I loathe militarism in all its forms." Somehow it took me back quite suddenly to the days before the war, to ideas that I had almost completely forgotten. I suppose that in those days the great feature of those who tried to be " in the fore- front of modern thought" was their riotous egotism, their anarchical insistence on the claims of the individual at the expense even of law, order, society, and convention. " Self-realization " we con- sidered to be the primary duty of every man and woman. The wife who left her husband, children, and home because of her passion for another man was a heroine, braving the hypocritical judgments of society to assert the _claims of the individual soul.' The woman who refused to abandon all for love's sake was not only a coward but a criminal, guilty of the deadly sin of sacrificing her soul, committing it to a prison where it would languish and never blossom to its full perfection. The man who was bound to uncon- genial drudgery by the chains of an early marriage or aged parents dependent on him was,the victim of a tragedy which drew team from our eyes. The woman who neglected her home because she needed a " wider sphere" in which to develop her personality was a champion of women's rights, a pioneer of enlightenment. And, on the other hand, the people who went on making the best of uncongenial drudgery, or in any way subjected their individu- alities to what old-fashioned people called duty, were in our eyes contemptible poltroons. It was the same in polities and religion. To be loyal to a party or obedient to a Church was to stand self. confessed a fool or a hypocrite. Self-realization, that was in our eyes the whole duty of man.

And then I thought of what I had seen only a few days before. First of battalions of men marching in the darkness, steadily and in step, towards the roar of the guns, destined in the next twelve hours to charge as one man, without hesitation .or doubt, through barrages of cruel shell and storms of murderous bullets. Then, the following afternoon, of a handful of men, all that was left of about three battalions after ten hours of fighting, a handful of men exhausted, parched, strained, holding on with grim determination to the last bit of German trench, until they should receive the order to retire. And lastly, on the days and nights following, of the constant streams of wounded and dead being carried down the trench, of the unceasing search that for three or four days was never fruitless.

Self-realization ! How far we have travelled from the ideals of those pre-war days. And as I thought things over I wondered at how faint an echo that phrase, " I loathe militarism in all its forms," found in my own mind.

Before the war I bated " militarism." I despised soldiers as

men vh& had sold their birthright for - a mess of pottage. The sight of the Guards drilling in Wellington Barracks, moving as one man to the command of their drill instructor, stirred me to bitter mirth. They were not men but manikins. When I first enlisted, and for many months afterwards, the " mummeries of military

discipline," the saluting, the meticulous uniformity, the rigid sup- pression of individual exuberance, chafed and infuriated me. I compared it to a ritualistic religion, a religion of authority, a re- ligion which depended not on individual assent but on tradition for its sanctions. I loathed nsilitarism in all its forms. Now . . well, I am inclined to reconsider my judgment. Seeing the end of military discipline has shown me something of its ethical meaning more than that, of its spiritual meaning.

For though the part of the " great push " that it fell to my lot to see was not a successful part, it was none the less a triumph—

a spiritual triumph. From the accounts of the ordinary war corre- spondent I think one hardly realizes how great a spiritual triumph it was. For the war correspondent only sees the outside, and can

only describe the outside of things. We who are in the Army, who know the men as individuals, who have talked with them, joked: with them, censored their letters, worked with them, lived with

them, we see below the surface. The war correspondent sees the faces of the men as they march towards the Valley of the Shadow, sees the steadiness of eye and mouth, hears the cheery jest. He

sees them advance into the Valley without flinching. He sees: some of them return, tired, dirty, strained, but still with a quip• 'for the passer-by. 'He gives us a picture of men without nerves, without sensitiveness, without imagination, schooled to face death as they would face rain or any trivial incident of everyday life. The " Tommy " of the war correspondent is not a human being, but a lay figure with a gift for repartee, little more than the manikin that we thought him in those far-off days before the war, when we watched him drilling on the barrack square. We know better.

