WILL CHRISTIANITY SURVIVE THE WAR? 31 



" O life as futile, then, as frail ! 

 O for thy voice to soothe and bless ! 

 What hope of answer, or redress ? 

 Behind the veil, behind the veil." 



To such a Divine Force as we postulate, the whole 

 development and perfecting of life on this planet, the 

 whole production of man, may seem little more than to any 

 one of us would be the chipping out, the cutting, the carving, 

 and the polishing of a gem ; and we should feel as little 

 remorse or pity for the scattered dust and fragments as must 

 the Creative Force of the immeasurably vast universe feel for 

 the disjecta membra of perfected life on this planet. 



It has seemed to me, peering into the enigma of existence, 

 that the gospel of Pity, the installation of Loving-Kindness 

 as a cardinal axiom, the attempt to save failures, the finding 

 of a niche even for the unsuccessful, were principles never so 

 well expressed as in the teaching of Christ in Palestine nearly 

 1,900 years ago. And that we justly commence our present 

 era from the approximate date of the birth of that remarkable 

 personality, since Christianity in its essence may be the 

 beginning of a cosmic force of far-reaching application, even 

 though for many centuries its light was hid under a bushel 

 of stupid myths and foolish practices. 



In regard to the present war, we should do well to apply 

 all our energies to getting it over and making it the last 

 of " great " wars, and not exaggerate its importance as an 

 agency for good or evil in the history of man. 



(2) Will not the religion of the future, as a result of the 

 unforgettable revelations of this supreme tragedy, be humanist 

 rather than theological? 



I sincerely hope so. I hope that the religion of the future 

 will devote itself wholly to the Service of Man. It can do so 

 without departing from the Christian ideal and Christian 

 ethics. It need only drop all that is silly and disputable, and 

 " mattering not neither here nor there," of Christian theology 

 a theology virtually absent from the direct teaching of 

 Christ and all of Judaistic literature or prescriptions not 

 made immortal in their application by unassailable truth and 

 by the confirmation of science. An excellent remedy for the 

 nonsense which still clings about religion may be found in 

 two books : Cotter Morison's Service of Man, which was 

 published as long ago as 1887 an( ^ has si nce been re-issued 

 by the Rationalist Press Association in its well-known six- 

 penny series, and J. Allanson Picton's Man and the Bible. 



D 



