A passage in the declaration which issued from the Lambeth
Conference, claiming that in the conflict of Christianity with materialism the tide was turning, has raised some question even among optimists. Those who justify it do so, I gather, on two counts, the number and quality of men coming forward as ordinands and the trend of philosophic thought at the universities, away from a negation of natural and revealed religion to at any rate a positive theism. The ordinands are those, particularly, who are training for the ministry of the Anglican Church, and they include, I am told, numbers of men of the best type, some as high-ranking as generals and admirals, coming out of the forces. Nothing more is claimed than that the tide has ceased to flow in the wrong direction and begun to flow in the right—and even that cannot be precisely measured. But that those who should know think this is happening gives an encouragement which we rather badly need.
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