are of the more liberal school. They do not attribute all the blunders
and crimes and failures of the Middle Ages to free will, to a sheer and
deliberate obstinacy in clinging to evil. They realise the overpowering
nature of the environment and the drastic discouragement by the clergy
of anything like novelty or initiative in ethics. It was then that man
needed God, if there is a God. But, on this theory, God argued with the
academic wisdom of a medieval theologian; he concluded that medieval men
were quite capable of originating modern ideas, and he would not
co-operate until they did. The theory is preposterous in every respect.

Finally, we have the very large class of candid or of hopelessly puzzled
Christians who give up the matter as a mystery. They do not understand
how this ruling of the universe which they seem to see clearly in stars
and flowers should become so obscure or disappear altogether in the
human order. They realise that, if this war were an isolated
occurrence, they might imagine God holding his hand for a season, for
some reason unknown to us; but they know that it is not an isolated
occurrence: it is part of the human order of things. It has been
preceded by other wars at intervals of every few years, and war itself
is only one of a series of catastrophes and calamities that splash the
human chronicle with innocent blood. They give it up, sorrowfully, and
find a thin consolation in learned formulæ about the impossibility of a
finite mind understanding an infinite mind, and so on: which give, as I
say, thin consolation, for one may at least see that an infinite
benevolence ought not to act worse than a moderate human benevolence.

Now if there were any very strong evidence of divine ruling outside the
human order, we might find a certain amount of logic in this position.
The mystery of a God who moves the stars and inspires the bees, yet
leaves man to his own unhappy impulses (after putting those impulses in