WILL CHRISTIANITY SURVIVE THE WAR? 27 



of reason, armed with new weapons and inspired by new 

 hopes ; and the outstanding figure of the nineteenth century 

 was to be, not Pius the Ninth, but Darwin. 



It seems unlikely that the war will seriously affect the 

 popular belief in Providence. Yet it is possible that the 

 tragedy which is being enacted may bring home to many 

 thoughtful religious people, as no far-off tragedies of the 

 past could do, how glaringly inadequate the current theology 

 of the Churches is as an explanation of experience. There 

 may be a wide and more insistent demand for doctrines less 

 obviously out of keeping, intellectually and ethically, with 

 the general body of modern ideas. The liberal clergy, who 

 (whatever may be thought of their logic) have been doing 

 the work of Rationalism, may have a new stimulus and 

 encouragement to go on their way more boldly than ever 

 reinterpreting the old phrases and eviscerating the old 

 doctrines. 



But it would, I think, be a mistake for Rationalists to 

 expect that the slow process of " creeping from point to 

 point" will be greatly accelerated. Is anything short of a 

 new scientific revelation, comparable in import to those 

 which are associated with the names of Copernicus and 

 Darwin, likely to quicken the pace perceptibly, even for a 

 time? And it should be borne in mind that Reason cannot 

 hope to enter into her own till education is completely 

 reformed and all men are taught in childhood enough about 

 the general facts of the past to enable them to see that history 

 is not the dossier of an incompetent Providence, but the 

 record of an uphill struggle, in which their race, heavily 

 handicapped, has accomplished wonders. In this country 

 education is the field in which, immediately after the end of 

 the war, we have to hope and fear most. There appears to 

 be a general consent that our system needs a radical revision, 

 and that education must no longer be treated by governments 

 as a minor department, in which their only duty is to devise 

 compromises, which satisfy nobody, between contending 

 claims. It would be too sanguine to cherish a hope that 

 the secular principle may be introduced. The adverse 

 influences are still powerful, and nothing will be left 

 undone to avert such a change. But perhaps we may 

 look forward to some improvements in the programme of 

 liberal education ; and improvements, however small and 

 timid, must in the long run promote the cause of freedom 

 and reason. 



