Page:The War and the Churches.djvu/70

52 lawlessness, did not enter the mind of Christianity. It was born of the secular humanitarian spirit of modern times.

For any serious person this is the gravest charge which the clergy have to meet, and they one and all evade it. The civilisation of Europe has a unique greatness on its material side; in its applied science, its engineering, its industries, its commerce. For that, assuredly, the Churches are not in any degree responsible. Our civilisation is unique also in its political power, its mastery over other peoples; and for that again the Churches are not responsible. It is great on the intellectual side, in its science and philosophy, its art and general culture; and that greatness, too, has been won independently of, or in defiance of, the clergy. On the moral side only it may plausibly be connected with its established religion, and here precisely it fails and approaches barbarism. I do not wonder that the Churches are troubled, and do not wonder greatly that they are silent.

But while they are silent on the main issue, they have a vast amount to say about minor issues and secondary aspects. They console and reconcile their people in a hundred ways. Actually they seem, in a great measure, to entertain the idea that the Churches are going to emerge from this trial stronger than ever, and to witness at last that religious revival which they had almost begun to despair of securing. Let me examine a few of these clerical pronouncements. I do not choose the eccentric sermons of ill-educated rural preachers, but the utterances of some of the more distinguished preachers, reproduced with pride and honour in the leading religious periodicals. Yet no person can coldly reflect on these pronouncements and