Part 2 (1/2)

CHAPTER III

THE APOLOGIES OF THE CLERGY

Any person who cares to read the reports of the utterances of our clergy in the current religious periodicals will recognise that they are painfully conscious of the reproach which this war implies. One constantly finds them repeating that in this year of tragedy ”Christianity has failed” and ”the gospel has broken in our hands.” It had been their boast that Christianity had civilised Europe, and none of them has the audacity or indecency to claim, as some writers have done, that such a war is in harmony with the principles and ideals of civilisation. They have preached brotherhood and peace, and the greater part of Christendom is engaged in a strife of the most terrible nature.

It is not a struggle of Christian and infidel; it is a struggle of Christian and Christian, and one or several of the Christian nations involved are guilty of a crime greater in magnitude than all the murders in Europe during a decade. Above all patriotism, above all immediate anxiety, above all argumentation about responsibility, this grim fact stands out and reproaches them: after fifteen hundred years of Christian preaching Europe is locked in the bloodiest struggle of all time.

During the last fifty or hundred years the clergy have developed some expertness in making apologies. They have lived in a world of anxious questions and heated charges, and a special department called Apologetics has been added to theology. They are, it is true, sorely perplexed, divided in counsel, uneasy as to their procedure. Some would ignore the pertinacious outsider and persuade their followers that he is negligible; others would sustain an energetic campaign against him. Some would openly and candidly meet the questions of their followers; others would prefer not to unsettle the large number who never ask questions.

At the present juncture it is impossible to be wholly silent. Some of the clergy, it seems--I learn this from the recorded words of eminent preachers--wish to ignore the war and go on with their business as usual. But the majority feel that such a procedure is dangerous. This violent breach of Christian principles by Christian nations requires some explanation. Where is the long-boasted moral influence of Christianity? Where is the all-loving ruler of the universe? Let us examine some of the apologies of the preachers.

Let me confess that, from a long experience of this apologetic branch of theology, I am not surprised to find that not a single speaker or writer--as far as my reading of their utterances goes--fairly meets the main difficulty. Most of them, naturally, are content to plead that the war has been forced on Europe by Germany, and that therefore no responsibility lies on Christianity as a whole for the tragedy and the moral failure it involves. A large number of them go even farther. They point to the heroic sacrifices made in defence of an ideal by France, Belgium, England, and Russia--the millions of men streaming to the battle-field, the millions of women bravely enduring the suspense and the loss, the millions who generously open their purses to every philanthropic enterprise--and they acclaim this as a triumph of Christian civilisation. As to the failure of Christianity in Germany to stand the test, they either point superficially to the growth of Rationalism, Biblical Criticism, and Socialism in that country, or they take refuge in the confusions of the extreme pacifists and refuse to a.s.sign responsibility at all, or they persuade themselves that a small minority of men who were not Christians deluded the German people into consenting to the war. In any case, they insist that Christianity as a whole is not impeached. a.s.sume that Austria was dragged into the war by Germany, and you have four Christian nations--five, if one includes Serbia--behaving with great gallantry and entire propriety, and only one Christian nation misbehaving.

There is no doubt that this is the common religious att.i.tude, but it does not satisfy some of the more thoughtful and earnest preachers. This optimism seems to them rebuked by the very fact that Christendom is in a state of war to which Paganism can offer no parallel. They think of the lands beyond the sea to which they have been sending the Christian message of peace and brotherhood. They fancy they see China and j.a.pan smiling their faint but distressing smile at the situation in Christian Europe. They have a.s.sured all these distant peoples that their faith has built up a s.h.i.+ning civilisation in Europe, and now there flash and quiver through the nerves of the world the daily messages of horror, of fierce hatred, of appalling carnage, of the wanton destruction by Christians of Christian temples. The Gospel has, somehow, broken down in Europe, they regretfully admit.

