But Christianity itself, as taught by Christ, towers above all “failure,” despite the apathy and hypocrisy of thousands of its professing priests, who in many instances are as selfish and flagrant blasphemers as the worst atheist and iconoclast in unchristianised and brutalised Germany.
Without that heavenly faith which helps us towards the attainment and reverence of the Divine in all things, what has Germany become? More cruel and callous, more lost to every sense of decency and honour than the savages of prehistoric times, she is sowing the wind and will reap the whirlwind.
But let us take care that we do not join her in her rush towards annihilation. Political shams and treacherous intrigues would drag us thither—“Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.” If a weak section of men and women fail to find their souls, Christianity itself has not “failed,” nor will it fail; because it is the divine expression of the unconquerable Spirit of Truth.
The most brilliant House of Lies ever built by man’s careful stupidity falls into dust at the lightest breath of a truth based on eternal equities. The microbes in a rotting cheese may deny the existence of the sun because they do not see it, and may ask, “Has the daylight failed?” But the sun pursues its glorious course, lightening the visible universe.
So it is with Christianity. And those who presume to ask “Has it failed?” are but the microbes in the rotting cheese.
SNOOKS’S OPINION
Snooks is one of those entertaining persons who makes a point of giving an “opinion” on everything. From the Almighty downwards he has what he calls a “calm common-sense view” on all subjects in heaven or on earth, and his chief object in life is to get that “calm, common-sense view” on all to the front, so that the poor, purblind, uneducated public who seldom have any time to indulge in “views,” and still less chance to express them, may understand that there yet exists one truly great man of sane and sober judgment—namely, SNOOKS.
Before the War he used to write letters to the Times on the urgent necessity there was for complete disarmament. In fervent language he pressed the reduction of naval expenses. He was, and is still, under the impression that the Times is still as it was in ages past—a British Thunderer; an Oracle which manifested itself as “I am Sir Oracle; and when I open my mouth let no dog bark.” He forgets that journalism is now only a monstrous Syndicate, not expressive of thoughts, but of Shares and Dividends, and that if the Times were what it once was, it would not publish any letter from Snooks. But Snooks is “fixed” in his opinions. He admits no change in the course of things—an old-established institution must, without argument, remain always as such, and must not totter to decay. When decay sets in, despite Snooks, he firmly denies its possibility.