Page:The War and the Churches.djvu/71

Rh fail to realise that our generation acts not unnaturally in passing by the open doors of the Churches; that the clergy are, as usual, shirking the most serious questions of the modern intelligence, and trusting mainly to profit by the heated and disordered and confusing emotions of the hour.

One of the most extraordinary of these deliverances reaches me from Australia, but as it comes from one of the leading prelates of the Commonwealth and does assuredly express what multitudes of preachers are saying everywhere, I do not hesitate to give it prominence. Archbishop Carr, of Melbourne, set out in the middle of the war to enlighten his followers, and his words are reported with great deference in the Melbourne Age (December 28th). The prelate observed that he had "very strong ideas about the war" (I quote the words of the Age), and "did not believe it had happened by accident, or by the chance action of some king or emperor." He believed that "the great God who provided for all human creatures, through the war was punishing sin that had prevailed for a long time, particularly in the shape of infidelity." The Archbishop proved from history and the Bible that war did come sometimes as a punishment of sin, and he concluded, or the journal thus summarises his conclusion:

"The reason that God was using the present war for the punishment of the nations was that for a very considerable time there had been not merely neglect of the worship and service of God, which had always existed to a greater or less extent, but a regular upraising of human light and human understanding and human will against the existence of the providence of God. It was not so common among us here [it is just as common], but there were countries in Europe in