The War and the Churches | Page 3

the problem is less simple and more
serious than is often supposed, and I set out to discuss each of them
with some fullness. That the war has no relation to the Churches will
hardly be claimed by anybody. Such a claim would mean that they
were indifferent to one of the very gravest phases of human conduct, or
wholly unable to influence it. Nor can we avoid the issue by pleading
that Christianity approves and blesses a just defensive war, and that,
since the share of this country in the war is entirely just and defensive,
we have no moral problem to consider. I have assuredly no intention of
questioning either the justice of Britain's conduct or the prudence of the
Churches in adapting the maxims of the Sermon on the Mount to the
practical needs of life. If and when a nation sees its life and prosperity
threatened by an ambitious or a jealous neighbour, one cannot but
admire its clergy for joining in the advocacy of an efficient and
triumphant defence. But this is merely a superficial and proximate
consideration. Not the actual war only, but the military system of which
it is the occasional outcome, has a very pertinent relation to religion;
the maintenance of this machinery for settling international quarrels in
an age in which applied science makes it so formidable is a very grave
moral issue. It turns our thoughts at once to those branches of the
Christian Church which claim the predominant share in the moulding
of the conduct of Europe.
But these questions of the efficacy of Christian teaching or the
influence of Christian ministers are not the only or the most interesting
questions suggested by the relation of the war to the prevailing religion.

The great tragedy which darkens the earth to-day raises again in its
most acute form the problem of evil and Providence. More than two
thousand years ago, as Job reminds us, some difficulty was experienced
in justifying the ways of God to men. The most penetrating thinker of
the early Church, St. Augustine, wrestled once more with the problem,
as if no word had been written on it; and he wrestled in vain. A century
and a half ago, when the Lisbon earthquake destroyed forty thousand
Portuguese, Voltaire attempted, with equal unsuccess, to vindicate
Providence with the faint hope of the Deist. Modern science,
prolonging the sufferings of living things over earlier millions of years,
has made that problem one of the great issues of our age, and this dread
spectacle of human nature red in tooth and claw brings it impressively
before us. Is the work of God restricted to counting the hairs of the
head, and not enlarged to check the murderous thoughts in the human
brain? Nay, when we survey those horrid stretches of desolation in
Belgium and Poland and Serbia, where the mutilated bodies of the
innocent, of women and children, lie amidst the ashes of their homes;
when we think of those peaceful sailors of our mercantile marine at the
bottom of the deep, those unoffending civilians whose flesh was torn
by shells, those hundreds of thousands whom patriotic feeling alone has
summoned to the vast tombs of Europe, those millions of homes that
have been darkened by suspense and loss--how can we repeat the
ancient assurance that God does count the hairs of the head and mark
the fall of even the sparrows? Does God move the insensate stars only,
and leave to the less skilful guidance of man those momentous little
atoms which make up the brain of statesmen?
These are reflections which must occur to every thoughtful person in
the later and more meditative phases of a great war, when the eye has
grown somewhat weary of the glitter of steel and the colour of banners,
when the world mourns about us and the long lists of the dead and
longer list of the stupendous waste sober the mind. Something is
gravely wrong with our international life; and, plainly, it is not a
question whether that international life departs from the Christian
standard, but why, after fifteen hundred years of mighty Christian
influence, it does so depart. Is the moral machinery of Europe
ineffective? One certainly cannot say that it has not had a prolonged

trial; yet here, in the twentieth century, we have, in the most terrible
form, one of the most appalling evils which human agency ever
brought upon human hearts. We have to reconsider our religious and
ethical position; to ask ourselves whether, if the influence of religion
has failed to direct men into paths of wisdom and peace, some other
influence may not be found which will prove more persuasive and more
beneficent.
J. M.
Easter, 1915.

CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCHES