But this is merely a superficial and proximate
consideration. Not the actual war only, but the military system of which
it is the occasional outcome, has a very pertinent relation to religion;
the maintenance of this machinery for settling international quarrels in
an age in which applied science makes it so formidable is a very grave
moral issue. It turns our thoughts at once to those branches of the
Christian Church which claim the predominant share in the moulding of
the conduct of Europe.
But these questions of the efficacy of Christian teaching or the
influence of Christian ministers are not the only or the most
interesting questions suggested by the relation of the war to the
prevailing religion. The great tragedy which darkens the earth to-day
raises again in its most acute form the problem of evil and Providence.
More than two thousand years ago, as _Job_ reminds us, some difficulty
was experienced in justifying the ways of God to men. The most
penetrating thinker of the early Church, St. Augustine, wrestled once
more with the problem, as if no word had been written on it; and he
wrestled in vain. A century and a half ago, when the Lisbon earthquake
destroyed forty thousand Portuguese, Voltaire attempted, with equal
unsuccess, to vindicate Providence with the faint hope of the Deist.
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