But they never go beyond this vague admission and boldly state the sin of the Churches. One would imagine that, in spite of its obvious and lamentable failure, they still thought that their predecessors had been justified in preaching only the general terms of the Christian gospel and never applying it to war. One would fancy that they are so unacquainted with history as to suppose that during the long ages of the past the Churches were really frowning on violence and warfare, instead of blessing and employing it. They fear to draw out in its full proportion the inefficacy (because of its vagueness) of the gospel and the long perversion of its ministers. Yet we cannot evade this fundamental fact of the situation, that this particular war is an outcome of a general military system, and the Churches have a very grave responsibility for the maintenance of that system until the twentieth century. We all know how the technical moral theologian of recent times has glossed the complacency of his Church. He has drawn a distinction between offensive and defensive war, and, since the latter is obviously just, he has maintained that armies are rightly raised to wage it when necessary. On this petty fallacy the Churches have so long reconciled themselves to militarism, and have, in fact, been amongst its closest allies. The clergy did not, or would not, see that the retention of the military system was in itself the surest provocation of offensive war; that ambition or covetousness could almost always find a moral pretext for aggression, and that there have been comparatively few priests in the history of Europe who ever stood out and unmasked the hypocrisy of such monarchs. As long as the military system lasted, it was certain that wars would take place, yet they never denounced the system. The great conception of subst.i.tuting justice for violence, law for lawlessness, did not enter the mind of Christianity. It was born of the secular humanitarian spirit of modern times.

For any serious person this is the gravest charge which the clergy have to meet, and they one and all evade it. The civilisation of Europe has a unique greatness on its material side; in its applied science, its engineering, its industries, its commerce. For that, a.s.suredly, the Churches are not in any degree responsible. Our civilisation is unique also in its political power, its mastery over other peoples; and for that again the Churches are not responsible. It is great on the intellectual side, in its science and philosophy, its art and general culture; and that greatness, too, has been won independently of, or in defiance of, the clergy. On the moral side only it may plausibly be connected with its established religion, and here precisely it fails and approaches barbarism. I do not wonder that the Churches are troubled, and do not wonder greatly that they are silent.

But while they are silent on the main issue, they have a vast amount to say about minor issues and secondary aspects. They console and reconcile their people in a hundred ways. Actually they seem, in a great measure, to entertain the idea that the Churches are going to emerge from this trial stronger than ever, and to witness at last that religious revival which they had almost begun to despair of securing. Let me examine a few of these clerical p.r.o.nouncements. I do not choose the eccentric sermons of ill-educated rural preachers, but the utterances of some of the more distinguished preachers, reproduced with pride and honour in the leading religious periodicals. Yet no person can coldly reflect on these p.r.o.nouncements and fail to realise that our generation acts not unnaturally in pa.s.sing by the open doors of the Churches; that the clergy are, as usual, s.h.i.+rking the most serious questions of the modern intelligence, and trusting mainly to profit by the heated and disordered and confusing emotions of the hour.

One of the most extraordinary of these deliverances reaches me from Australia, but as it comes from one of the leading prelates of the Commonwealth and does a.s.suredly express what mult.i.tudes of preachers are saying everywhere, I do not hesitate to give it prominence. Archbishop Carr, of Melbourne, set out in the middle of the war to enlighten his followers, and his words are reported with great deference in the Melbourne _Age_ (December 28th). The prelate observed that he had ”very strong ideas about the war” (I quote the words of the _Age_), and ”did not believe it had happened by accident, or by the chance action of some king or emperor.” He believed that ”the great G.o.d who provided for all human creatures, through the war was punis.h.i.+ng sin that had prevailed for a long time, particularly in the shape of infidelity.” The Archbishop proved from history and the Bible that war did come sometimes as a punishment of sin, and he concluded, or the journal thus summarises his conclusion:

”The reason that G.o.d was using the present war for the punishment of the nations was that for a very considerable time there had been not merely neglect of the wors.h.i.+p and service of G.o.d, which had always existed to a greater or less extent, but a regular upraising of human light and human understanding and human will against the existence of the providence of G.o.d. It was not so common among us here [it is just as common], but there were countries in Europe in which the spirit of infidelity and the absence of supernatural faith had been increasing for many years. Men were coming to think they were quite sufficient in themselves for the working out of their own destinies, but the war had come, and it was humbling such men.”

