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WRY
LA JUL.LA, bALirUKNIA
)D IN A WORLD
AT WAR
BY
LAS CLYDE MACINTOSH, Ph.D.
Dwight PrufeMor of Tli«olo-rv in Yale University
;y of Califor
3rn Regional
iry Facility
3 1822025138751
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GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
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"A solid and satisfactory piece of
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tion to epistemological science. "-
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"An interesting and learned study
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sive critical summary of the teaching of
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GOD IN A WORLD
AT WAR
BY
DOUGLAS CLYDE MACINTOSH, PH.D.
DWIGHT PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN YALE UNIVERSITY
LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. i
First published
(All rights reserved)
TO
MY HONORED
TEACHER AND FRIEND
PROFESSOR GEORGE BURMAN FOSTER
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION . ... 9
I. GOD . . . . . . .II
II. GOD AND HISTORY . . . . . l6
III. GOD AND EVIL . . . . .30
IV. GOD AND THE INDIVIDUAL . . . .47
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
THE great world-war has led a good many people
seriously to raise for the first time the question as to
whether they ought not to revise their inherited religious
beliefs. It all depends upon what happen to have been
their inherited beliefs. Nothing has happened during the
war that has not, in principle, happened over and over
again in the course of human history ; there are no essen-
tially new religious problems to be faced. But many
who were putting off the troublesome duty of fundamental
thinking until a more convenient season are now finding
themselves forced, for their own peace of mind, to begin
even at this late hour to do their own religious thinking
and come to their own conclusions.
The religious questions most commonly raised by the
war have been concerning divine providence in human
affairs, the meaning of the presence of so much evil in
the universe of a presumably good God, assurance as to
a life after death, the religious status of the individual
soldier with special reference to the hereafter, and the
prospect for the future well-being of the human race.
These are the questions that many in the homelands are
raising ; and the writer's contact with soldiers in the
camp, on the field and in the hospital would lead him to
9
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
say that these are also in the main the very questions
which interest and often perplex the minds of the men
that make up our fighting forces. These, therefore, are
the questions which demand our present attention, and
we shall consider them under the following heads : —
I. God;
II. God and History ;
III. God and Evil ;
IV. God and the Individual.
10
I
GOD
THE most fundamental of religious problems now as
always is the problem as to the nature and existence
of God.
There always has been in these modern days of transi-
tion from dogmatism to science a good deal of questioning
and uncertainty as to the existence of God. But there
is perhaps no more of this uncertainty at the present
moment than there was before the outbreak of the war.
Some who believed half-heartedly may have " lost their
faith " ; but some others who were in honest doubt are
now able, through deepened experience and reflection, to
make an equally honest confession of faith.
Uncertainty as to the existence of God is always due
to one or the other, or both, of two causes. Sometimes
it is because of a defective idea of God. Where the thought
is incorrect, experience refutes instead of verifying. Some-
times the doubt is due to defective religious experience.
However correct the idea of God, apart from religion it
can be but problematical, a vague possibility. Moreover,
each of these defects has a tendency to aggravate the
other. Wrong ideas of God result in a defective religious
experience, and the defective experience fails to correct
wrong ideas, until any specially religious experience ceases
and belief in God is given up.
ii
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
The wrong ideas of God are naturally many. We shall
refer to but two of them. One is the idea to which Mr.
H. G. Wells in his recent works has been giving currency.
It is the idea of " a finite God " who is our " great Brother
and Leader," but who, so far from being the Creator
and Sustainer of the universe, " does not care, and very
likely does not know, how this tangle of existence came
into being." But even if one could find reason to believe
in the existence of such a Being, it is not easy to see how
one could have perfect confidence in His sufficiency. As
a God He would be good enough, perhaps ; but He would
scarcely be great enough to be the Object of our absolute
dependence.
Another unsatisfactory idea of God is that which insists
upon regarding Him as the Cause, providentially, of the
present war. Mysterious as it may seem to us, He is using,
it is asserted, devilish means to realize His divine ends.
But, remembering the iniquitous acts which plunged the
world into this bloody conflict, we must hold any such
God too unscrupulous to be adequate to the needs of
religion. He might be great enough, but He would not
be good enough to be the Object of worship and absolute
dependence.
The true idea of God is derived from religious experi-
ence at its best. It is the idea not merely of a Reality
upon which we are ultimately dependent. It is more
specific than that. It is the idea of a Reality that is
absolutely sufficient for the imperative religious needs of
men — both great enough and good enough to be the
satisfactory Object of absolute dependence and worship.
What are the religious needs of men ? Reduced to its
lowest terms, what man needs of God is preparedness of
spirit to meet in the right way whatever he may have
to meet, whether it be temptation, opportunity for ser-
12
GOD
vice, danger, pain, loss, disappointment, death, or what-
ever there may be after death. Such inner preparedness
through religious dependence is virtual salvation. Actual
salvation is its consummation : deliverance from all
absolute evil, and steady development toward the true
ideal. God, then, must be both great enough and good
enough to be absolutely dependable for the making of this
inner preparedness and actual deliverance possible, no
matter what may happen in the world about us. " Good
enough " can only mean perfection in holiness and per-
fection in love. No love is perfect that is not perfect
in holiness, and no holiness is perfect that is not perfect
in love. Both ideas are fulfilled in the idea of a God
who, from the point of view of the moral and religious
consciousness of a Jesus of Nazareth, is " the Father "
and " perfect." " Great enough," moreover, as applied
to God, must mean possessing power enough and wisdom
enough, and being sufficiently accessible to man to make
possible the divine bestowal and man's acquisition of full
preparedness of spirit for any situation that may have
to be faced and any duty that may have to be done.
This means ability to " save to the uttermost " all who
enter into the right religious relation, and to continue
the triumphant progress of the spirit toward its true ideal
in spite of all that can befall a person in this life, or in
death, or in whatever there may be in any future state.
God must be great enough to keep anything that can
happen in nature or in history from making this inner
preparedness and steady development at any moment
impossible to any individual who enters into the right
relation of self -adjustment to God.
There is a common notion of God which makes religious
doubt practically inevitable for critical thought, and
which ought to be corrected. It is the still too prevalent
13
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
conception of an immeasurably great but essentially man-
like Person, who is wholly external to men — as external
to men as individual men are to each other Now it is
true that in religion we do need to make use of the analogy
of human social relations, relations of persons to person ;
but there is another analogy which is in some respects
closer and more illuminating. This is that of the rela-
tion of the higher and more comprehensive self, the rational
will with its moral character, to the lower, fragmentary
" selves " of particular impulses, or tendencies to action.
These component factors of the human life are so inde-
pendent of the central rational will that they may even,
within certain limits, act in opposition to that will ; and
yet, on the other hand, the rational self has a way of
influencing them from within, and when they do come into
conformity with the central will, their action is at once
the action of the subordinate centre of activity and the
action of the rational will through that lower centre.
For example, our breathing, which commonly takes place
with little or no conscious direction, may, on occasion,
be regulated by the rational will, in which case the act
is at once an act of the subordinate centre and of the
rational will through that lower centre. The relation of
God to man may be thought of in similar fashion. God
transcends man somewhat as the rational human will
transcends the particular human impulses ; and yet God
can act in and through man's activities, somewhat as
man's will, or deliberate purpose, can make use of his
impulses and act through them. There are different
degrees both of the possible immanence of human will
and character in organic process and of the possible im-
manence of the life of God in the soul of man.
This view of the relation of God to man may tend to
remove intellectual difficulties in the way of religious
14
GOD
belief, but is not enough of itself to produce religious
assurance. It is only in the actual experience of this
inner preparedness for anything, this deliverance from
all absolute evil through religious dependence, that one
becomes adequately convinced of the existence of God
as the Power in the universe that is able and ready thus
to prepare and to deliver us. Somewhat as we become
aware of the presence of physical objects in the complex
of sense-qualities of color, sound, touch and the rest,
or as we become aware of ourselves in the complex of
inner experiences, or as we become aware of other persons
in the complex of social experiences, so in the complex
of religious experience at its best we become aware of
" a Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness "
in and through us, according as we relate ourselves to
that Power in a certain discoverable religious attitude.
There are many arguments for the existence of God, but
there is but one demonstration. It is not deductive, but
empirical — the proof that is found in the right sort of
religious experience.
II
GOD AND HISTORY
MOST urgent among the religious problems of the
day is the question as to the relation of God to
the events of current history.
As was to be expected, many erroneous notions are
prevalent concerning divine providence and the present
war. Some of these errors are owing to intellectual con-
fusion ; others, however, impress one as due to an almost
wilful perversion of the impulses of religious faith.
