Has Christianity succeeded?
But the religious interest of the war is by no means exhausted when we
have concluded that it marks, in one of the most important departments
of human action, the complete failure of historical Christianity. My
purpose is to discuss this relation to the Churches, and it would not be
completed unless I considered the war in relation to their fundamental
doctrine, the moral government of the universe by a Supreme Being. In a
few months, we hope, the war will be over: the Allies will have
triumphed. We know, from experience and from history, what will follow
in the Churches. From end to end of Britain, from Dover to Penzance and
from Southampton to Aberdeen, there will rise a jubilant cry that God
has blessed our arms and awarded us the victory. Now that we are in the
midst of the horrors and burdens of the war God is little mentioned. One
would imagine that the great majority of the clergy conceived him as
standing aside, for some inscrutable reason, and letting wicked men
deploy their perverse forces. When the triumph comes, gilding the past
sacrifices or driving them from memory, God will be on every lip. The
whole nation will be implored to come and kneel before the altars.
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