centre of the earth, and CM towards the centre of the moon. Similarly with E1. It was clear, therefore, that part of the effect of the moon's attraction at E and at E1 must tend to produce a low tide at those points, and therefore a high tide at the intermediate points; not only at C1 but also at C3. The problem, however, might be considered, as Mr. J. A. Hardcastle had done in his papers read before the British Astronomical Association, as one of water moving forward in response to the moon's attraction, rather than as one of water directly raised or depressed by it. The Rev. JOHN TUCKWELL said that Lord Kelvin had stated that unless the earth were more rigid than a cannon ball, it would bulge more at the equator than was found to be actually the case. He regarded the earth as a body that had been rendered solid by the immense pressure. After some questions and remarks from Colonel ALVES, Professor LANGHORNE ORCHARD and others, a vote of thanks was passed by the Meeting to the Lecturer, who in acknowledging it again pointed out that the moon would cause a lateral pressure on the earth at the points lettered E and E1 on the diagram. The Meeting adjourned at 6.15 p.m. 582ND ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING. HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL, THE VERY REV. HENRY WACE, D.D., DEAN OF CANTERBURY, The Minutes of the preceding Meeting were read and confirmed. Also the Minutes of the Meeting held on May 24th, 1916, in Commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the First Ordinary General Meeting of the Victoria Institute, which had been held on May 24th, 1866; exactly one year after the publication of the circular suggesting the founding of such a Society. The SECRETARY announced the election of Sir Henry H. Howorth, K.C.I.E., D.C.L., F.R.S., as a Vice-President of the Victoria Institute, and of Mr. C. E. Miller as an Associate. The SECRETARY also announced that a Committee of three judges had been appointed to consider the essays sent in for the Gunning Competition, and that they had unanimously selected as the best in scholarship and research the one bearing a motto which afterwards proved to have been that adopted by the Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall, M.A., D.D. The Council had therefore awarded to Dr. Tisdall the prize of £40. The CHAIRMAN said that he was glad to see that the winner of the Gunning Prize was a man of such ripe scholarship as Dr. Tisdall. It was an honour to the Victoria Institute that a man of such learning should have taken part in the competition established under the bequest of the late Dr. Gunning. He had great pleasure in handing the sum of £40 to the Secretary for transmission to Dr. Tisdall with their congratulations. The CHAIRMAN said they were honoured by the presence with them that afternoon of the Right Rev. Bishop Welldon, Dean of Manchester, who had kindly promised to address them on "The Influence of the War on Religious Life in Great Britain." ANNUAL ADDRESS. THE INFLUENCE OF THE WAR ON RELIGIOUS LIFE IN GREAT BRITAIN. By the Right Rev. Bishop J. E. C. WELLDON, D.D., Dean of Manchester. TH HE Christian view of human history is not the same as the secular view. It does not accept or expect, as an historical law, the continuous evolution of humanity from a lower to a higher plane of sentiment and conduct. On the contrary, it looks for certain great periodic convulsions which involve, according to the Scriptural language, "the removing of those things that are shaken. . . . that those things which cannot be shaken may remain." There must, in fact, as Christians hold, be from time to time a dissolution, and then a reconstruction, of society. Thus human history is Scripturally divisible into æons or eras or periods, each of them beginning and each ending with some striking and dominating event. Such events in Jewish history were the Exodus from Egypt, the Captivity, the siege and fall of Jerusalem under Titus. Such, too, in Christian history were the destruction of the Roman Empire, the Reformation, the French Revolution. Such, it may be, is the world-wide warfare of the present day. Nor is there any one of these historical events which has not profoundly modified the character and influence of religion in the world. For every catastrophic occurrence in human history is properly regarded as a Day of God. The Christian differs, then, from the secular historian, as he differs from the scientific explorer, not in rejecting or disputing any fact which falls within the range of observation or induction, but because among or beyond these facts he is always looking for the hand of God. He believes in God not only as the Creator, but as the Sustainer and Director, of the Universe. He waits humbly upon the authority of Divine Providence. It seems to him that mankind is half unconsciously working out the solution of problems, which are ultimately decided by the will of Heaven. In his eyes God controls the main issues of history man can do no more than by filling in the details. The essential severance between the white and the coloured races, or between Oriental and Occidental countries; the ordered progress of civilization from the East to the West; the gradual submission of monarchical and aristocratical governments to democracy-these are facts harmonious with the Will of God, but ultimately independent of human theory or policy. Nor does it lie within the power of human intellect or effort to determine when or how the war now raging over the world shall be brought to a conclusion. Man knows, and