FROM “THE RECORD,” SEPTEMBER 23, 1916
The way in which this war is stirring the deepest thoughts of our people has received a striking illustration during the last three weeks in a discussion in the pages of theWestminster Gazette. In that able journal religious questions have not ordinarily so congenial a home as in theSpectator, and it is the more illustrative of the tone of the public mind that, since August 28th last, hardly a day has passed without the appearance in its columns of letters of great earnestness on the subject of “Religion and the War.” The discussion was opened on that day by an anonymous article under that title, which opened with these words: “‘Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.’ The words of the Prophet come back to me when I hear the preachers trying to reconcile the terrors and horrors of this war with the idea of an all-powerful and all-beneficent Creator”; and around thedifficulty thus started the whole discussion has turned. The writer says he has listened, during the last few months, to many sermons, and read many of the articles and pamphlets and books “in which Divines and Philosophers have endeavoured to plumb these deep waters,” and he states briefly the principal arguments that he has found in them. It is not necessary for the present purpose to quote them all, especially as I think the writer has been unfortunate in his pulpits and his books. Several of the pleas he quotes are mere platitudes, such as “that the ways of God are unfathomable, and that one must walk in faith and believe that things are somehow good.” The point to which he reduces the question is that under the strain of our present experience “people see suddenly that the doctrine of an omnipotent and all-loving Creator, as commonly expounded in pulpits, is at war with the plain facts of the visible world.” To this problem all the subsequent letters are directed, and they afford impressive and painful evidence of the distress with which many men and women seem to be groping in perplexity.There are many striking and touching observations in them, and sometimes, as by Lord Halifax, the central principles of the Christian Faith are applied to the problem. But it is disappointing to find that it is not in the Bible or in the Christian Faith that most of the writers seek for a solution of their difficulties. Too many of them seek refuge in philosophical discussions of matters like the Divine omnipotence and the abstract problem of evil. The first writer comes to the conclusion that “theology remains tangled up in its own conception of omnipotence—which brings us at best to the conclusion that God has so limited His own power as to permit the existence of evil, and at worst invests Him with attributes which are the reverse of benevolent,” and to this philosophical question writer after writer returns. The consequence is that the light which is thrown upon the whole problem by the Scriptures and by our Lord Himself is obscured in a maze of philosophy and words.
What, then, has revelation to say upon the subject? The first thing, and themost important, which it has to say is almost ignored in the discussion. As has been said, the problem propounded by the opening writer is to reconcile the terrors and horrors of this war with the idea of an “all-powerful and all-beneficent Creator.” From the point of view of the Bible, of the Psalms in particular, and of our Lord, that description of the Creator leaves out His most important attribute. If we add as the Psalms invariably imply, “an all-righteous Creator,” an element is introduced into the problem which raises entirely fresh considerations. If you merely ask the question how the pain and misery of the war are compatible with perfect beneficence and perfect omnipotence, the answer is obscure. But if you introduce the question of the compatibility of the permission of such suffering with perfect righteousness combined with benevolence, the problem is radically altered. God is dealing with a creature who is not merely capable of pain and happiness, but of a righteousness and a truth like His own; and to bestow upon this creature happiness without righteousness would be inconsistent with the main object for whichhe was created, and such an idea would, in fact, involve a contradiction in terms. Once recognize that there is no happiness possible for man except in the harmony of his nature with the Divine righteousness, and it is evident that the main object of an all-benevolent Creator must be to produce this righteousness in man, and to repress and extirpate, by whatever means may be requisite, the evil which is incompatible with his happiness.
Now the Scriptures, from the third chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation, exhibit God as employing suffering as a remedy for unrighteousness or sin. It is a punishment, but it is also a cure. It may be such suffering as is involved in the condemnation of man to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow, instead of being able to “put forth his hand” and seize whatever he craved without effort. It may be the severer remedy of the punishment of death, or the bitter surgery of war. But what the Scriptures reveal is that all the suffering of life, slight or severe, is instituted by God, and employed by Him, to promote and uphold that righteousness in man which can alonequalify him for that harmony with God, which is the happiness for which he was intended. The free will, whatever its degree, with which man has been endowed, must be educated by the suffering which follows its misuse, as well as by the satisfaction which is conferred by its right use. Accordingly it appears to be the cardinal fact of man’s constitution that unrighteousness throws his nature into disorder, and brings a similar disorder into his whole social condition. Families, societies, and nations can only realize their true purposes, they can only exhibit a true order, when the individuals of whom they are composed are righteous, and are thus qualified for their true functions. Let the individuals or component parts become disordered, and the whole society must be disordered, and involved in confusion and perhaps ruin. I have sometimes imagined the case of a visitor introduced to some vast machine, working under immense pressure, and being told by his guide that unfortunately every part of the machine was more or less imperfect, and some of the parts almost rotten. Would the visitor care to exposehimself long to the risks of the inevitable explosion? But that is exactly the case of every human society, small or great. All the individuals of which it is composed are grievously imperfect, and some of them are positively vicious. Is it any wonder that it develops antagonistic forces within itself, and that sooner or later it bursts into a great conflagration—the conflagration of a revolution or a war? God, in fact, by this constitution of mankind, has provided that unrighteousness shall punish itself. He does not intervene, as a rule, to inflict a special punishment. He leaves men to work out their own punishment, and to realize from it that there was some corruption at work in their lives.
