42 THEOLOGY AND THE WAR 



lives of their loved ones, and have wrestled in vain. Does 

 any one believe that a bullet or a torpedo is ever deflected by 

 one hair's-breadth from the course prescribed by the physical 

 forces which set it in motion, and which act upon it as it 

 moves? No one really believes any such thing. I am not 

 here relying on any preconceived dogma of an eternal and 

 immutable sequence of cause and effect running through the 

 whole universe from the beginning to the end of things. I 

 am not maintaining it to be impossible that God could have 

 interfered to spoil the aim of the man who launched the 

 torpedo at the Lusitania. On the contrary, it seems to me 

 perfectly possible. The action of mind upon mind, through 

 no visible or ponderable medium, is now a matter of every-day 

 experiment. If there be an all-embracing Mind, analogous 

 to our own, though infinite in the scale of its workings, one 

 sees no difficulty in conceiving it as constantly modifying by 

 suggestion the cerebral processes on which our actions depend. 

 Such guidance by suggestion would involve no interference 

 with the order of nature ; it merely postulates the existence 

 of a force unrecognized and unmeasured, whose method of 

 action has, however, several clearly-recognized analogies in 

 common experience. Nor can one say with any certainty 

 that such a force does not exist, and is not in constant opera- 

 tion. That whole range of our actions which seems to us to 

 be guided by choice may, in fact, be the result of promptings 

 from the divine mind. We may all be mere puppets of God, 

 actuated by a sort of psychical wireless-telegraphy. It seems 

 to me flatly impossible to say that this is not so ; all I do say 

 with confidence is that there is not the slightest sign of any- 

 thing that we can recognize as intelligent purpose, to say 

 nothing of benevolence, in the operation of any stimulating 

 or controlling agency that may be conceived to exist. In 

 other words, I do not say that we are not the puppets of God, 

 but I do say that, if we are, he has a great deal to answer for. 

 Any theory which relieves him from all immediate responsi- 

 bility for the events of the past two years to say nothing of 

 the events of several previous aeons seems to me, if not more 

 rational, at any rate a great deal more truly religious than 

 that which makes him the deliberate fomenter of the whole 

 world-frenzy. 



There is no difficulty in conceiving a moral and beneficent 

 government of mundane affairs. It is even possible though 

 this is harder to conceive a moral and beneficent ruler whose 

 action should be, in some small degree, influenced by the 



