"I said to my
son when he set out," she observed, with a laugh, to her neighbour,
"that it was far better for him to get shot than to die of diphtheria or
something at home." If that sentiment, that obtuseness to the massive
horrors of war even when a son was involved, is widespread, the outlook
is dark. One fears that it is not very promising.
The lady I quote would read these pages, if she could constrain herself
to do so, with a genuine shudder. Abandon Christianity! She would
volubly reel off the eloquent forecasts of the doom of society which she
has heard from a hundred pulpits. Meantime she is one of the gravest
obstacles (as a type of her class) to the removal from society of one of
its most crushing burdens and most criminal usages. To me her class
illustrates the limitations of Christianity, and it confirms me in the
belief that we shall make more rapid progress without it. She was a lady
of keen sympathies and of great activity for others: the kind of woman
who, as she would put it, practised her Christianity. Yet in face of
this mighty disorder she showed at once the failure of Christianity and
the reason of it. Her genuine human sympathy was directed by an ancient
and outworn code of duties.
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