Page:The War and the Churches.djvu/98

 of proportion nor sense of decency nor sense of humour. The theory would be too repulsive if it were put in this plain form, and it is more usual merely to point out these good results and hint that war is not absolutely and in every respect an evil. As if any person ever said that it was. The point is simple, and ought not to be obscured. A few incidental advantages do not reconcile us to this colossal misery, suffering, and waste, and do not in the slightest degree alleviate the position of the man who thinks that God directed human events to this awful consummation. If an earthly ruler employed such agencies to educate his subjects, with such an extraordinary disproportion between the suffering inflicted and the results attained, what should we think of him?

The parallel reminds us that of infinite wisdom we expect infinitely more than of a human ruler. Once unintelligent nature had a crude, wasteful, hard method of producing new and higher types of life. Man, having intelligence, produces the same result without waste or suffering. We expect immeasurably higher procedure of such an intelligence as Christians ascribe to God. One can understand the man who says that the plan of such an intelligence might be beyond human ken, but I am discussing the opinions of people who contend that they bring it within human ken. In fact, there is no need here to remind us of the mysteriousness of the ways of an infinite intelligence. If the war was designed for certain practical uses, such as those we have had suggested by various divines, one may reply at once that a more brutal and unjust way of attaining those ends could not have been devised. It is almost impossible to conceive any man seriously entertaining the notion.