The Potter and the Clay

by Arthur F. Winnington Ingram

The fallacy of the argument with regard to the breakdown of Christianity from the War lies in the words "Christian nations."

Is a nation a Christian nation which adopts as its governing policy a pagan doctrine? There may be plenty of individual Christians in the nation, as no doubt there are, thank God, in Germany, but no one who has ever cursorily studied Treitschke or Bernhardi, or the utterances of the governing class of Germany, who have imbibed the teaching of such leaders of thought, can imagine that the nation which has prepared for this War for forty years, which has prayed for this Day and longed for it, is really in this sense a Christian nation.

We are getting tired, terribly tired—at least I am—of hearing of these wretched men who have succeeded in indoctrinating a great and powerful and efficient people with a virus which has turned them into a curse instead of a blessing to the world. I only bring them in as part of my defence of Christianity. I say it is a monstrous misuse of language to talk of the breakdown of Christianity when what has produced the War is the exact contrary to Christianity. There is no such precise contradiction to the doctrine of the Cross as the doctrine of the Superman; there is no such absolute contrast to the principles of the New Testament as the German War Book.

You can say, and justly say, that in failing to convert the German nation, Christianity has so far failed in its world-wide mission, and this I readily admit; but so has it failed at present to convert the wild tribes of Central Africa and the millions of Chinese. All that we claim is that the principles of Christianity, when accepted and lived up to, change the face of the world; and we Christians protest in the strongest way that a nation which avowedly acts at a great crisis on anti-Christian principles is not in this sense a Christian nation at all.

(2) But we go further than this; the progress of the War has opened the eyes of other watching neutral nations besides Japan, as to the value of Christian principles in the conduct of War.

No one, I suppose, would deny that the whole idea of the Hague Conference, and the rules which it issued for the conduct of War, were a product of Christianity. It was thought two years ago that, while the Christian religion might not have so far progressed in the world as to render War impossible, at least that it would never be disgraced by the murder and violation of women and children, by ill-treatment of prisoners and non-combatants, and the sinking of innocent merchantmen and trawlers.

Just as in the origin of the War Christianity justified itself, so it has done in the conduct of it. Mr. Washburn has described the humanity with which the great Russian advance in Poland was conducted—not a church damaged, except by accident, not a civilian injured; whereas, while the world lasts, the names of Louvain, Aerschott, Lusitania, Cavell, and Fryatt will cry shame on the apostles of mere Kultur.

(3) But, on the other hand, let it not be supposed for a moment that I am speaking as if our own nation had no national sins to repent of and no open sores to cure in this great Day of God.

I am myself "Chief of the Staff" of the great Mission of Repentance and Hope which has already begun.

Short-sighted people ask to-day, "If we have a righteous cause, what have we to repent of?"—but the true answer is, "Because we have a righteous cause, therefore we must repent." I have spoken of metaphors from the Old Testament, but there is a fine simile to which I have not alluded, the simile of the polished shaft. "He has made me like a polished shaft; in his quiver hath He hid me." I fully believe that we are such a polished shaft in the Hand of God to-day; that He feels down for the polished shaft which He has prepared by years of discipline and dearly bought freedom, in order that He may save through us the Freedom of the world; but what if we break in His Hand, as nations have broken before? What if our drinking habits, curtailed, it is true, for a time by drastic regulations, but still producing a drink bill of 181 millions, what if the ravages of lust in our nation, as shown in the statistics published by the recent Commission, what if the constant neglect of God Himself, so rot the polished shaft that it breaks in the Hand of God?