With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.”
There is a general tendency not to take too much personal trouble over any matter, a desire to avoid “being bothered,” and a persistent jog-trot in the same old way, like “dumb, driven cattle,” no matter whether the road lead to prosperity or ruin. This is like the fatal lethargy which overcomes the traveller in heavy snow, when he yields himself to a sleep from which he shall never wake.
Half the people in these islands do not yet realise the full meaning or the real horror of the war in which we have been forced, by all the rights of law and liberty, to engage. They do not think—they cannot. Their sense of perception seems stunned as by a heavy blow. All religion, all faith, all hope, have in a great measure failed them. They do not see why they should suffer undeservedly.
A poor woman receiving the news that her son was killed, had no tears—her face grew white and stiffened, as with frost—but she had nothing to say except this: “Ah, well! I couldn’t expect anything else, as there’s no God left to us now! Only man, the devil!” She could but realise that the war is man’s work—the result of his miserable ambitions, his delight in destruction, his selfish pride and cruelty. And the church had taught her little more than that the God she was told to worship was “a jealous God,” and out of that saying little comfort can be drawn for the broken heart of a bereaved mother.
Perhaps one of the most terrible notes struck from the great thunder-echoes of the war is this apparent failure of all churches to cope with the sorrow that has swept over all lands, destroying homes that were once happy.
Our Lord’s pitiful and pathetic words are realised to-day:—“Because iniquity shall abound the love of many shall grow cold.” Ah, yes, love for Him and all the tenderness He taught has “grown cold,” and many of His professed ministers are tongue-tied and spirit-frozen, and seem all unable to raise the broken lives from the dust of despair, or dry the weeping eyes which are too tired and heavy to lift themselves to heaven.
There is a strong instinctive sense among us all, no matter to what sect we belong or what religious formula we profess, that if the churches had ever truly taught and truly followed the example of Christ, war and its horrors would have been impossible. For He gave us only two commandments—two instead of the Mosaic ten—thus:—
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it—thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Who is there that can deny that if these two commandments had been obeyed by man in his social and civil life, the whole face of things would have changed to an almost divine betterment, and the world’s progress, assisted by a sanity of thought and a clarity of action, would have been towards beauty and spiritual uplifting?