In any case, most conspicuous among the erroneous
doctrines of the day with reference to divine providence
is that which has been voiced by the German Emperor
ever since the beginning of the war. In speaking of the
Teutonic triumph over disorganized Russia, for example,
he is reported to have expressed himself as follows : " The
complete victory fills me with gratitude. It permits us
to live again one of these great moments in which we
can reverently admire God's hand in history. What turn
events have taken is by the disposition of God." One
could scarcely be blamed for inferring that the Kaiser
imagined, or affected to believe, that the Almighty had
entered into a favored-nation treaty of some sort with
Germany. But even this would seem to fall short of
what has been claimed. We quote further from the same
theological authority. " The year 1917 with its great
16
GOD AND HISTORY
battles has proved," he has asserted, with almost incredible
simple-mindedness, " that the German people has in the
Lord of Creation above an unconditional and avowed ally
on whom it can absolutely rely." And even so late as
the end of September, 1918, the same authority was
responsible for this statement : " Our enemies cannot and
will not succeed. We are under divine protection."
By way of comment upon such statements, let us quote
the words of one of the Kaiser's own subjects : —
The appeals and praises to God go on without cessation. Not
a telegram in which the Kaiser doesn't say, " God has helped,"
" may He continue to help," " He will still help," " the God of
Christianity, the German God, the God of battles who does not
forsake the righteous cause." What will he say if the war should
be lost ? Will he change his phrases, or will he speak of the superior
strength of the enemy, of the treachery of friends, of mistakes
of politicians or generals, of mustering new strength, of speedy
revenge, or of wise submission to the force of circumstances ? Will
he and his myrmidons admit that they have been deceived in
God, and have praised Him prematurely ? Will they acknowledge
the injustice of our cause, if God's verdict goes against us ? Will
they then see that there is no partisan God ? Is this continual
reference to God due in part to narrowness of outlook, or is it
merely political wisdom ? Does the real believer regard it as
blasphemy or as inspiration ? And what does the sceptic, the
unbeliever, feel about it ? — Dr. Muehlon's Diary, Entry for
September i, 1914.
The curious reversion to religious tribalism in the case
of the German Emperor has not been without its parallel
in the belief of his subjects. Assiduously taught, as they
were, that they were fighting a justified, defensive war,
and praying, as they have been, for victory over their
enemies, their conviction came to be, pretty generally,
what a German-American in the early days of the war
expressed in these words' : "If Germany doesn't win this
war, there is no God." However, in view of what the
world knows as to the causation and the conduct of this
17
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
war on the part of Germany, the only answer so prepos-
terous a doctrine deserves is that given by Ex-President
Taft : " Germany has mistaken the devil for God."
But the Germans are not the only ones who have been
cherishing mistaken notions as to the providence of God
in human affairs. We and our allies have rejected the
idea of a partisan, or merely national God, and any notion
of the " Lord of Creation " being our " unconditional
ally." The morally perfect God is too just and impartial
to have any favorites among the nations, whether Jewish,
or German, or British, or American. Might does not make
right, we know ; and no more is might an infallible index
to God's will. God is not necessarily " on the side of the
heaviest battalions." On the contrary, the true God, as
the God of righteousness, must be, we feel sure, on the
side of right and justice, whichever side that may be.
Being confident, therefore, of the justice of our cause,
we feel that we have the best of reasons for believing
that we are righting on the side of God, as well as for the
true well-being of humanity.
So far, good ; but many among us proceed to put two
and two together and find that they make five. If we
are on the side of human rights and the will of God, and
if God is sufficient for our religious needs, is it not clear
that, from the beginning, we ought to have been absolutely
certain of winning the war, whatever temporary reverses
might have to be encountered ? Moreover, especially
since we did not omit to have our days of prayer for
victory, have we not been entitled to sing,
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is jast,
And this be our motto, " In God is our trust " ?
Indeed, so satisfied have many of us been with the logic
of this position that multitude of us would have agreed
iS
GOD AND HISTORY
with the sentiment expressed by a British-American in
the early days of the war, " If Germany wins this war,
there is no God."
But there are reasons for doubting the correctness of
this view. Right makes God's will, surely enough ; but
has it been, or ought it to have been, certain from the
beginning that the side whose cause was just would win
the war, simply because it was the side of right and of
God ? Ultimately, we may be sure, right must prevail,
for wrong is not the sort of thing that can permanently
succeed ; it contains within itself the germs of its own
ultimate destruction. But nothing in history can be surer
than that this ultimate judgment upon evil does not
necessarily involve the defeat of all unjustified military
undertakings. The side with the greater moral justifica-
tion has not always won its battles, nor even its wars.
It is not enough to have justice on our side ; we must
use our might on the side of right. Right has to be worked
for, and sometimes it has to be fought for. That is the
kind of world that — not unfortunately for our develop-
ment, probably — we are living in. And the fighting is
no sham battle. Its issue is not predetermined. It is
being decided while the fighting is going on.
Moreover, with reference to prayer as a military factor,
it is only fair to remember the many sincere and believ-
ing prayers for victory in the war offered by the religious
on both sides. It is not intended to deny that religion
of a certain sort is an important military factor ; sin-
cere and believing prayer for a cause that is regarded as
sacred and just undoubtedly helps morale, both in the army
and throughout the nation. But it is a factor which
throughout the war has operated on both sides. Man
has the capacity for misusing not only physical, but even
spiritual forces. And on the other hand, when prayer
19
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
and religious faith encourage an eas}rgoing attitude, and
are thus made to some extent a substitute for effort,
such prayer and faith cannot but prove a serious military
hindrance, no matter how just the cause may be that they
are designed to support. They may even conceivably
make enough of a difference on the wrong side to lead
to the defeat of righteousness.
These notions as to God's providence in war, which we
have criticized as manifestly mistaken and dangerously
misleading, are symptomatic of confused and muddy
thinking on the whole subject of the providence of God
in human history. How does God secure His adequate
providential control of the course of history ? One theory
is that He has secured it by having absolutely predeter-
mined from the beginning all events of nature and history,
so that all process is the simple unfolding of what has been
eternally decreed. There are the strongest ethical and
religious reasons for refusing to accept this unproved and
unprovable dogma. On the one hand it would mean
that man's consciousness of free agency and moral respon-
sibility would have to be regarded as quite illusory, since
what has been decided and made inevitable before man's
life began cannot have been originated by man himself.
On the other hand this predestination doctrine would
mean that God should be regarded as the real and respon-
sible cause of all evil, including what we call human sin.
No such God would be moral enough to be trustworthy
or deserving of human adoration.
Another theory as to how God secures His adequate
providential control of the course of events is that it is
by various sorts of arbitrary or unconditioned interven-
tions in external nature, as well as in human life, in order
to realize the ends He may desire to accomplish from time
to time. It has often been suggested, for . instance, that
20
GOD AND HISTORY
a miracle of this sort took place at the Marne, preventing
the German entry into Paris. But this theory is open to
the objection that it raises three unanswerable questions.
In the first place, how can we be sure that such interven-
tions have taken place, particularly in the external world ?
How do we suppose it will ever be established sufficiently
for confident rational belief that only by special miracle
were the German armies turned back from Paris in 1914 ?
In the second place, if such special miraculous interven-
tions do take place for the sake of preventing evil, why
do they not take place oftener, especially in these times
of unprecedented disaster to human life ? A miracle like
that of the Marne, such as would have turned the Turks
back from the helpless Armenians, would have been
much appreciated. But, for a third question, if such
miracles were to take place as often as this theory
of providence would seem to call for, what would be-
come of the order of nature, and how could man learn
what to expect, or how to adjust himself to his environ-
ment ?
As against these theories of absolute predetermination
and arbitrary intervention, we may point out that God
secures His adequate providential control of the course
of history in two principal ways, viz. by enough predeter-
mination of events to give man a dependable universe
to live in and learn from, and by enough intervention
to admit of a response to man's need of the religious
experience of salvation, that is, of being inwardly or
spiritually prepared to meet in the right way and with
triumphant spirit the very worst that the future may
bring. The predetermined order of the laws of nature
and mind exhibits the general providence of God. By
means of this order, or in the light of consequences, God
is teaching man both science and morality, that is, how
21
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
to adapt means to the realization of ends, and what ideals
and principles of action must be employed if the most
desirable results are to be obtained. The " intervention
enough " of which we spoke — if indeed it is to be called
intervention — or, in other words, the response of the
divine Reality to the right religious attitude on the part
of man, is an exhibition of the special providence of God.
When one has found the right relation to God and gained
access to the divine power for the inner life, one is virtually
prepared for whatever can happen to him. But, as we
have indicated, his preparedness is primarily inner,
spiritual. He is in a position to meet danger with moral
courage ; to gain the victory over temptation ; to make
the most of opportunities for service ; to endure hard-
ship, pain and privation, as a good soldier, with patience
and cheerfulness ; to face death — his own or that of
others — and whatever there may be after death, with
faith and equanimity.
There are two possible ways, then, in which God may
exercise His providence in the events of human history.
