A great many good people may have
derived spiritual advantages from the war, but the price was stupendous,
and we would rather they got their spiritual advantages in another way.
These questions and reflections must surely arise, and they will lead to
larger reflections. Men will perceive the antithesis I pointed out
between all that is claimed for Christianity in Europe and the actual
condition of Europe; between the supposed luminous traces of the finger
of God in the non-human world and the complete absence of them from the
human world. From the samples of clerical eloquence which we have
examined, we can hardly suppose that the clergy will have great success
in meeting the inquirers. An enormous proportion of their followers, of
course, will not ask questions, or will be satisfied with anything in
the nature of an answer. I heard a group of men discussing the subject
in a rural ale-house, and the most intelligent man in the group, to
whom, as an educated visitor, the natives looked up with respect, said:
"War is God's way of purifying and bracing nations from time to time."
This sort of stuff pacifies hundreds of thousands: like the stuff that
Archbishop Carr found it possible to put before his Australian
Catholics.
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