They do not, and would, on the contrary, soon reduce to silence
any religious crank who proposed it. They know perfectly well that the
cases of "spiritual advantage" from illness bear no proportion whatever
to the amount of suffering in the world. Slight but painful illnesses
rarely have any beneficent effect on character; very frequently the
reverse. Any large city, at any given moment, is racked with pains which
do but give rise to curses, or a polite equivalent. Most of the
irritation and perversion of character is due to morbid influences. And
for every case in which a long illness issues in some signal advance of
character, a hundred others could be quoted in which the illness was an
unmitigated calamity. So it is with bereavement and with adversity of
fortune. Look honestly into the experience of any class of the
community, and ask in what _proportion_ of cases narrowness of means,
especially after comfort, brings a "spiritual advantage."
So it is above all with this war. Any man who thinks that the awful
perversion of the character of a great European people, the death of
such vast numbers in such painful circumstances, the ruin of further
millions, and all the innumerable ugly results of a great war, were
worth bringing about in order to secure a few spiritual advantages has
neither sense of proportion nor sense of decency nor sense of humour.
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