There is His shorter and preferred method, and His longer
and more roundabout method. If the individuals con-
cerned come into the right relation to God, there is the
best possible guarantee that they will be made ready for
all there may be for them to do and to experience, and
thus conditions will be most favorable for the speedy
realization of the will of God. •» But if this shorter, pre-
ferred method cannot be employed, because men fail to
rise to the occasion as they might if they would rightly
relate themselves to God, the divine providence will still
be exercised, although necessarily in the less desirable,
more roundabout way. God will let man choose the wrong
Way through thoughtlessness or wilfulness, and then let
him take the bitter consequences of failure, that he may
22
GOD AND HISTORY
finally learn to guard against similar mistakes and faults
in the future.
Let us now return to the more particular question of
the relation of the providence of God to the great world-
war. Before referring again to the topic with which we
started, viz. the final outcome of the conflict, we may
deal with some other aspects of the problem. In the light
of what has been said of the two possible methods of
divine providence, it may be denied that the war was
providentially caused by God in order to curb other evils,
such as softness and idleness, or the selfish pursuit of
wealth and pleasure, or drunkenness and vice, or thought-
lessness and irreligion. It is true enough that in the face
of war conditions some of these evils have been decreased
and the martial qualities of self-sacrificing courage and
fortitude have been stimulated. But it is notoriously true
that the advent of war introduces a host of evils, in some
cases necessarily, in others almost as inevitably. Drunken-
ness tends to increase greatly, unless stern measures are
taken for its repression. Vice, with the resulting trans-
missible diseases, ordinarily becomes much more prevalent.
Hatred, cruelty, and even the most fiendish brutality are
given ample opportunity to develop, and in many instances
they become relatively fixed attitudes and attributes of
character. So far from the biologically fittest tending to
survive, under modern war conditions these are the very
ones who, for the most part and to the incalculable detri-
ment of the future of the race, are killed off, even granting
that of those who are " fit " enough to get to the front,
the weakest are those who have the poorest chance of
survival. And finally, when the stress of war conditions
becomes acute, innumerable enterprises for social better-
ment are constrained to be given up, at least for the time
being. In view, then, of all this, not to dwell upon the
33
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
unspeakable suffering, physical and mental, on the part
not only of combatants, but of non-combatants as well,
and considering the merely problematical nature of the
good to which the crisis involved in a state of war may
prove a stimulus, it must be regarded as incredible that
a God good enough and wise enough to be worthy of
absolute dependence and worship could have ordered so
stupendous a catastrophe as a possible means of national
or racial salvation. Neither is it reasonable to suppose
that God has been prolonging the war, in order that some
social evils, such as drunkenness, might be eradicated
before victory was finally secured. Something like this
might, perhaps, be the outcome, if such a war were greatly
prolonged ; but it could not be at all certain beforehand
that any such improvement would be permanent enough
to offset the evils involved in the continuation of the
war. We can not suppose any one who was wise enough
and good enough to be God would be so far below our
best human standards as to will either the existence or
the continuation of the war as a whole, with all its atten-
dant evils, even in order that particular goods, of the kind
referred to, might abound. Any God who might be thought
of as doing so would be a false God ; his condemnation
would be just.
Understanding, then, that in so far as human hatred or
selfishness or stupidity have been factors in leading to
the war, it has been originated, not by the will or in the
providence of God, but against His will and providence ;
understanding also that in so far as it has been prolonged
by human inefficiency or stupidity, or by the efficiency
of evil wills, or of the wills in the service of wrong, its
continuation has not been in accordance with but in
opposition to His will and providence, let us turn to the
more positive aspect of the divine providence in connec-
24
GOD AND HISTORY
tion with the war. It may be said, to begin with, that in
so far as going into this war has been correctly judged
by any party to it to be the necessary alternative to
national perfidy, or ignoble servitude, or any other evil
greater than those involved in 'passing through the ordeal
of war, and in so far as the task has been accepted as a
solemn duty and entered upon in brave and self-sacrificing
spirit, the act of going to war is to be regarded as in accord
with the will of God. Indeed, if we may regard the divine
spirit as immanent where we find the divine qualities
present in human life, we may go further and say that
such righteous participation in the war is the work of God
within the soul of man, fighting against the forces of evil.
Moreover, in so far as the war has been prolonged by the
fortitude of men of good intentions and their fidelity to
a just cause, the war may similarly be said to have been
prolonged in accord with the will and even by the work
of God in and through the good will and work of men.
But of providence in relation to the war as a whole,
it can only be said that man's evil choice has compelled
God to use the long, roundabout method. It is the second
best method, although the best possible under the cir-
cumstances. The sinful choices of men and nations were
not, of course, divinely predetermined. What has been
divinely predetermined, we may well believe, is the law-
abiding order of nature and of individual and social mind,
according to which the disasters and sufferings incidental
to war are the inevitable consequences of certain forms
of individual and corporate wrongdoing. In this round-
about way certain reforms may be providentially forced
upon nations by a great war. The evil consequences of
certain former evils tend to be more acutely felt under
the strain and stress of severe and prolonged warfare.
Let us suppose that in order to win such a war nations
25
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
may find it necessary to take drastic steps to eradicate
drunkenness with its attendant evils, or even to prohibit
the waste of food-stuffs and fuel involved in the manu-
facture of alcoholic beverages. Such a consequence would
not mean that the war had been divinely caused in order to
realize this end, but only that it was, and indeed always
is, the divine will that man should learn the lessons of
the law of consequences, which lessons are in some
instances more readily learned in time of war.
But what God has been teaching most directly through
the law of consequences in connection with the war is
the necessity of correcting certain immoral international
relations. He has been teaching the nations through
bitter experience how imperative are international
righteousness and some practicable and adequately
democratic scheme of world-government.
In reverting to the topic of the outcome of the great
conflict, the writer is constrained, in order to make his
thought unmistakably clear, to quote words which he
addressed to an American audience during that trying
time in the spring of 1918 when our enemy's armies on
the Western Front were rapidly plunging ahead, and when
the latest reports of what had been accomplished by the
United States during her first year of the war were any-
thing but gratifying or reassuring. The state of affairs
which called forth this particular form of utterance no
longer exists, but it is the writer's conviction that the
words he used were — and always will be — true of the
situation which confronted the Western Allies during those
critical days.
We must not close our eyes to the possibility that through our
failure to do our part, God may be forced to take the long, sad,
roundabout way of exercising His providence in connection with
the end, as He had to in the beginning of the war. What we must
26
GOD AND HISTORY
waken up to is this, that i» spile of the justice of our cause, in $pitt
of its being the cause of humanity and in essential accord with the
will of God, and in spite of our days of prayer and our optimistic
religious faith, GERMANY MAY WIN THIS WAR ! If our conscious-
ness of being right and our religious optimism make us so com-
placent that we shall fail to exert our utmost strength on behalf
of our righteous cause, these may be the very factors that will
turn the tide of war against us. We have resources enough for
the winning of victory. If we fail it will be a moral failure. If
we fail to rise to the moral demands of this great occasion, God
may have to let us fail to win the war and then learn what we can
from the bitter consequences of this failure. We and future genera-
tions may have to learn through tragic experience how imperative
it is that right be not left to enforce itself, but that we devote our
full might to the cause of right, and that before it is too late.
It is true that it seems not yet too late, however critical the
situation, for the winning of victory for the cause of liberty and
justice. But the surest way of providing for success would be
for all who recognize the right so to surrender themselves to the
will of God for self-sacrificing service, and so to depend upon the
indwelling power of God for inner preparedness for whatever may
have to be faced and whatever may have to be done, that their
whole might may be made use of in this warfare for the right.
Our primary need is morale — morale in the Government, morale
in the shipyards, morale in the munitions factories, morale among
all our people in their business and home life, as well as fighting
spirit in our army and navy abroad. Enough religion of the right
sort may make enough difference in morale to make all the differ-
ence between defeat and victory as the outcome of this war. And
if in this way victory for the right should come as a result of religion,
it would be not only a crowning example of the short and preferred
method of divine providence ; it would be, literally speaking,
victory by the Grace of God.
In any case the situation for the Western Allies is such that
neither faith without works nor works without faith can accom-
plish what waits to be done. There must be, if we would win,
faith and works together.
Before leaving this topic of God and history, a word
may be said on the question of what, on this interpretation
of providence, we may expect to be the final outcome of
this war for the future of the race. Will the result be more
harm than good, or more good than harm ? It is very
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
certain that the war will need to be the occasion of an
immense amount of good to balance up to the race the
evils involved in it from beginning to end. Much possible
evil will be avoided if the immoral Prussian militaristic
ideal is finally and permanently eradicated. Moreover,
there is the probability that humanity will have learned,
at least temporarily and as an intellectual conviction,
the undesirability of war and of the conditions that make
for war. But attention and moral effort will be necessary
to retain this lesson with sufficient impressiveness, and
to put it into effect, and the best power of thought will
be needed to determine just how this putting it into effect
may be most fully and lastingly secured. There seems
real danger that the human race on earth will be per-
manently poorer and worse off, spiritually and socially,
as well as biologically and economically, as a result of this
nearest approach to racial suicide. Undoubtedly it will
be so, if the nations fail to learn and to put into effect
the lesson of the necessity of international righteousness
and a just and efficient system of world-government.