We know that each one of these men is an individual, full of human affections, writing tender letters home every week, longing with

all his soul for the end of this hateful business of war which divides him from all that he loves best in life. We know that each one of these men has a healthy individual's repugnance to being maimed,; and a human shrinking from hurt and from the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

The knowledge of all this does not do away with the even tread of'• the troops as they pass, the steady eyeand mouth, the cheery jest;

but it makes them a hundred times more significant. For we know that what these things signify is not lack of human affection, or weak- ness, or want of imagination, but something superimposed on these, to which they are wholly subordinated. Over and above the indi- viduality of each man, his personal deires and fears and hopes, is grafted a corporate personality which knows no fear and only one ambition—to defeat the enemy, and so to promote righteousness in the world. In each of those men there is this dual personality: the ordinary human ego that hates danger and shrinks from hurt and death, that longs for home, and would welcome the end of the war on any terms; and also the stronger personality of the soldier who can tolerate but one end to the war, cost what that may—the victory of liberty and justice, and the utter abasement of brute force.

And when one looks back over the months of training that the soldier has had one recognizes how every feature of it, though at'

the time it often seemed trivial and senseless and irritating, was

in reality directed to this end. For from the moment that a man rbecomes a soldier his dual personality begins. Henceforth he is both a man and a soldier. Before his training is complete the

order must be reversed, and he must be a soldier and a man. As a soldier he must obey and salute those whom, as a man, he very likely dislikes and despises. In his conduct he no longer only has to consider his reputation as a man, but still more his honour as a soldier. In all the conditions of his life, his dress, appearance, food, drink, accommodation, and work, his individual preferences count for nothing, his efficiency as a soldier counts for everything.

At first ho " hates " this, and " can't see the point of " that. But by the time his training is complete he has realized that whether he hates a thing or not, sees the point of a thing or not, is a matter

of the most utter unimportance. If he is wise, he keeps his likes . and dislikes to himself. All through his training he is learning the unimportance of his individuality, realizing that in a national, a

world crisis it counts for nothing. On the other hand, he is equally learning that as a unit in a fighting force his every action is of the utmost importance. The humility which the Army inculcates is not an abject self-depreciation that leads to less of self-respect and effort. Substituted for the old individualism is a new self-con- sciousness. The man has become humble, but in proportion the soldier has become exceeding proud. The old personal whims and ambitions give place to a corporate ambition and 'purpose, and

this unity of will is symbolized in action by the simultaneous meal- tude of drill, and in dress by the rigid identity of uniform. Any- thing which calls attention to the individual, whether in drill or in dress, is a crime, because it is essential that the soldier's individuality should be wholly subordinated to the corporate personality of the regiment.

As I said before, the personal humility of the soldier has nothing in it of abject self-depreciation or slackness. On the contrary, every detail of his appearance and every most trivial feature of his duty assumes an immense significance. Slackness in his dress and negligence in his work are military crimes. In a good regiment the soldier is striving after perfection all the time.

And it is when he comes to the supreme test of battle that the fruits of his training appear. The good soldier has learnt the hardest lesson of all, the lesson of self-subordination to a higher and bigger personality. He has learnt to sacrifice everything which belongs to him individually to a cause that is far greater than any personal ambitions of his own can ever be. He has learnt to do this so thoroughly that he knows no fear—for fear is personal. He has learnt to " hate " father and mother and life itself for the sake of— though he may not call it that—the Kingdom of God on earth.

It is a far cry from the old days when one talked of self-realization, isn't it I I make no claim to be a good soldier ; but I think that perhaps I may be beginning to be one ; for if I am asked now whether I " loathe militarism in all its forms," I think that " the answer is in the negative." I will even go further, and say that I hope that some of the discipline and self-subordination that have availed to send men calmly to their death in war will survive in the days of peace, and make of those who are left better citizens, better workmen, better servants of the State, better Churchmen.

A STUDENT IN ARKS.