If it be asked whether an all-powerful and all-beneficent Being could not have provided some less distressing method of education, the first reply may be that of Bishop Butler—that it is foolish for such creatures as we are to try to devise schemes for the construction of better worlds than the one we live in. But the Gospel has provided an answer which removes all temptation to such folly. Itreveals the momentous fact that “God, of His tender mercy, did give His Only Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption.” There is no need to enter upon theories of the Atonement in order to appreciate the bearing of that solemn truth upon this problem. Christ, Who lived and died for our redemption, found it necessary for that purpose to submit to the sufferings of the Cross—sufferings at least as bitter as any that are inflicted in war—and He said He submitted to them because it was the will of His Father—of the God Whom He called “His Father and our Father, His God and our God”—that He should do so. It is one satisfactory feature in this discussion that the moral authority of Christ is generally recognized; but it is very little noticed, if at all, that that authority declares, both by repeated assurances, and by the most touching personal experience, that the infliction and endurance of death and agony are compatible with the most perfect relations of love and tenderness between God and the Sufferer.
Our Lord has thus given His blessedpersonal sanction to what, after all, has been the instinctive belief of human nature, even before He lived and died. Cicero, for instance, in hisDe Officiis, states it more than once as a cardinal principle of human life and duty that it is more contrary to nature to do or allow unjust acts than to endure any suffering, loss, or even death. But the Cross of Christ elevates this inspiring and consoling conviction to the height of a Divine revelation and consolation; and to those who realize it, the main practical problem of the sufferings of war is solved. All such suffering is God’s remedy for moral evil, and is allowed because it is the only means by which man’s nature can be purified and renovated. From this point of view it becomes quite unnecessary to perplex ourselves with philosophical questions respecting omnipotence. When God has once established a constitution, either for nature or for human nature, He has limited His Own action by the laws of that constitution so long as it lasts. He can, indeed, interfere with it for good cause; and He has done so, both in nature and human nature, by miracle.But to interpose by miracle to avert all distressing consequences of those laws would be to abolish the constitution altogether, and this He will not do until the present dispensation is brought to an end. For the present, God is governing and educating men by means of the laws which He has established, both physical and moral, and He leaves men to take the consequences of their moral violations of those laws, no less than of their physical.
The example of Christ, in His submission, should be enough to prevent any man “replying against God” for this constitution of things. The reflection which should be aroused in our minds by such “terrors and horrors” as those of this war is, on these principles, that there must have been something terribly false and vicious in the condition of the nations of Europe to produce so awful a manifestation of the consequences of evil. They are the consequences which, under the laws of human nature established by God, inevitably follow the prevalence of unrighteousness; and for that reason they are justly described in Scripture as the manifestation of “the wrath of God” against evil. On the principles of the Christian Faith, in short, there is one certainty amidst all our perplexities in this matter. The war and all its miseries reveal to us the fact that great injustices and moral evils were prevalent in Europe, and the greatness of the misery may be taken as a measure of the greatness of the evil. We think we see these moral and religious evils in the state of our enemies, and particularly in the state of German life and religion. But we shall make a fatal mistake if we allow ourselves to think that all the evil and unrighteousness has been on their side. If we are candid with ourselves, we shall recognize that a disregard of God and Christ, a grievous disbelief in the revelation and the guidance they have given us, and a consequent decay of religion, and looseness of moral obligations of all kinds, have been making way among us, and have affected not only our private life, but our standards of public action. We are discovering more clearly, day by day, that if we are to meet the terrible dangers by which we are threatened, we must revive, both in public and in private, the standards of Christianprinciple which we formally acknowledge—self-denial, self-control, truth in word and deed, the fear of God, and the love of Christ; and in proportion as we succeed in these efforts shall we find that the problems of “religion and the war” are much simpler, better understood by our fathers, and more easily grasped by ourselves, than is supposed in the discussion from which we started.