The War and the Churches | Page 2

Church. In
the great cities--and it is undoubted that the life of a nation is mainly
controlled by its cities--there has been an increasing reluctance to listen
to the authoritative exponents of the Christian gospel.
A number of the clergy have very naturally noticed and stressed this
coincidence. Prelates of high authority have, as we shall see, even
declared that the war is a scourge deliberately laid on the back of
mankind by the Almighty on account of this spreading infidelity. As a
rule, the clergy shrink from advocating a theory which has such grave
implications as this has, and they are content to submit the more
plausible suggestion, that the decay of the Christian standard of
conduct in the mind of a large proportion of our generation accounts for
this tragic combat of nations. A distinguished Positivist writer, Mr. J.
Cotter Morison, commenting in the last generation on the decay of
Christian belief, expressed some such concern in the following terms:
"It would be rash to expect that a transition, unprecedented for its width
and difficulty, from theology to positivism, from the service of God to
the service of Man, could be accomplished without jeopardy. Signs are
not wanting that the prevalent anarchy in thought is leading to anarchy
in morals. Numbers who have put off belief in God have not put on
belief in Humanity. A common and lofty standard of duty is being
trampled down in the fierce battle of incompatible principles."[1]
It is true that in the work from which I quote[1] the learned, if
somewhat nervous, Positivist does not, by his masterly survey of the
moral history of Europe, afford us the least reason to think that we have
really deteriorated from the standard of conduct set us by earlier

generations, but his words do tend to press on our notice the claim of
many writers, clerical and non-clerical, that we are returning from
Christianity to Paganism, from a settled moral discipline to an
unhealthy moral scepticism. Can one entirely and safely reconstruct the
bases of personal and national conduct in one or two generations?
This very plain and plausible theory is, however, exposed to criticism
from other points of view. The clergy as a body are not at all willing to
concede that the decay of belief has spread as far as the theory would
suggest. In order to suppose that the life of Europe has, in a matter of
the gravest importance, been directed by a non-Christian spirit, one
must assume that at least the majority in each nation have deserted the
traditional creed. It is by no means conceded or established that the
fighting nations have ceased to be predominantly Christian. Indeed, if
we confine the awful responsibility for this tragedy, as the evidence
compels us, to Germany and Austria-Hungary, we are casting it upon
the two nations which have been the chief representatives in Europe of
the two leading branches of the Church. Most assuredly no prelate of
either country would admit that his nation has ceased to be Christian or
surrendered its life to non-Christian impulses; and in our own country
we have frequently been assured of late years that the real power of
Christianity was never greater.
Clearly these conflicting claims and this contrast of profession and
practice suggest a problem that deserves consideration. The problem
becomes the more interesting, and the plausible theory of non-Christian
responsibility is even more severely shaken, when we reflect that war is
not an innovation of this unbelieving age, but a legacy from the earlier
and more thoroughly Christian period. Had mankind departed from
some admirable practice of submitting its international quarrels to a
religious arbitrator, and in our own times devised this horrible
arbitrament of the sword, we should be more disposed to seek the cause
in a contemporary enfeeblement of moral standards. This is notoriously
not the case. Men have warred, and priests have blessed the banners
which were to wave over fields of blood, from the very beginning of
Christian influence, not to speak of earlier religious epochs. There is
assuredly a ghastly magnitude about modern war which almost lends it

an element of novelty, but the appearance is illusory. That intense
employment of resources which makes modern war so sanguinary tends
also to shorten its duration. No military struggle could now be
prolonged into the period of the Napoleonic wars; to say nothing of the
Thirty Years War, which involved the death, with every circumstance
of ferocity, of immensely larger numbers than could be affected by any
modern war. Nor may we forget that it is the modern spirit which has
claimed some alleviation of the horrors of the field, and that the
majority of the nations engaged in the present struggle have observed
the new rules.
These considerations show that