Yet such things as these are the only claims we have offered to us of
the action of God in human events. Neither the steps that man takes
onward nor the steps that he takes backward are ascribed to divine
influence. All that is claimed is that when a ship goes down, for
instance, he saves the saved, and "permits" the rest to be drowned; when
a war has been raging for a few months by his "permission," he puts a
stop to it when one army is worn out. The unbeliever is really entitled
to a good deal of sympathy for his inability to follow this tortuous
reasoning with confidence. One cannot entirely blame him for being more
interested in the heart of man than in the petals of a rose.
These considerations are, of course, not novel. I am only applying to
this special case of the war a difficulty that has been discussed in all
ages, and has been acutely felt by very able religious thinkers. How a
group of bishops can sit down to write, in very deliberate and elegant
language, that such a calamity as this makes the soul more sensible of
"the approach of Christ" is one of the many little mysteries of the
clerical mind. It has precisely the opposite effect in any logical mind.
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