War & Peace Quote by George Meredith

A battle cry disguised as a prayer, "Bring the army of the faithful through" compresses Meredith's moral universe into one marching line. He doesn't ask for victory, or even clarity; he asks for passage. That verb, "bring", quietly relocates agency outside the self, suggesting the faithful are not merely brave but carried, escorted, hauled across something dangerous. It's less triumphal than it first sounds: the phrase is about endurance, about surviving the middle of the ordeal.

Calling them an "army" is the sly pivot. Meredith, the Victorian novelist of social intelligence and hard-earned idealism, understood that belief is never purely private. Faith organizes people; it recruits. In an age of empire, churchgoing, and industrial discipline, the metaphor borrows the era's most legible structure of obedience and sacrifice. It makes conviction look like coordination. At the same time, "army" hints at coercion: once you are in ranks, the cost of dissent rises.

"Of the faithful" sharpens the line between those who belong and those who don't. Meredith often wrote about the fierce etiquette of communities - who gets counted, who is judged, who is forgiven. The phrase flatters solidarity while smuggling in exclusion. It's not "the army through", it's the faithful through: virtue becomes the password, survival the reward.

The power here is its ambiguity: it can read as spiritual supplication, political exhortation, even romantic encouragement in the Meredith vein. Its context is Victorian confidence cracked by doubt; its subtext is that faith is less a feeling than a formation, and getting through requires both belief and bodies in step.