It is great on the
intellectual side, in its science and philosophy, its art and general
culture; and that greatness, too, has been won independently of, or in
defiance of, the clergy. On the moral side only it may plausibly be
connected with its established religion, and here precisely it fails and
approaches barbarism. I do not wonder that the Churches are troubled,
and do not wonder greatly that they are silent.
But while they are silent on the main issue, they have a vast amount to
say about minor issues and secondary aspects. They console and reconcile
their people in a hundred ways. Actually they seem, in a great measure,
to entertain the idea that the Churches are going to emerge from this
trial stronger than ever, and to witness at last that religious revival
which they had almost begun to despair of securing. Let me examine a few
of these clerical pronouncements. I do not choose the eccentric sermons
of ill-educated rural preachers, but the utterances of some of the more
distinguished preachers, reproduced with pride and honour in the leading
religious periodicals. Yet no person can coldly reflect on these
pronouncements and 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.
Pages:
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95