Why was this tremendous experience forced upon mankind?
Surely it is a superficial thinker who imagines that the great
Designer of all things has set the whole planet in a ferment, and
strained every nation to exhaustion, in order that this or that
frontier be moved, or some fresh combination be formed in the
kaleidoscope of nations. No, the causes of the convulsion, and
its objects, are more profound than that. They are essentially
religious, not political. They lie far deeper than the national
squabbles of the day. A thousand years hence those national
results may matter little, but the religious result will rule the
world. That religious result is the reform of the decadent
Christianity of to-day, its simplification, its purification, and
its reinforcement by the facts of spirit communion and the clear
knowledge of what lies beyond the exit-door of death. The
shock of the war was meant to rouse us to mental and moral
earnestness, to give us the courage to tear away venerable shams,
and to force the human race to realise and use the vast new
revelation which has been so clearly stated and so abundantly
proved, for all who will examine the statements and proofs with
an open mind.

Consider the awful condition of the world before this
thunder-bolt struck it. Could anyone, tracing back down the
centuries and examining the record of the wickedness of man, find
anything which could compare with the story of the nations during
the last twenty years! Think of the condition of Russia during
that time, with her brutal aristocracy and her drunken democracy,
her murders on either side, her Siberian horrors, her Jew
baitings and her corruption. Think of the figure of Leopold of