him), would be, one imagines, painful enough; but if there were
irresistible evidence that God does move the stars and quicken the bird
and beast, we might be compelled to reconcile ourselves to that unhappy
dilemma. There is, however, no such irresistible evidence. This is not
the place to examine such evidence as is adduced. I must be content to
recall the fact that it is all highly controverted; that theologians
tear to pieces each other's "proofs" of the existence of God; and that a
large and increasing body of cultivated men and women discard the
evidence entirely. So that, in the last resort, the situation is this:
on the one hand we have a number of very disputable suggestions, which
are growing fainter in proportion as science investigates these matters,
of divine action in stars and rocks and reptiles, and on the other hand
we have a stupendous mass of suffering, starting millions of years ago
at the very birth of consciousness and piled up mountains high in this
year 1915, which no thinker has ever yet reconciled with the notion of a
divine ruling of the life of man. This is a very grave and plain
situation, and if the clergy have nothing more to say about it than to
borrow from an ancient Hebrew certain offensive gibes at the unbeliever,
or to offer us the kind of apologies we examined in the last chapter,
one must conclude that they do not realise the situation. The war has
terribly accentuated the most terrible difficulty they ever had to face.
Whether there is intelligence manifested in nature is, after all, an
academic question which does not profoundly stir the modern world.
Whether there is benevolence, a moral personality, reflected in the
course of man's history is the much more important question. And this
appalling calamity will induce many to take a more candid view of the
world-process and conclude that, as far as the critical eye can see,
man's world seems to be left entirely to his own efforts, to his own
crimes and blunders and aspirations.