i8 WILL CHRISTIANITY SURVIVE THE WAR? 



moral system which teaches that treachery, murder, and 

 torture are rightly applied by Germans to their fellow-men in 

 order to increase German wealth and material domination. 

 The triumph of the Alieswill lead to the firmer establishment 

 of " peace upon earth, goodwill towards men " the ideals 

 of Christian morality. Even should that triumph lead to 

 some temporary recrudescence among peasants and dreamers 

 of some of the vanishing superstitions of the Christian 

 mythology, we can tolerate the latter for the sake of the high 

 ideals which they have carried with them. There can be no 

 serious relapse in that direction. In due time Rationalism 

 will be left together with the essential doctrines of the 

 Christian morality in possession of the field ; and Rationalism 

 will, by further knowledge of the evolution of man, finally 

 justify that high code of morality (which the conscience of 

 humanity has, through ages of struggle and suffering, 

 built up and accepted) by tracing the steps of its origin and 

 gradual adaptation to human needs. 



Finally, let me quote a pregnant passage from Evolution 

 and the War (Murray, 1915), by my friend Dr. Chalmers 

 Mitchell : 



" I assert as a biological fact that the moral law is as 

 real and as external to man as the starry vault. It has 

 no secure seat in any single man or in any single nation. 

 It is the work of the blood and tears of long generations 

 of men. It is not in man, inborn or innate, but is 

 enshrined in his traditions, in his customs, in his litera- 

 ture and his religion. Its creation and sustenance are 

 the crowning glory of man, and his consciousness of it 

 . puts him in a high place above the animal world. Men 

 live and die ; nations rise and fall ; but the struggle 

 of individual lives and of individual nations must be 

 measured, not by their immediate needs, but as they 

 tend to the debasement or perfection of this, man's 

 greatest achievement." 