It is perhaps possible for the race to learn enough from
this period of strife and carnage for the resultant good
to outbalance the total evil. But even then no one would
have the right to credit the war with having been the means
of greater good than could have been accomplished without
it. All its moral evil at any rate will be regrettable forever.
And the only possible way of guaranteeing beforehand
greater good than evil as an outcome of the war, even in
view of the victory of the cause of justice and liberty, will
be for individuals and groups so to relate themselves to
truth, to right and to God, that flagrantly immoral inter-
national relations will become practically impossible. The
only safety of the race lies in an essentially Christian
international morality, and the only adequate guarantee
28
GOD AND HISTORY
of this is an essentially Christian personal religion. The
only failure of essential Christianity of which the war
may fairly be regarded as evidence was its failure to be
given an adequate trial; which means, of course, not a
failure of Christianity as an ethical or as a religious system,
but a failure of the human will to be adequately Christian.
So-called " Christians " failed, but not the principles of
Christianity.
Ill
GOD AND EVIL
THE war has given new weight to the problem of evil.
The most insistent problem with regard to evil
always is (or ought to be) the practical problem — how to
get rid of it. But the more theoretical problem of evil —
the problem as to how, in the presence of so much evil
in the world, it is not unreasonable to believe in the exist-
ence of a God both great enough and good enough for the
religious needs of man — this, too, becomes in the end a
practical problem. The vitality of the religion of thought-
ful people depends to a considerable extent upon their
finding a satisfactory answer to such questions as this.
Among opinions to be rejected should be included, on
the one hand, that exaggerated optimism which would
maintain that " all's well with the world," that the world
we live in is the best possible world, that " whatever is,
is right," and on the other hand, the too pessimistic view
that even in its general constitution the world we live in
is not the best possible kind of world in which to have
man begin his development. In distinction from both of
these positions, the thesis we would undertake to defend
is this : that while this world is far from being as yet
the best possible world, nevertheless in view of its general
constitution it may be regarded as the best possible kind
of world in which to have man begin his development,
30
GOD AND EVIL
and that the evils which exist in the world furnish no
good reason for abandoning belief in a God who is both
good enough and great enough to meet every real
religious need.
The best possible kind of world must be a world of law
and order. This seems a pretty obvious assertion with
which to begin. The physical world, as a world of law,
gives all living beings a steady and dependable plat-
form upon which to stand. To its uniform processes the
organism may adjust its activities and learn to make
habitual the most favorable adjustments. Indeed, if the
world were not thus essentially dependable in its processes,
it would seem that no real or permanent progress in the
constitution or activities of organic beings could be looked
for. No habit could be any better than any other habit ;
no character any better than any other character.
But the ruthless processes of natural law, admitting of
no exceptions in order to spare the individual organism
or any other object, inevitably tend and not infrequently
lead to the injury or even to the violent and premature
death of organic beings, human as well as other, and to
the destruction of objects which have value for living
beings. The lives of men and animals and the existence
of objects of value are exposed from time to time to various
" accidents," in all of which the impartial, law-abiding
processes of nature are involved. Earthquakes, volcanic
eruptions, tempests, floods, fires, extremes of heat and
cold, diseases of all sorts — these and other disaster-bringing
events are incidental to the world we live in being a world
of undeviating natural law.
Now it is all very well to enlarge upon the desirability
of a world of law and order, but would it not be well if
there were a way of intervening in this world of mechanical
and chemical law, for the guarding of life and objects of
31 c
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
value from the injury and destruction that would other-
wise befall them ? And in order that this intervention
should not break up the orderliness and dependableness
of the world, and thus lead to confusion and stagnation,
might it not be well that it should be not a process of
suspending the laws of the physical world, but one of intro-
ducing new factors whose processes would themselves be
according to their own laws and uniformities ?
This may seem a good deal to ask — an intervention in
a world of law, which would yet be no breach of law,
but itself the exemplification of law, a sort of law-abiding
miracle — but as a matter of fact it is just this which we
find in existence in the world in which we live. In the
processes of sensation we see this law-abiding miracle for
the protection of the living organism and its possessions.
Sight, hearing, sensations of taste, smell, touch, heat and
cold, pleasant sensations and sensations of pain — these
are the desired protective processes made, as it were, to
order. Miraculous as they are from the standpoint of
the merely mechanical, chemical and physiological, they
are nevertheless themselves perfectly orderly and law-
abiding, being definitely conditioned upon certain events
in the nervous system, and exhibiting certain inner uni-
formities (psychical laws) of their own.
The serviceable function of sense-processes is well known.
Sight, hearing and the sense of smell not only enable
men and animals to avoid many enemies and threatening
dangers ; they also make it possible for them to secure
their own food and the other necessities of life. Sensa-
tions of sight, smell and taste help to identify wholesome
food-substances. Feelings of pleasure are associated with
the activities involved in satisfying appetites which in
the main operate to preserve the life of the individual
or of the race. And one of the most indispensable of
33
GOD AND EVIL
sensations is the sensation of pain in its various forms
and combinations. Where quick or decisive reversal of
conditions is necessary, if injury to the organism is to
be avoided, a special sort of sensation, sharply stimulating
to change, is called for ; and this is what we have, as a
blessing in disguise, in the sensation of pain. If the
burning of the flesh, exposure to extreme heat or cold,
bodily exhaustion, hunger, thirst, wounds and conditions
of acute disease were not normally accompanied by sensa-
tions of pain, all the " higher " and more complicated
forms of animal life would soon be killed off by the ruthless
operation of natural forces. Indeed, in the light of the
now well-established evolutionary view of the origin of
species, the human species included, we can say that a
world without any pain in it would have been a world
in which man could never have appeared ; his animal
ancestors would have been killed off long before the
biological conditions for the appearance of the human
species had been reached.
It seems clear, then, that a world in which there occur,
in a law-abiding way, sensations of many sorts, including
sensations of pain, is a much more desirable kind of world,
from the standpoint of the well-being of physical life and
all that depends upon it, than any world of physical law
without such processes of sensation. But it may be
objected that in this law-abiding character of sensation
there is involved a good deal of pain which is not of im-
mediate use to physical life. For example, just because,
when certain bodily conditions exist, certain sensations
appear, there is often much pain in connection with in-
curable disease, and even in curable cases pain may con-
tinue for some time after the appropriate remedy has been
applied. Moreover, biologically necessary operations are
often accompanied by intense suffering. Of course, it is
33
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
to be recognized that pain which is not directly and im-
mediately valuable for the life of the body may still
prove, in the case of man, valuable for moral discipline.
Theoretically, it would seem, this ought to be true of all
human pain ultimately. Besides, most systems of edu-
cation and reform provide for the deliberate addition of
pain of one sort or another, for the sake of correction and
discipline. Thus much pain that is not immediately and
directly useful for the life of the body may come to have
biological value ultimately and indirectly. And yet, when
all has been said, it would seem that there is, by virtue
of the law-abiding processes of sensation, a good deal of
suffering, human and animal, which, it is not unreasonable
to suppose, the world would be much better without.
While it is not easy to prove that any human suffering
will be absolutely useless, there can be little doubt that
much of it is needless.
Would it not be well, then, it may be asked, if there
were a way of intervening so as to regulate the life of
sense, and especially sensations of pain, in order that need-
less pain might be reduced to a minimum ? It would
be desirable, however, on general principles, that any such
intervening process should not involve a suspension of
the laws of sensation, and that it should proceed according
to laws of its own. This amounts to a demand, once more,
for a " law-abiding miracle " ; but it is a demand which
we find already granted. Just such a factor of modifica-
tion in the life of sense, intervening without suspending
the laws of sensation and in a way that is according to
laws of its own, we find to exist in the activity of
thought.
Thought observes sensations and their conditions, re-
members them, and anticipates future possibilities, prob-
abilities and certainties. Such thought leads to knowledge
34
GOD AND EVIL
of the conditions of pain, and when combined with
consideration of what pain, on the one hand, is valuable
for guidance or discipline, and what pain, on the other
hand, is unnecessary, this knowledge tends to lessen the
amount of needless suffering. By taking thought man
can anticipate and avoid unnecessary and disagreeable
experiences. For example, he can learn to avoid the
pains that follow excess in the pursuit of pleasure. By
" taking pains " enough to study the causes of undesirable
effects, he has been able, on behalf of others as well as
for himself, to provide against very much greater future
pains. The discovery of anaesthetics is simply a con-
spicuous example of the law-abiding intervention of
thought in the processes of sensation.
But thinking is a means of intervening, not only to
prevent pain and modify other sense-experiences for the
better ; it can work against physical disasters directly.
Especially in the overcoming of disease, scientific investi-
gation has accomplished wonderful results, and it is prob-
ably not too much to say that science has made it possible
for twice as many people to live twice as long as formerly.
