It is imposible to convey to the reader the pro-
found impression created by this service. There
was a sense of elemental oneness and religious real-
ity that baffles exposition. Sixteen nationalities,
nineteen religious denominations, the blended
strains of five great civilizations, the humble peas-
ant yonder in the fields, the flowers, the birds, the
illimitable sky, the living here and the living over
there, that myriad martyred host of all the ages
who have died for the world's redemption from
tyranny and sin — all these seemed fused into a
great spiritual unity. ^'Behind and beneath all our
inherited or intellectual differences there is an
identity which is indigenous to the human spirit,
a postulate neither theological nor ecclesiastical,
reached neither by logic nor by experience ; but an
enveloping and penetrating necessity holding us
together as gravitation and cohesion and chemical
affinity bind all physical substances. It may be
described as the instinct for establishing and re-
taining contact with the Supreme Being."

This revelation of the oneness of religious experi-
ence is a distinct gain from the war. The evidence
was on all sides; we could not escape it. There
was another day in particular where this fact was
indelibly stamped upon my mind. I awoke early
one Sunday morning in Boulinville, a small village
just back of the lines in the St. Mihiel sector. The
German guns were dropping shells all about the
region, and every few minutes our own artillery



UNIFYING ELEMENTS 81

would reply. One of our companies had been badly
gassed four days before, and fifty-two men had died
as a result. I felt impelled to go out onto the hill-
top and spend an hour beside the new-made graves.
