The War and the Churches | Page 5

difficulty would, of course, have been for the clergy,
as the supreme representatives of the doctrine of brotherhood, to apply
that doctrine boldly to every part of man's conduct; to pronounce that
all violence and bloodshed were immoral, and to devise a humane
means of settling international quarrels. I will consider in the next
chapter why the Christian leaders failed even to attempt this great
reform. For the moment it is enough to observe that the conditions of
modern times favoured a fresh assertion of the doctrine of brotherhood.
Great as the power of sincere moral idealism has always been, the
historian must recognise that economic changes have had a most
important influence upon the development or acceptance of moral ideas.
Just as in earlier ages the development of forms of life was conditioned
by changes in their material surroundings, so man's moral development
has been profoundly influenced by industrial, commercial, and political
changes.

The destruction of feudalism and the development of the modern
worker were notoriously not due to religious influence, yet they had an
important relation to religious doctrines. Once the new spirit had
asserted its right, the clergy recollected that all men are brothers from
the social as well as the religious point of view. Many of them, and
even some social writers of Christian views, maintain that the new
social order is itself based on or inspired by the religious doctrine of
brotherhood. This speculation is entirely opposed to the historical facts,
but it will easily be realised that when the workers had, in their own
interest, asserted afresh the doctrine of human brotherhood, the
Churches had a new occasion to preach it. How timid and tentative that
preaching was, and even is, we have not to consider here. On the whole
the brotherhood of men was re-affirmed by the Churches both in the
social and religious sense.
This situation makes more violent than ever the contrast between the
political and religious relations of men, and gives a strong prima facie
case to the charge against the Churches which I am considering. It is
wholly artificial and insincere to say that men are brothers socially and
religiously, yet are justified in marching out in millions, with the most
murderous apparatus science can devise, to meet each other on the field
of battle. We condemn crime for social reasons. We have relegated to
the Middle Ages, to which it belongs, the notion that the criminal is a
man who has affronted society, and that society may take a revenge on
him. In the sane conception of our time the criminal is a mischievous
element disturbing the social order, and, in the interest of that order, he
must be isolated or put out of existence. It is not the guilt, but the social
effect, which we regard. And from this point of view a single great war
is far more calamitous than all the crime in Europe during whole
decades. It is estimated by high authorities that if the present war lasts
only twelve months it will cost Europe, directly and indirectly,
including the destruction of property and the loss to industry and
commerce, no less a sum than £9,000,000,000; and it will certainly cost
more than a million, if not more than two million, lives, besides the
incalculable amount of suffering from wounds, loss of relatives,
outrages, and the incidental damage of warfare. The time will come
when historians will study with amazement the wonderful system we

have devised in Europe for the suppression of breaches of the social
order at a time when we complacently suffer these appalling periodical
destructions of the entire social order of nations.
It is quite natural to arraign the Christian Churches in connection with
this disastrous outbreak. Unless they discharge the high task of the
moral direction of men, in international as well as in personal conduct,
they have no raison d'être. Few of them to-day will plead that their
function is merely to interpret to their fellows what they regard as the
revealed word of God. In face of the challenging spirit of our time they
maintain that they discharge a moral mission of such importance that
society is likely to go to pieces if Christianity is abandoned. We
therefore ask very pertinently where they were, and what they were
doing, during the months when the nations of Europe were slowly
advancing toward a declaration of war.
In examining the charge that, for some reason or other, they neglected
their mission at a crisis of supreme importance, we must recall that few
of us believed that a great war would occur until we actually heard the
declaration. No indictment of the clergy is valid which presupposes that
they are more sagacious or far-seeing than the rest of us. Yet, however
much we