And science, of course, is not the whole of thought, but
only its more methodical development.
But while thought is a most important means of inter-
vening for the prevention of needless suffering and for
the more effective safeguarding of life and property, it
must be admitted that it is not always as successful as
could be wished. In fact, there is evil in the realm of
thought, intellectual evil in the form of ignorance and
positive error, and this further complicates our original
problem. Sometimes error as to the ends to be pursued,
or as to the means to be employed, or mere ignorance
and vacuity of mind may cause an immense amount of
unnecessary suffering and disaster to life and objects of
35
GOD IN 'A WORLD AT WAR
value. Not only is there often a failure, through ignorance,
to remedy remediable evils ; there is often the imposition
of additional suffering and destruction of life as the direct
result of erroneous ideas. Religious persecution is a case
in point.
But not only are ignorance and error, as results of
inadequate thought, themselves evils and the occasion of
further evils in the way of suffering and disaster. Exact,
scientific thinking may serve to make injurious processes
all the more potent and disastrous. Science serves to
make crime more skilful and to make war so destructive
as to threaten the future existence of the race.
Would it not seem desirable, then, that there should
be some intervention in the life of thought, such as might
direct it into beneficent channels, making informatioH
more accurate and complete, and the whole process of
thought more effective for good ? No doubt such inter-
vention would be desirable, provided it did not unduly
interfere with the dependable order of the universe in the
realm of the physical, or in the life of sensation or thought,
but took place only under definite conditions and within
narrow and discoverable limits.
This third call for normal " miracle " has also been
anticipated in the constitution of human nature. In the
human will, or capacity for voluntary attention, we find
a way of intervening for the direction and concentration
of thought, so that ignorance and error may in the normal
and dependable way be progressively overcome, and the
whole thought process directed towards eliminating need-
less suffering and disaster and realizing in a more positive
way the truest human ideals.
This miracle of human free will carries with it immense
possibilities of making the world a better place for man
to live in. Our doctrine that the world in its general
36
GOD AND EVIL
constitution is the best possible kind of world does not
mean that it is as good a world as it ever can be. While
remaining a world of physical law, and one in which there
occur the orderly miracles of sensation and thought, our
world may be made, by virtue of human free agency, a
much better world than it is or ever has been. If all
human wills were as good and efficient as, by virtue of
their freedom, they might be, thought would become so
nuch more effective for good, that the life of sense would
be so unified for the better, and physical evils so guarded
igainst, as ultimately to make the conditions of life on
the earth in most respects almost ideal. Apart from the
final inevitableness of physical death — a fact which in-
volves problems which we must presently consider — it
may be said that, if only the wills of men were as well-
disposed as they might be, there would be little or nothing
to regret, ultimately, in such injurious accidents and
biologically unnecessary sufferings as might still persist
through man's not yet having learned how to prevent
them. It would be better that man should have the train-
ing in mind and character involved in finding out how to
combat disease and other causes of pain and disaster
than that by some arbitrary and purely magical miracle
these evils should be removed without any human effort,
and so without any training of the human intellect or
will. Moreover, the possibility of training in fortitude
involved in the facing of unavoidable danger, and in the
endurance of unpreventable pain, would not be anything
to be regretted. Neither would it be desirable that the
race should be without any such training in social sympathy
and helpfulness as are made possible by the fact of actual
or threatened suffering and loss. Nor, finally, would it
be well for humanity to be without the socially unifying
spectacle of individuals, voluntarily and for the good of
37
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
others, undertaking courses of action which necessarily
involve great suffering for themselves.
With the exception of the problem involved in the in-
evitable death of the individual, our general problem of
evil might now be regarded as solved, if this free will of
man, to which we have referred, were always at the same
time a good will. But the very fact of free will, which
is the necessary condition of good choices, and conse-
quently of the development of moral character and a
good will, also makes evil choices possible, with their
many unfortunate consequences, including the develop-
ment of immoral character and an evil will. Moreover,
this evil will tends to make evil choice habitual, and so
to aggravate its own evil condition.
Here we are confronted with the problem of the origin
of moral evil. How comes it that beings that are free
to choose between good and evil should sometimes choose
evil, not simply through ignorance, but even against their
best moral judgment ? It is not necessary to push the
problem further back by referring to a superhuman tempter.
The explanation is psychological, physiological, sociological.
Right conduct is action which is right both inwardly
and outwardly. It is conscientiously and intelligently
directed toward the true well-being of all concerned.
Such action is not always the easiest to choose and carry
through. Instinct, habit, mental inertia and social in-
fluence may be against it, even when the true ideal is
seen and approved. And so it comes about that man
is often guilty of choices which bring into existence a new
kind of evil, and that the worst of all, viz. moral evil, or
sin. Moreover, moral evil is very potent in increasing
the other kinds of evil to which we have referred, viz.
needless injury and disaster to life and its values, needless
suffering, and needless ignorance and error. Through
38
GOD AND EVIL
man's inhumanity to man, the world is far from being
the best possible world. Universal and permanent good
will in man would make heaven on earth, but the evil
human will has gone far — in war, for instance — toward
making hell on earth.
And yet what is desirable is not the taking away of
human freedom of choice and action. Other things being
equal, a world of human free agency is the best possible
kind of world. Without it moral personality would be
impossible. Man would be a mere mechanical puppet,
some of whose actions were mysteriously accompanied
by processes of completely predetermined sensation and
thought. But a world of moral freedom is one in which
it is possible for man to learn the right way of life, if not
through the preferred way of anticipating possible evil
and avoiding it, then through the bitter consequences of
thoughtless or wilful wrong-doing. The case, then, is
similar to that of intellectual evil. There is danger in
free thought and investigation, lest one fall into error,
with its unfortunate consequences. There is danger,
similarly, in free choice and action, lest one fall into sin
and its many consequent evils. But it is better to think
than not to be able to think, and better to choose than
not to be able to choose. The possibility of moral person-
ality and of continual progress towards an ever-developing
moral ideal is without doubt worth the risk of individual
choices of moral evil.
But in view of the seriousness of moral evil and its
consequences, and considering the costliness and uncertain
efficacy of learning to do right through experiencing the
painful consequences of doing wrong, it seems highly
desirable that there should be yet another way of inter-
vening, this time in the life of the human will, to guard
against this peculiarly serious form of evil, viz. human
39
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
sin. But it is desirable also that this intervention should
occur without destroying the orderliness of nature or of
the life of sense and thought, and without interfering
with the freedom of human choice and action. This
again may seem a great deal to ask, but it is not too much.
Provision has been made for just this sort of normal inter-
vention in the miracle of moral salvation through the right
sort of religious dependence. This experience of salvation
from sin through the right adjustment of the life to God
is not forced upon anyone ; human freedom is not violated,
and happily so, for there could be no moral salvation if
it were. But if all individuals were to fulfil as fully as
possible the religious conditions of salvation from sin,
the world we live in would come to seem to us so nearly
the best possible world, that it would be easy to believe
it to be the best possible kind of world for the first stages
of man's development. If, then, the world is not what
it would be if man were to make as full use as he might
of the source of moral renewal in religious experience at
its best, the fault is his own. The world as a world of
human freedom, even in the matter of choosing or reject-
•ing moral salvation, is a better kind of world than one
of any other imaginable sort would be, whether it were
a world in which developing creatures could never need
salvation, because they were not free and so could not
sin, or a world in which there was sin but no provision
for salvation, or a world in which an external " salva-
tion," so called, was forced upon the individual without
his choice or against his will, and so at the expense of his
moral personality.
But there is still another element of the problem of evil
which would remain to exercise our minds, no matter
how fully moral evil were overcome through educative
discipline and religious dependence. There is the problem
40
GOD AND EVIL
involved in the universal and inevitable fact of physical
death. However the good will with the aid of scientific
thought may guard man against violent and premature
death, the limit of the power to live is nevertheless soon
reached. Every human individual, however valuable he
may be as a means of human betterment or as an end in
himself, must ultimately part with his material body and
disappear from the earthly life of the race.
Now so far as the well-being of the human race on earth
is concerned, it is no doubt better that all must ultimately
die than that there should be no such thing as bodily
death. If the latter were the case, the earth would soon
be full of old people, there would be no room for new
generations, and the resulting racial stagnation may be
left to the imagination to depict. If only it were possible
to be assured that all the essential values of individual
personality were somehow conserved, in spite of the death
of the body, it would be possible to maintain that even
a world in which physical death is universally inevitable
is still the best possible kind of world in which to have the
human individual pass the first stage of his development.
But is it possible to find a reasonable basis for believing
that the death of the body does not mean the end of those
values that are bound up inseparably with personal exist-
ence ? What is called for is one more normal and univer-
sally dependable miracle, viz. the miracle of personal
immortality. Racial immortality, so called, is not suffi-
cient. In fact, if there is no individual immortality,
there can be no immortality of the race. Science holds
out the certain prospect of a time when this planet will
have become too cold for the support of any form of
physical life. The only possible guarantee of racial
immortality is necessarily bound up with the immortality
of the individual.
