Could the God of
Professor Clow find no other way of removing Germany's arrogance than to
sear and blast it with a world-war and involve millions of innocent
along with the guilty in his lakes of fire and blood?
More important, however, is a sermon delivered before the recent
National Free Church Council by one of the most esteemed Nonconformist
preachers, the Rev. J. H. Rushbrooke, and reproduced admiringly in the
Nonconformist journals. The cloud of war, naturally, brooded over this
gathering of ministers. Some of them heroically closed their eyes to it
and went on with their clerical business as usual. But most of the
speakers seem to have felt that all other issues were thrust aside in
the minds of their followers just now, and that a grave and soul-shaking
question possessed them. As a result we have, I suppose, the finest
efforts of Nonconformity to meet that question and save the prestige of
the Churches.
Mr. Rushbrooke frankly described the war as an overwhelming catastrophe,
gravely disturbing the religious mind. It bore witness, he said, to "the
failure of organised, or disorganised, Christianity." He conceived it as
"God's judgment upon the Church's failure seriously to devote herself
to the great cause of peace on earth and good-will among men.
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