ARE THE CHURCHES TO BLAME?

Otago Witness, Issue 3332, 23 January 1918, Page 62

ARE THE CHURCHES TO BLAME?

By Coxstance Clyde

Of late days when any great calamity has occurred' it has been customary to put the blame on the churches. To the logical mind this is very much as if the hospitals were held responsible for the number of accidents! The churches are there as a solace for the sin and suffering. Were there no such sin and suffering one great reason for their existence would be gone. This, however, is scarcely understood ; and how often wo hear the Church abused for not taking some drastic step for which, if it were once taken, it would be most roundly upbraided! There are people so curiously constituted that any great physical disturbance happening near enough to them, such as an earthquake, turns to atheiam. Why. an earthquake should have a specially secularising effect is hard to understand; yet certain it is that when one chances on one of those human documents arraigning the Creator, earthquakes are always sure to have special mention. The earthquake, however, must be near. An upheaval in other parts of the world leave most people's orthodoxy quite unshaken. The unblushing egotism' of such doubters is astonishing. Onlv when an affliction touches oneself is the justice of heaven denied. May it not even be said in all gentleness that those who allow this " awful war " to disturb their religion show as little logic as they do faith, for the extent of the pain makes no difference to the justice or -injustice of innocent suffering. Heaven is as much arraigned when an innocent animal dies agonisingly in a trap as when a whole army perishes. That the innocent suffer without redress—that is the stumbling-" block, and that stumbling-block has always been with us, then and now, and as much in peaceful hamlets remote from Avar as in the field of war itself.

This great calamity has not proved the failure of Christianity, but its glorious triumph. Pity it is that the triumph must come in so sad a way, yet come certainly it has. For .how have we got men £o fight for us? Not for gain, not even altogether for patriotism, but for humanity, for love of brotherhood! Whether the stories of atrocities are exaggerated or not, certain it is that it was only such stories that created the great volunteer armies at first. Diplomatists may have their secret treaties, their desire for aggrandisement, but when they want their men to fight they are not fools enough to tell them that they will gain something. They lure them on by telling them other countries have lost something. Tell them that they will gain new territory by fighting, and not a man goes 'voluntarily to the recruiting office. Tell- them that Belgium will regain her old land, and the place is thronged. Your true diplomat, in fact, must be as careful to hide from the masses the fact that they may benefit materially from a war as to keep from the few selfish ones the fact that they may lose by it. They talk of the wars of the Crusader; but *in truth to the common folk every war is a crusade. They could not go out on it otherwise. One might say, in fact, that the people have never gone to Avar; it is the politicians that go to war; the people always go a-crusading. It is this crusading, not war itself, that the Church blesses. The Church must take Csesar's word that these things are his; it must look into the spirit and motive of the action, and judge only by these; therefore on opposing sides the priests bless the banner without there being any real inconsiste:%y. On both sides the people fight for an ideal; they literally would not want to win if that ideal were not right; and in each case the ideal is the same. In short, the people on both sides are fighting for the same thing. On one side, sometimes on both, are the wily politicians or profiteers intent on selfishness; but they are the few. The many are actuated by good motives only. /

In peace I am afraid the reverse is the case. Then the crusaders are few and the profiteers many. Profiteering is taken for granted in peace-time; in war only is it made a sin. Oh, that men could show such abandon of chivalry in peace as in war! The Golden Age then would most asuredly be at hand. There has been a great failure of many things in the war ; there has been a failure of logic, of common sense, of guns, of ammunition. The only thing that has not failed has been Christianity. The churches have done their best in a calamity for which they are no more responsible than the nures in a hospital for a collision in the adjacent street. In a shattered world they alone have stood firm. The criticising of the Church is no new thing, and, however enterprising the objector is in other respects, he is often singularly will-less in his attitude to this organisation. He seems to think that it should get hold of him somehow. "I think so much less of the Church it it has not attracted a person like me," said one woman lately. She had no conception of her duty toward the Church. Others proclaim their greater ability to pray out of doors away from musty churches. The open-air treatment is demanded for the soul just as nowadays for the body. As we lie outside on verandahs and porches to get better, so we must get outside the churches. To many of us, However, the analogy does not hold good, for when we get outside the churches we find only storm and confusion. Such is the long, chaotic night of life, no night of stars and peace, and so we enter the building; once more, seeking only shelter and rest.