Archbishop Carr is not adduced here as a representative type of clerical culture. On what grounds the Roman Catholic authorities select men like him and the late Cardinal Moran to preside over the destinies of their Church in our great and promising Commonwealth is not clear. In the course of this important sermon, in which he is delivering his very personal and mature conclusions on the greatest issue of the hour, the Archbishop observed that ”the Roman Empire had been attacked by Attila”

and ”Attila scourged the Romans for the crimes of which they had for a long while been guilty.” One is surprised that he did not add the pretty legend of the awe-stricken Hun retreating before the majestic figure of Pope Leo I. However, most of us are aware that, as a student in any college of Australia ought to be able to inform the Archbishop, Attila never reached within two hundred miles of Rome, and that the Pagan Romans, whom the Archbishop obviously has in mind, had been extinguished long before the monarch of the Huns was born. There is no greater historical scholars.h.i.+p in the other proofs which the prelate brings in support of his thesis that war is often deliberately sent as a punishment.

But what are we to make of the moral standards of an eminent prelate of the Roman Church who can hold and express so appalling a theory? It is based on the moral standard of the Prussian officer, of the medieval torturer. The majority of clergymen have at length come to realise, tardily and reluctantly, that the man or woman who rejects the creeds they offer may quite possibly not believe in them. The practice of describing a refusal to a.s.sent to the doctrine of h.e.l.l and heaven as a wilful rebellion of pa.s.sion against the restraining influences of Christianity is going out of fas.h.i.+on. Christian people were meeting too many heretics in the flesh, and did not recognise the thing described from the pulpit. The st.u.r.dy Archbishop will have none of this pampering.

Unbelief is a matter of the will as well as the understanding. And he actually believes that G.o.d guided the thoughts of William II in engineering this war--believes it for a reason a hundred times worse than the Kaiser's idea. He believes that G.o.d sent on Europe a war that will cost 10,000,000,000, that is blasting the homes and embittering the hearts of millions, that mingles the innocent and guilty in one common and fearful desolation, that sends millions to a premature death amidst circ.u.mstances which do not lend themselves to a devout preparation, that is raising storms of hatred and perverting the souls of millions, because a few other millions refuse to go to church. It would be difficult to conceive a cruder and more barbarous idea. Attila did not scourge the Romans, but he did scourge other peoples; and we hold him up to execration for ever for it. But Archbishop Carr, and many other preachers, think that an all-holy and all-intelligent G.o.d can do infinitely worse than Attila. He is going to punish the unbelievers in eternal fire when they die: meantime he will make a h.e.l.l on earth for the innocent as well as the supposed guilty, the child and the mother as well as the free-thinking father. Of a truth, it is not surprising that a reluctance to listen to sermons has spread to Melbourne, and that men are wondering whether they had better not take in hand their own destinies rather than entrust them to such spiritual guides as this.

Note, particularly, in pa.s.sing the emphasis which the Archbishop puts on the determination of our generation to control its own destinies. Until the nineteenth century men entrusted their destinies, on the moral side, to guides like Archbishop Carr. I have described the result. In the nineteenth century there began this practice, which the Archbishop thinks worthy of so inhuman a chastis.e.m.e.nt, of men attending to their own moral interests. Of this also I have described the result. The moral sentiment of Europe has greatly improved, and there is at least a widespread revolt against warfare and a prospect of abolis.h.i.+ng it. For this G.o.d, the more than human, scorched Europe with the horrible flames which Archbishop Carr thinks he keeps in his a.r.s.enal of torture-implements. The Archbishop says that infidelity has not spread so much in Australia. I should, if I were not well acquainted with the Commonwealth, be disposed to see in that the reason why eminent prelates can still utter such gross medieval nonsense in that country.

