(Some Controverted Questions, Huxley, p. 159.)
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the leaders of the Reformation and the New Learning began their relentless warfare upon the existing formalism and superstition, and from two different points of attack. After centuries of bloody wars, Protestantism succeeded in displacing Catholicism as the dominant religion over a large part of Northern Europe. Roman Catholicism still remained dominant in Southern Europe, and Greek Catholicism in Eastern Europe. In the meanwhile, to the eternal disgrace of the then Christendom, the followers of Mahomet had established his religion in some of the fairest portions of Southeastern Europe. If the Christian nations of the fifteenth century had expended on the practical cause of keeping Mohammedanism out of Europe one tithe of the energy and sacrifice that they did expend on the unpractical dream of recovering the Holy Sepulchre, Europe would have been spared the endless heritage of evil that has followed the introduction of the unspeakable Turk into European politics. But mutual jealousies, prejudices, petty ambitions, dissentions and discords permitted this calamity to occur, the end of which it seems is not yet.
As the Reformed churches became established in power, each one developed its own formalism, different from, but no more in consonance with, Jesus' simple religion, than that of the Catholics. As dogmatic theologians, Luther, Calvin, Knox and Jonathan Edwards were little improvement over Loyola, Augustine and Justin. Predestination, fore-ordination, change of heart, infant damnation, eternal punishment, the Thirty-nine Articles, the Augsburg Confession, would have been as unintelligible to Jesus, and would have met as summary condemnation at His hands, as the quarrels between the homoi-ousians and the homo-ousians, which rent the Christian world in the third century after His death.
But a more formidable champion had entered the lists against dogmatic theology and in favor of the creedless religion of Jesus. The invention of printing, the growth of science, the diffusion of education, and the development of a world-wide commerce were all working towards the eradication of superstition, the breaking down of national and racial and religious antipathies and prejudices, the cultivation of relations, first of business, and then of mutual regard and friendship between the peoples of different countries, the constant amelioration of the roughness, harshness and cruelty of earlier times, the encouragement of courtesy, consideration for others and charity towards all men. All these forces were making for Jesus' ideal of a common humanity, where the asperities of different religious creeds would cease to trouble, and each man might love his neighbor as himself. A tremendous victory had been won when the time came, that an Orthodox Catholic would admit that his righteous-living Protestant neighbor might inherit heaven as surely as himself.
The optimist of the early years of this century might have hugged himself with complacency over the rapid progress which the Gospel of Jesus was making in moulding mankind towards a realization of His ideals. Then came the cataclysm of 1914. The leading nations of Europe—all Christian except the Turks—plunged into the bloodiest war of history, and on the most petty of pretexts—the political administration of an insignificant Balkan state. The Gospel of Jesus, as an efficient force restraining these nations from war, was as though it had never existed. In the communications between England, France, Russia and Germany, preliminary to the war and ostensibly seeking to avert war, did any one statesman urge the argument that the law of Jesus forbade this war? Not a single syllable, and, for the sufficient reason, that each one knew that it would fall on deaf ears and would be laughed at as "old women's talk." So far as the efficiency of such arguments was concerned, they might as well have been used between the Persians and Egyptians before Jesus was born.
Then, when war broke out, came the supreme irony of each nation crowding its churches to pray for the assistance of the meek and gentle Jesus in slaughtering its enemies. Later, the victorious nations crowded their churches to thank Jesus that He had made them successful in their hellish business.
There are some who can quiet their consciences by shifting the responsibility for the incalculable misery of this brutal, barbarous conflict from the sins and evil ambitions of man to the shoulders of the Almighty. With those holding this (to the writer) blasphemous doctrine, argument is useless. But to the ordinary, sincere and candid follower of Jesus, does not the occurrence of this war give occasion to pause and think—as it were, to take an account of his stock-in-trade? Why did the mighty forces of Christianity fail to work with any practical effect at this, their supreme test—the prevention of war? What promise has the future to prevent the recurrence of such evils? How far has modern Christianity kept undefiled the pure religion of the Great Nazarene?
These are all questions demanding at this time the serious consideration of every thinking man, professed Christian or not.
THE ETERNAL CONFLICT
The Gospel of Jesus proclaimed the highest ethical ideal that had yet appeared on earth. But, as a working rule-of-conduct for practical, everyday life, it contained an essential weakness. With its acceptance by one nation after another, it became an efficient force, working with other forces in the evolution of mankind. But here it came in direct conflict with the forces of nature, which, working through countless ages, had made man what he then was. The ultimate goal of man's struggles and aspirations under the Gospel of Jesus was self-abnegation, non-resistance, the protection of the weak by the strong. The ultimate goal of nature's forces was self-assertion, battle, the crushing out of the weak by the strong. The struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest had no place in their operation for the doctrines of "turning the other cheek," and "loving thy neighbor as thyself." The two were, and always will be, as incompatible as fire and water.