WILL CHRISTIANITY SURVIVE THE WAR? 35 



This being so, what are the prospects of religion after the 

 war, if prayer be an important ingredient in religion ? People 

 are discussing " religion after the war " (albeit with much less 

 assiduity) as they are discussing " trade after the war," and it 

 would be hard to say which topic elicits the worst nonsense. 

 But certainly the nostrum-mongers in regard to trade have 

 the better prospect of seeing their nostrums tried. In the 

 war temper, anything that looks even remotely like vengeance 

 is more or less welcome ; but if prayer will not flourish in 

 war time, when will it? It is true that there is a piety of 

 success and prosperity, as there is a piety of adversity and 

 defeat ; but the former is notoriously the less religious frame 

 of mind. When the Germans are finally beaten, other people 

 will be told that God has shown himself a God of justice ; 

 and there will be a fair number of people who will never 

 trouble themselves to ask what kind of divine justice it is 

 that first works immeasurable devastation and massacre by 

 its human instruments, and then puts them down, with or 

 without destruction of similar extent. But it is the more 

 thoughtful people who count for most in any calculation as 

 to how religion is prospering ; and while there have been 

 many accomplished people who could ostensibly take comfort 

 in the Berkeleyan thought that all things, good and bad 

 love and crime and sin and cruelty, flowers and stars and 

 agony and disease, scenes of beauty and scenes of horror 

 and filth exist " only " as ideas in the Divine Mind, it begins 

 to be doubtful whether that formula will continue to give 

 philosophic comfort in respect of the millions of maimed men 

 and the myriads of violated women who will for themselves 

 or others carry on the memory of the war. Bereavement, 

 doubtless, raises another religious problem. It may be that 

 among many of the millions of stricken folk for whom the 

 sun has been darkened by the death of those they most loved, 

 the belief in immortality will be stimulated as a means of 

 solace. If such comfort can outweigh the pursuing horror 

 of the historic tale of the Armenian massacres, for instance, 

 religion may be said to have regained ground. But will any 

 such countervailing process really take place, on any con- 

 siderable scale? If anywhere, is it not likely to be in the 

 defeated Empires? 



If there is one thing that religious writers claim more 

 constantly for religion than another, it is that faith sustains 

 in affliction ; and national affliction will presumably be 

 specially felt by the finally defeated peoples in the World 



