Page:War and the Christian Faith.pdf/21

Rh The ordinary man, confronted by the daily problems of ordinary life, perceives that there are daily difficulties, daily obscurities, daily contradictions. Being a moderately sensible fellow, he makes the best of all these difficulties and contradictions, and, practically, gets on pretty well. He is bewildered, but he survives. But there are men who find life so intolerable that they take refuge in delirium tremens. They fly from—creditors, let us say—who are there, to snakes and rats which are not there. And that, I think, is a pretty good analogy of the atheistic solution of the universe. And, in relation to this question of "God and the War," let it be remarked that we have not to choose between the easy atheistic hypothesis and the hard orthodox hypothesis. Both are hard; only one is hopeless. It is hard, indeed, as a soldier said