41
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
The, question of a future life is not a trivial one. Es-
pecially in these days of world-warfare, with the unpre-
cedented slaughter of promising young lives, the demand
of the human heart for this miracle of a life after death
becomes insistent and wellnigh universal. The soldier
is not indifferent to the question. He wants to be able
to believe that when he gives his life for the cause he
believes in, that sacrifice will not mean the end of his
personal existence. And there is probably no place on
earth where the flame of the immortal hope burns brighter
than on the blood-soaked fields of Europe. Spontaneously
the feeling arises, as one views the broken and mangled
bodies of the dead and the dying, and the rows upon
rows of wooden crosses that mark the graves of the heroic
dead, " Of course there must be a life beyond ; this surely
cannot be the end of all." Said a young Canadian soldier
of his friend who had just been killed by a German
shell : " He'll carry on ! It would take more than that
to stop him ! "
There are some who affect a superior air and declare
all desire for immortality a mark of egotism and petty
selfishness. It may be granted at once that the desire
of an egotistical and thoroughly selfish person for a future
life would very probably be an egotistical and selfish
desire. But when the medical missionary who has been
giving his life in arduous and unselfish service to the
fishermen of Labrador has this to say : "I am very much
in love with life. I want all I can get of it. And if there
is any more to be had after this life is over, I want that
too," the desire can not be dismissed as an expression
of petty selfishness. It all depends upon what a future
life is wanted for, and what use would be made of the
further opportunity for action, if the desire for it were
granted. On the understanding that a future life would
42
GOD AND EVIL
mean a further chance to express the good will and realize
the moral ideal, it must be evident that no one could
morally vote against the immortality of any good will,
his own or that of anyone else. The value of a good
will, as means to other ends and as an end in itself, is,
especially if given unending opportunity for expression
and development, immeasurably great, and therefore its
continued existence is absolutely imperative, if at all
possible. Indeed, practically the same thing may be said
of any will concerning which there is good reason to hope
that it will become a good will. No person, therefore,
human or divine, can be wise and good, and not be for
the immortality of all wills that are actually or even
potentially good.
But is it believable that the human mind and will and
whole spiritual personality will outlast the physical life ?
Are not all the phenomena of human consciousness neces-
sarily dependent upon certain conditions of the brain ?
How then can consciousness continue after the disintegra-
tion of the body ? In reply to this it may be said that
it is not necessary to regard mind as dependent for its
existence upon the brain. On the contrary, it is quite as
permissible to view the brain as the developing instrument
of the developing mind, and an instrument which has as
its special function the bringing of the mind into such
relations with a particular material environment as will
enable it to learn therefrom, express itself therein, and
communicate with other " embodied " minds similarly
related to the same environment. And there is strong
support for this view in certain special considerations,
some of which may be briefly mentioned. For example,
if we accept as valid the normal human consciousness of
moral responsibility, we must hold that, within whatever
limits, man is a free agent ; for if he were not free at all,
43
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
he would not be morally responsible. But if he is free,
this must mean that his spiritual self is an originating
and even creative factor in certain changes which take
place, first of all in the brain, and ultimately, through
the nerves and muscles, in the external world. If, then,
mind is independent enough to create changes in the brain,
is it unreasonable to suppose it may be independent enough
to survive the dissolution of the brain ? Some would
appeal to the alleged phenomena of spirit-communication
as verifying the hypothesis of a future life. Others, how-
ever, maintain that the hypothesis of telepathy is suffi-
cient to account for the facts, without any appeal to the
theory of communication from discarnate minds. But
telepathy itself would mean such a view of mind as would
make it seem not unreasonable to suppose that it might
very well be able to persist without the brain as its
instrument.
But if we would go beyond these statements (to the effect
that a future life is morally and socially imperative and
theoretically possible), we must rest our assertions upon
a religious basis. In the experience of inner preparedness
for anything that one may have to face, through depen-
dence upon a power great enough and good enough for our
imperative religious needs, there are included on the one
hand an assurance that such a power exists, and on the
other hand a sense of readiness to meet even physical
death itself without the prospect of any absolute and
irreparable loss. These two assurances are bound up with
each other. In proportion as we are sure of a God who
is sufficient for our imperative religious needs, we can be
sure that He will not suffer the good will, or the will
that is on the way to becoming good, to lapse into non-
existence. " I know God," says the religious expert,
" and I know He will not let me die."
44
GOD AND EVIL
We have thus the indicated solution of the religious
problem of evil, the problem as to how the fact of evil
in the world is compatible with the sufficient greatness
and goodness of God. It may be well to summarize
briefly the .main course of our discussion. A physical
world of absolutely dependable law and order is a better
basis for the development of physical life than any alter-
native that can be suggested. But the working out of
the natural processes in such a world tends to prove
disastrous at times to physical life and to objects having
value for life. A means of guarding against such disasters
without violating physical law is to be found in the facts
of sensation, including pain. Sensation itself occurs ac-
cording to law, and consequently under certain circum-
stances there tend to be instances of needless pain. A
means of guarding against such needless pain, and also
against disaster to life, is to be found in thought. The pro-
cesses of thought occur according to psychical law, and
consequently under certain circumstances there tends to
be erroneous thought. A means of guarding against error
is to be found in the capacity of directing attention, within
necessary limits and yet in a free and creative way. This
free agency, however, while indispensable for the develop-
ment of moral personality, also necessarily involves the
possibility of moral evil, which when it becomes actual,
carries with it a train of error, needless suffering and
disaster or injury to life and objects of value. A means
of guarding effectively against moral evil is to be found
in the religious experience of moral salvation, an experi-
ence which occurs without violation of the laws of nature
or of mind, and without violating the free agency of man.
But in spite of these normal miracles of sensation, thought,
free will, and the religious experience of moral salvation,
there remains the inevitable fact of physical death. The
45
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
complete solution of the problem of evil thus requires
the postulate of the further miracle of the soul's survival
of bodily death — a miracle assurance of which may be
found in a type of religious experience which is universally
valid and accessible to all who are willing to fulfil the
necessary conditions. These are the miracles we can be
assured of, and they are the only ones we need to be assured
of to be able to maintain that however far, through man's
misuse of freedom, the world may fall short of being,
as yet, the best possible world, it is nevertheless the best
possible kind of world to be the scene of the first stages
of man's development. And through man's co-operation
with God, undertaken in dependence upon God, this best
possible kind of world may be brought more and more
into conformity with the ideal of the best possible world.
46
IV
GOD AND THE INDIVIDUAL
IN order to deal at all completely with the problem
of the relation of God to evil, we have had to anti-
cipate to some extent our discussion of the relation of
God to the individual. We have had to refer to the
religious experience of moral salvation and to the religious
assurance of personal immortality, both of which are
affairs of God and individual men. But there are some
further questions with reference to the mutual relations
of God and men to which the war has given new interest
as topics of thought and discussion.
One of these problems has to do with the relation of
God to the protection of the soldier in the midst of the
dangers that surround him. There are some false notions
about this which need correcting. Soldiers who have
but recently arrived at the front are likely to think that
the saying of their prayers will have a sort of magical
efficacy for the saving of their lives. " I said my prayers
and I came out all right," said a wounded soldier to his
chaplain, meaning by " coming out all right " that he had
not been killed. But of those who said prayers for their
own protection, or of those for whom friends said prayers
for protection, was there never one killed ?
We have no desire to discount unduly the value which
such trench-religion undoubtedly has. Being brought
47 i>
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
face to face with the prospect of a cruel and untimely
death tends, naturally enough, to bring about a serious
frame of mind, which may even mean a spiritual crisis
in the history of the individual. At any rate, it is nothing
but normal that a man should have something of the
feeling of absolute dependence, and should begin to have
a new realization of his need of God.
But much the same thing may be said of trench-religion
as is notoriously true of " death-bed repentance." It
sometimes has a discernibly permanent effect ; but,
speaking generally, it tends to disappear when the danger
is over. It is a well-known fact that when troops are
expecting, in the course of a few hours, to go into action,
it is not a difficult thing to get them, almost to a man,
to partake of the sacraments of the Church. But the
writer can say from his own observation in a camp made
up of veterans who had been for some months — in hos-
pital, convalescent home, and command depot — away
from the front lines, that the number of men remaining
for the communion service after " Church parade " was
commonly not more than from two to five per cent, of
the total number present. And this characteristically
frank confession was made by an officer : " When I was
in the trenches, I prayed like a good one ; but a week
later, when I was back in billets, I didn't care a damn
for religion."
The trouble with ordinary trench-religion is that to a
considerable degree it is the expression of superstitious
and magical notions as to the efficacy of religion. It is
too much akin to the widespread revival of fetichism,
which is one of the curious phenomena of the war. Unless
the turning to God in the trenches is an expression of
whole-hearted aspiration after a higher and better life,
this overt religion of the soldier is very far from being
48
GOD AND THE INDIVIDUAL
as fine a thing, or as true a test of manhood, as the readi-
ness to lay down one's life for friends and country and
the future good of the world, whether this loyalty to a
cause be thought of as religion or not.