In England this particularly crude type of nonsense is not usually uttered by preachers of distinction,[2] though it is common enough among less responsible preachers; but there is a dangerous approach to it in some of the sermons which the religious periodicals regard as important. Looking over the current issues of the religious press, I notice a sermon on the war by Professor Clow, in which the Allies are, in harmony with his test, described as ”the vultures of G.o.d.” Germany, it seems, is the prey, and Germany's sins are painted black. Professor Clow, it is true, shrinks from the very natural implication of his words, but he clearly intimates that he sees the action of G.o.d in the military conduct of the Allies, and to that extent he is hardly less revolting, in view of his culture, than the archbishop. Could the G.o.d of Professor Clow find no other way of removing Germany's arrogance than to sear and blast it with a world-war and involve millions of innocent along with the guilty in his lakes of fire and blood?

More important, however, is a sermon delivered before the recent National Free Church Council by one of the most esteemed Nonconformist preachers, the Rev. J. H. Rushbrooke, and reproduced admiringly in the Nonconformist journals. The cloud of war, naturally, brooded over this gathering of ministers. Some of them heroically closed their eyes to it and went on with their clerical business as usual. But most of the speakers seem to have felt that all other issues were thrust aside in the minds of their followers just now, and that a grave and soul-shaking question possessed them. As a result we have, I suppose, the finest efforts of Nonconformity to meet that question and save the prestige of the Churches.

Mr. Rushbrooke frankly described the war as an overwhelming catastrophe, gravely disturbing the religious mind. It bore witness, he said, to ”the failure of organised, or disorganised, Christianity.” He conceived it as ”G.o.d's judgment upon the Church's failure seriously to devote herself to the great cause of peace on earth and good-will among men.” With all their boasts of what Christianity had done in Europe, it now appeared that that civilisation was raised upon ”foundations of sand.” The preacher claimed that much was being done in modern times by the clergy to promote international amity, but he seemed to feel that it was little and was _very_ recent. The spectacle unfolded before us in Europe to-day is a sufficient proof of its inadequacy. And, as Mr. Rushbrooke said, we now see how little use it is to preach ideals at home and not apply them to the common life of the world.

These words are the nearest to wisdom that I have found among a large collection of pulpit-utterances and religious articles. The preacher plainly sees, and with some measure of candour confesses, that long remissness of Christian ministers in applying their principles to which the war, and all wars, are fundamentally due. The record which he carefully makes of recent efforts to redeem the failure is paltry in comparison with the resources even of the Free Churches, and only serves to bring out more clearly the awful neglect of Christian ministers during the long ages when they had a mighty power in Europe. But Mr.

Rushbrooke makes one grave error. He feels that not merely the relation of the war to Christianity, but its relation to G.o.d, is engaging public attention, and he stumbles into the theory that G.o.d sent the war. It is ”G.o.d's judgment on the Church's failure.” We must suppose that Mr.

Rushbrooke did not literally mean what he said. His words imply a theory of the war more monstrous even than that of Archbishop Carr. To punish Europe for the sins of unbelievers has at least a genuine medieval plausibility about it; but to send this indescribable plague on the nations of Europe because the clergy failed to do their duty.... One must really a.s.sume that Mr. Rushbrooke did not mean what he said, and leave the sentence unfinished. What he meant it is impossible to conjecture. To the religious mind ”G.o.d's judgment” means a chastis.e.m.e.nt sent by G.o.d. But, whatever Mr. Rushbrooke meant, he had been wiser to leave the idea of G.o.d out of his comments on this war, and to say frankly that it would bring on them and on their predecessors, on the whole of Christianity, the judgment of man and the judgment of history for their neglect of their opportunities.

The Rev. A. T. Guttery addressed the Council in a more cheerful mood, and his reflections are characteristic of a large group of the clergy.

He would not for a moment allow the failure of Christianity. The Churches had, he said, been so successful in compelling the world to recognise the evil of aggressive warfare that even the Germans were eager to describe their action as purely defensive. ”The Pagan glory of war for its own sake was gone.” And when we acknowledge the comparative failure of religion in Germany, and restrict our attention to the sphere of our own clergy, we find that they have created an entirely new spirit. The l.u.s.t for territory and for gold is felt no more in England.

Here there is no mafficking over victories, there are no hymns of hate.

The British nation has been sobered by the influence of Christianity. We may regret that the German people has not proved equally susceptible, and its pastors equally energetic, but we cannot bear their burden.