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subject to be discussed was rather an abstruse one. It was a book on
philosophy and religion called “Mens Creatrix” by a very well known
man in England, Sir William Temple, which had just appeared. The
chairman of the meeting was a Congregationalist, a member of Mans-
field College. The author of the paper was a Franciscan friar, a very
learned Franciscan, who lives in Oxford. Amongst the people who
took part in the discussion was one of the most brilliant of Jesuits,
Father Martindale, a Benedictine father or two, and three or four
members of various denominations, such as Methodists and Presby-
terians, etc., and several members of the Church of England, belonging
to different parties in the Church of England. The questions discussed
were very profound ones, such, for instance, as the purpose of the In-
carnation. Now I want you to observe two things. They are, firstly,
that if I had not been told beforehand to what branches of the church
the members belonged, who took part in the discussion, I should have
guessed entirely wrong, because the most profound divergence that was
developed during the discussion was not between the Roman Catholics
and Protestants, not between the Church and nonconformists, but be-
tween the Jesuits on the one hand and the Franciscans and Benedictines
on the other. The second point is that twenty years ago, thirty years ago,
such a meeting in Oxford would have been wholly inconceivable. It would
have been impossible to get members of these various religious bodies
to join together for the discussion of theological problems, and if you
had brought them together it would have reminded you rather, I think,
of an Irish fair. But here we were, all gathered together, seniors and
undergraduates—they were mostly undergraduates—discussing the thing
with perfect courtesy, perfect good temper, and yet perfect loyalty to
their own principles. You know, when that sort of thing is possible
we are in measurable distance of a union.

What has really come about in the universities is this: There has been
an immense revival of interest in theological studies in England, in
theological studies in the strict sense, and above all, in what I venture
to call the borderland of philosophy and theology. It is one of the things
people are keenest about at the present moment in the university, and
theological scholars have come to cooperate with one another, to join
gladly in editing books, although they belong to different churches, and
that is teaching them how unimportant are the things that divide, com-
pared with the great things to be overcome.

The second matter is the movement that has originated at the front
amongst the soldiers, because the soldiers there have been brought into
contact with realities, and the grimmest realities, and they are natu-
rally asking inconvenient questions. They are asking such questions as:

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