As a matter of fact the soldier, after some experi-
ence at the front, tends to lose faith in his half -instinctive
prayers for protection and in the practices of magical
religion, and to adopt the now well-known fatalism of
the trenches. Realizing how little any one at " the real
front " can do, through prayer or in any other way, to
guarantee his immunity from death, he finds comfort in
the thought that the time and manner of his death are
settled beforehand. And so, with the thought, " What's
the use of worrying ? " he learns to do his daily duty
with a fine scorn of the constant menace of death.
This fatalism should not be regarded as the mark of a
total lapse from religion, even when it appears, as it so
often does, as a substitute for the half-instinctive, half-
superstitious saying of prayers as a protection against
death. In truth, it is often the soldier's way, crude and
inadequate though it may be, of expressing his self-commit-
ment to an overruling providence. It may even be the
soldier's " camouflage " for a faith that might have been
expressed in the familiar words, " Though He slay me,
yet will I trust in Him." In any case, there are many —
and" I have found chaplains among them — who feel that
it is the only thing that makes life tolerable at the front.
And yet this fatalistic philosophy of the trenches is
open to serious criticism. It may often prove beneficial,
as compared with entire lack of faith or some more super-
stitious belief. But it often proves injurious, as officers
and men who have been at the front can testify, leading
to carelessness and the taking of unnecessary risks from
which nothing can be gained. As a doctrine it contains
49 .
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
some truth, but it is also partly false, and the real truth
would be much better. Indeed, no soldier has complete
confidence in this fatalistic principle ; there are always
limits beyond which he declines to apply it. The real
truth is that it matters little when one dies, as compared
with how one dies. It is the truth that through self-
surrender to God and dependence upon Him one can
become inwardly or spiritually prepared for whatever
duty he may have to do and whatever danger he may
be called upon to face.
This religion, superior to fatalism, containing its truth
and practical value and avoiding its error and possible
harm, is well expressed in the following lines, written
by a young Canadian soldier I before going into action
in the great battle of the Somme in 1916 : —
O God of Battles, now that time has come
Which in the pregnant months in camp has been
The goal of everything, my hope, my fear,
The peril of the thing as yet unseen :
That fear and wounds and death may pass me by,
Is not the boon, O Lord, for which I pray ;
For having put the rim within my lips,
I do not ask to put the cup away.
But grant the heart that Thou hast given me
May in the hour of peril never fail,
And that my will to serve and do my part
May ever o'er my will to live prevail.
Thou knowest, Lord, my soul doth not fear death,
Although my body craves to live its span ;
Help me to grapple with my body's fear,
And grant, O Lord, that I may play the man.
It is not immunity from death, or from the even more
1 Ernest Garside Black.
! 50
GOD AND THE INDIVIDUAL
dreaded mutilation, that the soldier should seek to be
assured of, when he commits himself to God and places
his trust in Him. What he may reasonably and rightly
seek are these three things : resolution, such as will enable
him to meet triumphantly the temptations to evil that will
assail his moral character ; a steadfast devotion to duty,
such as will keep him faithful to the end ; and finally
assurance that, if he should be called upon to give his
life for the cause of justice and liberty, the death of the
body will not mean the end of his existence as a conscious
personality. These are the benefits which the soldier is
warranted, by reason and experience, in seeking in the
ways of religion.
One of the most fundamental problems of the relation
of God to the individual, as raised anew by the war, is
the question of immortality ; but this we have already
discussed in connection with the problem of evil. Our
conclusion was that assurance of a future life is bound up
with the assurance of the existence of God as a power
great enough and good enough for our religious needs.
As we have seen, this assurance of the reality of God
is to be gained in the experience of moral salvation, i.e.
of inner preparedness, through religious dependence, for
whatever one may be called upon to face.
But the bare fact of a future life is not all we want
to know. What ought we to believe about the future
destiny of the soldier who has been killed in battle ?
One of the doctrines of the day is to the effect that the
soldier's self-sacrifice for the cause of righteousness and
humanity makes atonement for the sins of his life, so that
we may be assured of his entrance immediately at death
into the perfect peace and bliss of heavenly life. Now
it is somewhat difficult to appraise correctly such a doctrine,
for the reason that some of its presuppositions are open
51
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
to criticism. It assumes that the relation between God
and the individual is primarily one of government, law,
crime, legal punishment and judicial pardon, rather than
one of a more direct personal sort. The only way for
the sinner to be saved, according to the older notion,
was through a conscious and definite acceptance of the
self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, as
expiating the guilt of human sin by bearing its legal
penalty as a substitute for sinful man, and thus propitiating
an offended and wrathful God. Apart from explicit
belief in the death of Christ as the sufficient substitute
for one's own everlasting punishment, there was no salva-
tion, it was maintained, from the inconceivable torment
to be suffered forever in hell.
Now of course the idea, so popular at present, of the
soldier's expiation of the sins of a lifetime through the
" supreme sacrifice " for a worthy cause is in some respects
a vast improvement upon this traditional doctrine. Its
idea of God and especially its interpretation of divine
justice are immeasurably more in agreement with the
truly Christian view of God's holy love as revealed in the
spirit of the historic Jesus and in supreme sacrifice on
behalf of the well-being of humanity.1 Moreover, it is
1 The traditional Christian doctrine of the Atonement Is really
more akin to the legalistic Old Testament doctrine of sacrifices —
against which the greatest of the Old Testament prophets protested
with great vehemence — than it is to the characteristic idea of
New Testament Christianity. According to the Old Testament
doctrine, for the establishing of reconciliation and peace with God,
man, the sinner, takes the first step and brings a gift to God, or
makes an innocent victim suffer instead of himself, imagining
that in view of this performance God will be made propitious
and grant him the pardon of his transgression. In the orthodox
Christian doctrine, the sinner is instructed to substitute the
innocent Christ for the animal victim ; in other respects the
conception is the same. " God, the Father " (in spite of this
designation) is regarded as the wwpropitious and arbitrary Sovereign,
52
GOD AND THE INDIVIDUAL
true that there is something akin to the death of Christ
in the heroic self-surrender of the soldier, even unto death,
for a cause which he has the right to believe in as the
cause not only of his country, but of all future generations
of humanity as well.
Let it be understood that the spiritual value of the
soldier's sacrificial devotion to home and country and to
the ideals of justice and liberty is fully and gladly acknow-
ledged. This has been suggested already, and will appear
more fully presently, in connection with our more con-
structive statement on the religion of the soldier. But
before making any sweeping statements as to the salva-
tion, through self-sacrifice, of the soldiers who have died,
it may be well to ask how far those other soldiers may be
said to have experienced salvation who are still numbered
among the survivors of encounters in which they, equally
whose wrath against the sinner can be removed only by the punish-
ment of some victim, though it need not be the actual transgressor.
But not only would such a transaction be unethical for both God
and man, whether the victim were a mere animal or a Christ ;
it only serves to make it irrational as well, when it is maintained
that there is a transfer of guilt from the sinner to the victim, and
of righteousness from the victim to the sinner. Any such notion
is magical and superstitious ; there can be no guilt but the guilt
which is inseparable from a sinful will, so long as it remains sinful ;
' and there can be no righteousness, save that which is inseparable
from the morally good will. The characteristically Christian or
New Testament notion of the reconciliation of God and man
represents God, the one sinned against, as taking the first step to
bring about reconciliation ; it is He who furnishes whatever " pro-
pitiatory offering " may be supposed to be necessary (see Rom. iii.
25 in the Greek original) ; it is man who is to be changed and
" reconciled " (see 2 Cor. v. 20) ; God has been propitious all along,
like the father of the prodigal ; all that is needed is the turning
of man's will from the ways of sin, or his turning to God that he
may be the more effectively turned from sin ; and it is only in so
far as it induces this change in man that the unselfish life or the
undeserved and " sacrificial " death of the Man of Nazareth can
be regarded as having any truly saving functioa.
53
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
with the fallen, braved the prospect of death on behalf
of a just and sacred cause. After the war it will be dis-
covered with regard to a good many of these brave lads,
not only that they are still very far from being conven-
tional saints — that will not be greatly to their discredit ! —
but that while in some respects they are stronger and
finer men, in some other respects their characters have
suffered deterioration. And while many, perhaps most
of them, will have gained a new respect for the things
that count for most in religion, it will not be possible
to say that they have all been brought into a state of
reconciliation with God by their experience in the trenches.
What ought to be said of the soldiers who meet death
on the field of honor is this, that they will begin the future
life with the characters with which they ended this first
stage of their existence, but that the heroic doing of their
duty, even unto death, will necessarily mean a long for-
ward step in the development of strength and nobility
of character. And in any case, from the truly Christian
point of view, they are now, as always, the objects of
the divine love and care.
