E. H. S. Yale University, August 21, 1918

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I
[MORAL AND SPIRITUAL FORCES IN THE WAR]
CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN

In one of our more thoughtful magazines we were favored last February with an article entitled, "Peter Sat by the Fire Warming Himself." It was a bitter, undiscriminating arraignment of the ministers and churches of the United States for their alleged lack of intelligent, sympathetic interest in the war. It was written by an Englishman who for several years has been vacillating between the ministry and secular journalism, but is now the pastor of a small church in northern New York. The vigor of his literary style in trenchant criticism was matched by an equally vigorous disregard for many of the plain facts in the case. His tone, however, was loud and confident, so that the article secured for itself a wide reading.

"What became of the spiritual leaders of America during those thirty-two months when Europe and parts of Asia were passing through Gehenna?" the writer of this article asked in scornful fashion. And then after listing the enormities of the mad military caste which heads up at Potsdam, he asked the clergymen of the United States, "Why were you so scrupulously neutral, so benignly dumb?" His main contention was to the effect that the religious leaders of this country had been altogether negligent of their duty in the present world struggle, and that the churches were small potatoes and few in a hill.

It has been regarded as very good form in certain quarters to cast aspersion upon the ministers of the Gospel. When the war came men began to ask, sometimes with a sneer, and sometimes with a look of pain, "Why did not Christianity prevent the war?" It never seemed to occur to anyone to ask, "Why did not Science prevent the war?" No one supposed that Science would or could. It was the most scientific nation on earth which brought on the war.

It never occurred to anyone to ask, "Why did not Big Business, or the Newspapers, or the Universities prevent the war?" No one supposed that commerce or the press or education could avert such disasters. These useful forms of social energy are not strong enough. They do not go deep enough in their hold upon the lives of men to curb those forces of evil which let loose upon the world this frightful war. It was a magnificent tribute which men paid to the might of spiritual forces when they asked, sometimes wistfully, and sometimes scornfully, "Why did not Christianity prevent the war?"

The terrible events of the last four years have taught the world a few lessons which it will not soon forget. They have shown us the utter impotence of certain forces in which some shortsighted people were inclined to put their whole trust: The little toy gods of the Amorites—Evolution, with a capital E, not as the designation of a method which all intelligent people recognize, but as a kind of home-made deity operating on its own behalf! The Zeitgeist, the Spirit of the Age, all in capitals! The "Cosmic Urge," whatever that pretentious phrase may mean in the mouths of those who use it in grandiloquent fashion! The "Stream of Progress," the idea that there are certain resident forces in the physical order itself which make inevitably for human well-being and advance quite apart from any thought of God!