"None the less, the German Emperor protests, calling on God for witness, that the sword has been thrust into his hand: and, if he honestly believes this, there must be some great confusion of mind in this business. One party or the other must be walking under some terrible hallucination.
"The aged Austrian Emperor calls on his God to justify him. So does the German; while we in turn call on our God to justify us.
"Now, there cannot be two Gods—two real Gods—president over the actions of men. That were unthinkable. Of two claimants to that sceptre, one must be a pretender, an Anti-Christ.
"Therefore our first duty in this dreadful business is to clear our minds, to make sure that ours is truly the right God. Let us not trouble—for it is too late—about any German's mind. Our business is to clear our own vision.
"I confess to you that, however we clear it, I anticipate that what we see in the end is likely to be damaging to what I will call 'official' Christianity. However you put it, the Churches of Europe (established or free) have been allowing at least one simulacrum of Christ to walk the earth, claiming holiness while devising evil. However you put it, the slaughter of man by man is horrible, and— more than that—our Churches exist to prevent it, by persuasion teaching peace on earth, good-will towards men.
"Disquieted, unable to sleep for this thought, I arose and dressed early this morning, and sat for a while on the wall opposite, gazing at this homely house of God across the roadway. It looked strange and unreal to me, there in the dawn; and (for Heaven knows I can never afford to slight the place it holds in my affection) I even dared in my fondness to reckon it with great and famous temples such as in our Westminster, in Paris, in Rheims—aye, and in Cologne—men have reared to the glory of God. I asked myself if these, too, looked impertinent as this day's sun took their towers, dawning so eventfully over Europe; if these, too, suffered in men's minds such a loss of significance by comparison with the eternal hills and the river that rushed at my feet refreshing this valley as night-long, day-long, it has run refreshing and sung unheeded for thousands upon thousands of years.
"Then it seemed to me, as the day cleared, that whatever of impertinence showed in this building was due to us—and to me, more than any—who in these few years past have believed ourselves to be working for good, when all the while we have never cleared our vision to see things in their right proportions.
"We are probably willing to accept this curse of War as a visitation on our sins. But for what sins? O, beware of taking the prohibitions of the Decalogue in a lump, its named sins as equivalent! In every one of you must live an inward witness that these sins do not rank equally in God's eye; that to murder, for instance, is wickeder than to misuse the Lord's name in a hasty oath; that to bear false witness against a neighbour is tenfold worse than to break the Sabbath. Yet we for ever in our Churches put these out of their right order; count ourselves righteous if we slander our neighbour, so it be on the way to worship; and in petty cruelties practice the lust of murder, interrupting it to shudder at a profane oath uttered by some good fellow outside in the street. To love God and your neighbour, summed up, for Christ, all the Law and the Prophets: and his love was for the harlot and the publican, as his worst word always for the self-deceiver who thanked God that he was not as other men.
"I verily believe that in this struggle we war with principalities and powers, with the rulers of darkness in this world, with spiritual wickedness in high places. But make no mistake: the men who are actually going out from England to brave the first brunt for us are men whom we have not taught to die like heroes, who have little interest in Church or Chapel or their differences, who view sins in an altogether different perspective from ours; whom we enlisted to do this work because they were hungry and at the moment saw no better job in prospect: whom we have taught to despise us while they protect us.
"The sins of our enemy are evident. But if We say we have no sin, we shall deceive ourselves and the truth will not be in us."