Page:The War and the Churches.djvu/99

 Yet all the jubilation and thanksgiving that will follow the war, all the supplication that accompanies its fortunes to-day, and the whole teaching of Christian theology, imply that God did direct the political movements and military ambitions which have culminated in the war. Even a human statesman could have devised a less terrible method of attaining any end that has yet been conceived for the war. The idea of the war as a punishment is quite logical and intelligible, though five hundred years out of date. But the idea of the war as a medicinal or an educative process has neither logic nor intelligibility, and does not even attain that consistency with modern ethical sentiments which it seeks. The colossal amount of suffering inflicted on innocent people and on children puts it entirely out of court.

Thirdly, this theory, as I said, raises the question whether the end justifies the means. Here we have another illustration of the way in which Christian dogma keeps the Christian conscience in many matters behind the ethical sentiment of the age. Many liberal divines would express genuine repugnance at Archbishop Carr's view of the war; yet some of the most liberal of these divines and laymen are almost as backward in another direction. They justify the world-process through which we are struggling on the ground that it will, we hope, issue in a nobler order of things: of the war, in particular, that hope is entertained, and to the war, accordingly, this theory of justification is applied. That is a case of the end justifying the means. Christian thinkers are advancing so rapidly and erratically that in some cases we are not clear whether the writer does or does not regard God as infinite in power and intelligence. We may