[91] Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu
     fuer den Glauben, pp. 25 sq.

     [92] Royce, The Problem of Christianity, vol. i. 39.

THE INDICTMENT AGAINST CHRISTIANITY

(1917)

No thinking man can deny that this war has grievously stained the reputation of Europe.  Even if the verdict of history confirms the opinion that the conspiracy which threw the torch into the powder-magazine was laid by a few persons in one or two countries, and that the unparalleled outrages which have accompanied the conflict were ordered by a small coterie of brutal officers, we cannot forget that these crimes have been committed by the responsible representatives of a civilised European power, and that the nation which they represent has shown no qualms of conscience.  That such a calamity, the permanent results of which include a holocaust of European wealth and credit, accumulated during a century of unprecedented industry and ingenuity, the loss of innumerable lives, and the destruction of all the old and honourable conventions which have hitherto regulated the intercourse of civilised nations with each other, in war as well as in peace, should have been possible, is justly felt to be a reproach to the whole continent, and especially to the nations which have taken the lead in its civilisation and culture.  The ancient races of Asia, which have never admitted the moral superiority of the West, are keenly interested spectators of our suicidal frenzy.  A Japanese is reported to have said, ’We have only to wait a little longer, till Europe has completed her hara kiri.’  This is, indeed, what any intelligent observer must think about the present struggle.  Just as the feudal barons of England destroyed each other and brought the feudal system to an end in the Wars of the Roses, so the great industrial nations are rending to pieces the whole fabric of modern industrialism, which can never be reconstructed.  Mr. Norman Angell was perfectly right in his argument that a European war would be ruinous to both sides.  The material objects at stake, such as the control of the Turkish Empire and the African continent, are not worth more than an insignificant fraction of the war-bill.  We are witnessing the suicide of a social order, and our descendants will marvel at our madness, as we marvel at the senseless wars of the past.

There has, it is plain, been something fundamentally wrong with European civilisation, and the disease appears to be a moral one.  With this conviction it is natural that men should turn upon the official custodians of religion and morality, and ask them whether they have been unfaithful to their trust, or whether it is not rather proved that the faith which they profess is itself bankrupt and incapable of exerting any salutary influence upon human character and action.  Christianity stands arraigned at the bar of public opinion.  But it is not without significance that