One of the most marked of the war's effects upon re-
ligious practice is to be seen in the widespread revival
among Protestants of the saying of prayers for the dead.
It is a logical development from modern Christian con-
ceptions of God and of the future life. If God is un-
changeably the God of justice and love, and if man's
future life is one of continued conscious activity and
development, why should it not be as right and reasonable
to express to God one's " soul's sincere desire " for the
spiritual well-being of the departed as it is to pray for
those who have not yet crossed "' the great divide " ?
There is this difference, however, between prayer for
the dead and prayer for the living. In prayer for the
54
GOD AND THE INDIVIDUAL
living our continued contact with them acts as a check
upon exaggerated notions as to the effects of our prayer.
The tendency piously to assume that the mere saying of
prayers on our part can produce any magical change in
their lives is discouraged by what we can learn of their
present condition. But in prayer for the dead this check
upon an over-exuberant faith — or credulity — does not
exist. There is no way of disproving that the request
has been granted, and many will be persuaded that it
would be impious to doubt it. There would thus, be a
tendency toward the thought that the making of one's
own life right might very well be postponed until after
death, and that there need be no very great concern for
the character or spiritual condition of others during the
present life. The history of prayer for the dead, espe-
cially as recognized and encouraged by the Church, is not
entirely reassuring.
What seems to be needed is a revision of current notions
with reference to the whole matter of intercessory prayer.
Prayer with direct reference to the spiritual welfare of
others may very well be the highest and most unselfish
kind of prayer ; but there is reason to fear that the ideas
of many Christians concerning intercessory prayer are not
only unverified but both unreasonable and unchristian.
The saying of prayers for others, if interpreted in a certain
way, may even do more harm than good. It is " vain
repetition," comparable to magical incantation. Not long
ago the writer heard a group of religious leaders discussing
the introduction of " efficiency methods " into their inter-
cessory prayer. The idea was to group together various
objects on their prayer-lists, and pray for them together
for the saving of time ! It is surely not undue scepticism
to be doubtful as to the value of such mechanical inter-
cession. Moreover, prayer with reference to the spiritual
55
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
well-being of others must not be of the sort that is so
easily made a substitute for doing one's duty to those
others directly. It must not be asking God to do, without
any effort on our part, what the divine Spirit, by leading
us to be interested in them, is seeking to accomplish
through our instrumentality. Rather must effectual inter-
cessory prayer be — in the main, at least — a coming into
dynamic relations with God, in order to be prepared to
work effectively for the well-being of those in whom we
are interested.
The solution of the problem as to the future of the
soldier killed in action is to be found, then, neither in
the idea of the expiation of the sins of a lifetime by the
heroic self-sacrifice of one's life for a noble cause, nor in
the practice of offering prayers on behalf of the dead.
Rather is it to be found in remembering that these brave
lads in the trenches are all of them well-beloved sons
of God. When one has watched the soldiers marching
up to the trenches, stern and thoughtful, looking straight
ahead through the gathering night to the unknown that
awaits them ;' when one has seen them with the guns
and on the fire-step ; when one has seen them returning
from the trenches, as the writer saw them by the thousand
in the great battle of the Somme, for example, some of
them from two days' fighting, in which a trench had
been captured from the enemy, consolidated and held
against heavy shell fire and three counter-attacks ; when
one has looked upon the sublime spectacle of these rain-
soaked, mud-beplastered men from the field of battle,
haggard and ready to drop from exhaustion, but ready
to help one another, considerate, grateful for the least
word or act of kindness, uncomplaining and cheery, with
an air of spiritual content about them ; or when one has
seen the freshly wounded in the dressing stations, bearing
56
GOD AND THE INDIVIDUAL
their pain and their ghastly mutilations with quiet forti-
tude, and when one reflects that it is the chastisement
of our peace that has been laid upon them, and that with
their stripes we are healed, one can not escape the con-
viction that out of the world's groaning and travailing
in pain there has come a revealing of the sons of God.
If these gallant soldier-lads are not sons of God, there
are no sons of God among us. There is much that is far
from perfect in them, no doubt ; they are sinful sons of
men, and many of them will have to suffer the bitter
consequences of their sins. They need the regenerating
power of God, like the rest of us ; they need to become
consciously, and by their own free decision, sons of God
in a fuller and more intimate sense of the term. But
after one has come to know them as they are, at their
best and at their worst, one does not wonder any more
that God should love sinners. In spite of everything they
are already, in a very real sense of the word, God's sons ;
and His likeness can be seen in their faces, marred with
the grime and blood of battle for a just and holy cause.
In the words of the Master there is a parable of two
sons, both of whom were bidden by their father to go and
work in his vineyard. One of them replied, " I go, sir,"
but he went not. The other said, " I will not," but he
afterwards repented and went. Performance without
profession versus profession without performance. After
all it is performance that counts. There are some who,
in those far-off days before the war, professed to be in a
special relation of sonship to God, and promised to be
obedient to His will. And then the time of testing came,
and they " went not." But these others, many of them,
in those bygone days never ventured much in the way
of profession or promise. But when the time for devoting
their lives to the sacred Cause arrived, they responded
57
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
to the call and " went." Of the two sorts of " sons,"
which were the ones who did the will of their Father ?
The fact is, there are two kinds of religion. Both sorts
are desirable. Some people have very little of either kind ;
some have one sort, and some have the other. These two
varieties of religion are, first, devotion to the divine Ideal,
that is, to an ideal of such absolute value that it is worth
living for, and may even prove, on occasion, worth dying
for ; and second, dependence upon the divine Being, or
Power, that is, upon the superhuman Reality which man
has a right to regard as the ultimate objective Factor
in his experience, That upon which he is absolutely depen-
dent. Devotion to the divine Ideal we may call funda-
mental religion, and dependence upon the divine Being
with reference to some desired experience, experimental
religion. Now there may be a good many soldiers who have
very little experimental religion, or whose experimental
religion is of a rather low and superstitious order ; but
on the other hand, many of these same soldiers, in the
fidelity of their devotion to duty and to the eternally
valid human ideals that the allied soldier's duty represents,
furnish a most inspiring illustration of fundamental reli-
gion. And if the real God be the God of Christian faith,
He is better satisfied with such devotion to the Ideal,
even though it be unaccompanied by conscious dependence
upon Himself, than He would be with mere dependence
upon Himself, without devotion to the true Ideal, which
is the goal of His will.
The soldiers who have died for international justice
and the future well-being of humanity, and so for divine
ideals, or the will of God, will presumably stand higher
in the judgment of the God of righteousness and love
than many others who may have seemed to us more
religious, but who shirked their duty in the supreme
58
GOD AND THE INDIVIDUAL
crisis. What is meant is not that the blood of the final
heroic act of self-sacrifice washes out the stains of the
sins of a lifetime. The divine judgment, being true judg-
ment, always is and will be judgment according to what
the man really is, judgment according to character. The
divine Grace never interferes with the correctness of the
divine verdict. And while the slain soldier's final heroic
service and sacrifice will mean much for his character, they
will not mean everything. But these brave souls will
be judged by the God whose judgments are true and
righteous altogether, by the God who hates hypocrisy and
cowardice, and who loves sincerity, loyalty, and courage.
No doubt there ought to be, and there will still need to
be, in the future life, educative discipline. The evil con-
sequences of wrong-doing in the earthly life will still be
felt, but the experience of these evil consequences will
be purgatorial, cleansing the mind and will from sin, if
they are taken in the same spirit of fortitude and de-
votion to a true ideal that have characterized the good
soldier. And in any case, the immortal spirits of our
soldier dead are in the keeping of the God, great enough
and good enough for all their needs, whose imperfect
but beloved sons they are.
And what of the future of the soldiers who will be with
us again after the war is over ? It would be a mistake
to suppose that they will be inevitably better or that
they will be inevitably worse as a result of their experi-
ences. Some of them will be the better and some of them
the worse for their experiences, and many of them will
be both better and worse. But this much is certain :
no man who goes to war for a righteous cause from a
sense of duty need suffer in character as a result of his
life as a soldier. The divine Power is sufficient for the
needs of the human spirit under all circumstances. Many
59
GOD IN A WORLD AT WAR
a soldier has proved the sufficiency of God to enable him,
in the discharge of his duty, to endure unimagined miseries
with fortitude and to look death in the face undaunted.
But many a soldier needs to learn the more prosaic lesson
that he has quite as much need of God to enable him
to meet with equal preparedness of spirit the dangers
that beset him in the temptations of his well-earned period
of " leave." Here, too, the power of God is sufficient
for the needs of man, but its exercise is conditioned upon
self-surrender to the divine Ideal as well as dependence
upon the divine Reality. There is no soldier in our armies
but may, if he will fulfil the conditions, return to his
friends, if he survives the war, strengthened and ennobled
in character by the discipline of his experiences. This
is true because there is a power of the divine indwell-
ing Spirit sufficient for every imperative religious need
of man.
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