The War and the Churches | Page 2

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 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