WILL CHRISTIANITY SURVIVE THE WAR? 25 



that an all-benevolent one would certainly have done so, 

 unless he were so far from being all-knowing that he did 

 not foresee it. If we are to use our reason at all, it is as 

 certain as anything can be that the world is not ruled by an 

 omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent Deity. The 

 evidence on this point is overwhelming. Indeed, it can 

 only be got over by a negation of reason which makes all 

 discussion impossible. 



As I have said, the war has so strengthened the evidence 

 that many religious people are beginning to face the inevitable 

 conclusion that the power of the Deity must be limited if we 

 are to retain our belief in his goodness. Of course, this is 

 mostly put forward very timidly; but, once it is granted in 

 any degree, the dogmatic basis of all the Christian Churches 

 is undermined. What are these Churches? They are com- 

 munities of men and women bound together by a number of 

 very definite beliefs, which are supposed to be of immense 

 importance, and the rejection of which is said by many of 

 the Churches to entail the punishment of eternal torture. 

 In nearly all these communities there is a body of men set 

 apart from the rest whose business is mainly (at any rate, in 

 theory) the exposition and defence of these definite beliefs. 

 That these beliefs must be mostly untrue is obvious from 

 their being mutually contradictory. That is, the dogmas 

 of one Church to a great extent contradict the dogmas of 

 another. The dogmas that are common to all the Christian 

 Churches are very few. Of these few, the most important 

 is the belief in the omnipotence, omniscience, and omni- 

 benevolence of the Deity. As this is certainly untrue, we 

 can only come to the conclusion that none of the Christian 

 Churches have a reasonable basis. 



So, then, arises the question : Why should there be 

 Churches ? Why these communities of people bound 

 together in a common fellowship of unreason, bound to 

 the support of absurd dogmas which they imperfectly 

 understand, and which are mostly directed to the con- 

 futation of the rival dogmas of other Churches? Indeed, 

 the chief binding force of many of these communities is 

 hostility to other communities. The Low Church and the 

 non-conforming sects derive a great deal of their strength 

 from a common hatred of the Church of Rome the one 

 thing in which they are united. The Church of Rome, on 

 the other hand, brands all rival religions as heretical, and 

 persecutes them whenever it gets the chance. 