can know, only that the war will end; God alone knows what the end will be. Yet it is indisputable that the war, alike in its process and in its issue, must vitally and permanently affect religion. It is worth while, then, to consider what are and will be, as results of the war, the disturbing influences upon the faith of Christendom. To many Christians Christianity itself is an accident of time and place. They are Christians because they were born in a Christian country; because they were educated in Christian homes and schools; because they have never been compelled to make a choice between the Christian and other religions, or even between one Christian Church and other Christian Churches. Sometimes it is argued that people find themselves, by their birth or education, members of a particular Church, and that, where God has set them, they are justified in remaining, if they are not indeed bound there to remain. Belief is comparatively easy, so long as it is not confronted by other beliefs or by negations. But it tends to become more difficult as soon as it is known to be contradicted. A person who spends his life in a rural village may spend it more happily and peacefully than in a great city. For every man is strengthened in his belief, whether political or religious, so long as he lives among people who agree with him. He is, or is apt to be, weakened in such measure as he is brought into contact with disagreement. Accordingly, experience may, and often does, make him more tolerant and more charitable, but it does not make him more firmly convinced of his own opinions. It is probable, then, that one reason of the laxity or flexibility in religion during the last half century has lain in the familiarity of men and women with such ways of thought, of habit and of worship as were unknown to any earlier generation. The means of locomotion and of information, as they have brought the nations of the world more closely together, have, in some degree, impaired the force of national character and of individual faith. Travellers, who have known the life of Mohammedan and pagan nations, have realized the possibility of a civilization widely different from the Christian; and this civilization may have seemed to them, at least in some aspectsas in temperance among orthodox Mohammedans-to be superior to Christian civilization. But foreign travel upon a large scale has, until recently, been the exclusive privilege of the rich, and consequently of the few. Never, I think, in English history, until the outbreak of the present war, except perhaps in the case of the British Army in India, have a large number of citizens been transplanted from their homes in Great Britain to countries where every, or nearly every, usage must have given an abrupt shock to their own prejudices and prepossessions. Private soldiers who have served, not only in India, but in Egypt, in the Dardanelles, and in Africa, cannot have failed to be deeply impressed by their contact with the alien peoples, who were sometimes their friends, sometimes their enemies, but always and everywhere representatives of a civilization alien from their own, or of sheer idolatry and barbarism. When these soldiers come home at the end of the war, they will come with the knowledge that Christianity is not, and, still more, that their own form of Christianity is not, the one religion in the world; that it cannot be taken for granted as the absolute, unique revelation of God; but that it must prove its claim to the allegiance of mankind by the intrinsic superiority of the doctrines which it inculcates, and of the virtues which it creates and fosters in its votaries. In a word, the truth of Christianity has at all times been challenged; but it has never, perhaps, been so widely or so gravely challenged as it will be in many minds, owing to the experiences, voluntarily or involuntarily, gained in the present war. But apart from the effect of contact with foreign life, both secular and spiritual, the men who come back after the war will have passed through deep, crucial times. They will have been emancipated from the bonds of routine at home; they will have spent weeks and months, even years, in the open air; they will have undergone privation and suffering; they will have realized how social inequalities vanish in the trenches and on the battlefield; for it may not seldom have happened that the employer, as a private soldier, has obeyed the orders of a man who, until the war broke out, was serving him in his works and drawing weekly wages from him. These men will have been face to face with death; they will have seen their comrades wounded, crippled, slaughtered on every side; they will have asked themselves, with an intensity unknown before, What is the meaning or value of life? Is death the end of life, and, if not, what lies beyond the river, dark and narrow, which is called death? It is certain that the men, who have so lived and so fought, will never contentedly acquiesce in the old conditions of life. For good or for evil, they will have broken with the limitations of shop or office or factory. It is probable that many of them, when the war is over, will seek the large, free area of the colonies. They will hope and claim to do more, and to be more, than they were of old; to pursue more various careers, and to enjoy more generous opportunities. Nor is there any sphere in which the bracing influence of the war will tell more vividly than in religion. Not a few men, it may be, will have gained a new sense of religion at the Front. It may be an all |