MUNITIONS OF PRAYER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1557, 30 May 1916, Page 4

MUNITIONS OF PRAYER.

FATHER VAUGHAN TO ALL ENGLAND.

“While mir khaki men tire in Hie trenehes I have felt that we ought to he in the benches. While they, with their quiekfiring guns, are mowing down the enemy, we ought with ours to be storming hea.ven. But I fear we lack the munitions of prayer.”

In this fashion Father Bernard Vaughan opened a conference on “The Call of the War to Prayer.” Among those present were King Manuel and Queen Augusta, Queen Amelie, the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, the Japanese Ambassador and Marchioness Inouye, and many other well-known people. “When the thought for this conference first entered my brain,” explained Father Vaughan, “I said to our Divine Lord, ‘I am going to have a conference, and I want you to till the hall. If you (ill it I take it for granted that you want more prayer. If it is empty it may he for the humiliation of my soul, and I promise you not to try this sort of thing again.’ When 1 learned that Hit 1 hall was hooked up,” he added, “I really felt it was a pat on the hack from our blessed Lord, and I fell that He wants this sort of thing.” “What does England think of God was one of the points of the address. People said that if God was almighty He would stop the war ; if He was all-loving he would certainly do so. He argued on the contrary that, being almighty, God permitted the war, and being allloving, He was drawing good out of it.

Concerning the “Angels of Mons,”

Father Vaughan told a story for which he quoted Lord Portnrlington as authority. A distinguished officer of the Irish Guards, “a man of matter-of-fact habits,” was sitting at his headquarters at the front when a nun entered the room and told him that we could not win the war unless wc prayed more. The officer dismissed her, and the next day complained to the Mother at the neighbouring convent, The Mother denied that any of ihe nuns were out at the time, and in order to prove this, summoned them all for the 'officer to identify the visitor. He was unable to do so, but as ho left the room he. saw a portrait on the wall. “That is the lady,” he told the Mother. “But she is dead,” was the reply. “She was the Reverend Mother of the Convent, and one upon whom we placed great reliance.”

“God mm do these things,” added Father Vaughan* “and even if they are not true, (hat should set us thinking, and make us put our house in order.”