God and the soldier

Preface

This book had its origin in one of the great camps in France where some of the chaplains had a weekly meeting presided over by the Rev. J. Harry Miller, one of the senior chaplains. At these meetings the problems which confront the soldiers and the Church were freely discussed. At a time when the writers were working in that camp — the one as the Director of Religious Services in behalf of the Y. M. C. A. and the other as preacher and lecturer with the Scottish Churches Huts — they were invited to open these discussions on alternate weeks. The addresses then delivered are now published in this form at the suggestion of those who took part in the discussions.

The authors do not pretend to have arrived at any final conclusions. They only hope that these addresses will indicate the direction in which they found their thoughts moving when in touch with the grim realities of war. They do not claim to have given an answer to the questions which the war has evoked from many vi PREFACE troubled hearts ; they are only able to show how urgent these questions are.

The different chapters were written without the advantage of mutual consultation, and they now appear with but slight alterations. If this book but show how the writers' minds were stirred by contact with the great army, and by intercourse with the men who are garrisoning its soul, and if it will lead others, with greater experience and fuller knowledge, to express frankly their thoughts on these problems, their purpose will have been served.

N. M.

Edinburgh,

October 27th, 1917.

CHAPTER I Is God to Blame?

SOME chaplains tell us that theological questions are not rife in the minds of soldiers; and that, amongst the rest, the problem of the Sovereignty of Divine Love over a world, in which this war has come to be, is of little concern to them. I think we may reasonably doubt that opinion — partly because it is inconceivable that those who see the horrors of war face to face should not find food for thought concerning the world-government which permits them, and partly because we have direct evidence to the contrary. In certain instances, soldiers have been known to discuss this matter for long stretches of time, and sermons and addresses upon it, provided they were frank and open, never failed to rivet

attention. But, for the most part, the man who expected that those who were in daily touch with death would have much to teach him upon these perplexities came empty away. It is universally acknowledged that soldiers are mostly fatalists in time of battle. "If your luck's in, it's in: if it's out, it's out" is the common attitude. Only the bullet with a man's name and address on it will ever hit him; but no parapet will shield him when that one comes along. It is an attitude of mind that is Calvinistic, without the high, religious sense which a genuine Calvinism always possesses. It only requires the exclamation, "Kismet!" to make it indistinguishable from the mental attitude of the East. Some religious observers find comfort in its prevalence, but it is hard to see why they do. For it is only a new indication of the stupefying effects of war.

At the same time, while there is this nonchalant assent to a rigid Sovereignty, which foreordains all that comes to pass, when soldiers had time for reflection, after the actual strain of fighting was over, it needed little probing to discover that many were wondering how Christians were going to square, with the conception of a God of Love, the fact that yesterday a thousand bodies of human beings had been predestined to be blown into bloody pulp. "Whatever is right, this is not," exclaimed a young officer, himself a candidate for the holy ministry, after a night of peculiarly gruesome experiences. The fundamental immorality of the whole thing was the one point that he saw clear. And the question arose at once, what about God? Does He indeed create evil? And, if so, is He as worship-worthy as His own creatures, who would uncreate it if they could? To these questionings, soldiers have no answer; but they expect one from the Church. Resolvings of contradictions, and visions of the higher unities do not come in the trenches: but a state of mind is engendered there, which makes for sharp criticism of traditional positions. Christian teachers will be put on their mettle in days to come by men who will want plain English on fundamental matters. Not only by soldiers — but by that great multitude, which scarce anyone can number, whose hearts hold wounds that will not heal, and whose spirits are bitter within them. There are men walking our streets in whose hearts smoulder fires of resentment against a Universal Sovereignty which has bereft them of their sons; there are many French mothers who have taken refuge in the same cynicism which led a bereaved peasantwoman in a little village of Normandy to sneer, "Le bon Dieu, il est en permission." And for the Church blandly to go on saying that God could have prevented it all if He had chosen, and that, at the same time, He is as loving as Jesus Christ, is to make certain that these exceedingly hungry sheep, looking up, will not be fed. There are, indeed, some, and these often men whose piety entitles their opinions to respect, who deprecate over-much dogmatic speech upon such a matter, on the ground of the vital importance of retaining intellectual reverence. It is true that all men must approach the thought of God not only with humble hearts, but with humble minds. Who are we to utter counsel concerning the Most High? "Soon as we speak, we err." At the same time, it is the duty of the Church to declare God, according to her knowledge of Him, in the halting language which is the only medium we have for expressing our thoughts. She has not feared to do so in days past; nor must she fear to-day, if she is to retain the respect of mankind.

All branches of the Catholic Church, Reformed and Unref ormed, hold a high doctrine of the Sovereignty of God. Not least conspicuous amongst them in this direction has been the Scottish Church. The late Monsignor Benson, in a book estimating the various British Communions from the point of view of the Church of Rome, fastened especially on the Scottish doctrine of God as full and clear in the Catholic sense. Even when Presbyterianism has set itself to simplifying its doctrinal statements, its declarations concerning God have been such as to make Him in all things supreme. "We believe in, and adore, one living and true God, Who is spirit, personal, infinite and eternal, present in every place, the Almighty Author and Sovereign Lord of all ; most blessed, most holy, and most true; perfect in wisdom, justice, truth and love; to us most merciful and gracious: unto

Whom only we must cleave, Whom only we must worship and obey. To Him be glory for ever." After such manner has statement been made, and no Catholic Christian will want to see such expressions enfeebled. A religious man feels that he can assent to no positions which prevent him from joining in the old triumphant shout, "the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." Consequently, no surprise need be felt that a certain impatience manifests itself with earnest and well-meaning people, even with Mr. Britling himself, who cast aside, as a worn-out garment, the grand phraseology in which, at all times, the Church has garmented her thought of the Supreme Being; or that taunts should be levelled at them to the effect that they are substituting a godling for God. No idea of the Uncreated is likely long to hold sway over men's minds which does not present Him as high and liftedup, as the One from Whom all things flow, the great I am, Who inhabits eternity. Indeed, it is impossible that religion itself shall continue apart from a confidence in the controlling power of God. We cannot live unless we believe that, while it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps, it is in God that ruleth to direct them for him. If there is no Will in which is our peace, there is no peace for us anywhere. Apart from faith in the directing power of God, the larger part of the Psalms would have to be cast away, and that the more valuable part. Therein would be a task of revision of the Psalter which would appal even Bishops. No longer could Scottish folk sing in their times of trial:

"Before me still the Lord I set; Sith it is so that He Doth ever stand at my right hand; I shall not moved be."

The one sure ground of optimism itself would be cut away from beneath our feet; for 01 sr ultimate hope of good, for the individual as for the race, depends upon the final control of experience by "the great Over-reason we name Beneficence." It is because we believe, with the Psalmist, that the Lord reigneth that we can, with him, call upon the earth to be glad. An impoverished, struggling, half-helpless God can never be the God of Christianity.

II

Where, then, do we find ourselves? Every religious instinct we possess cries out "God reigns"; and, meantime, there are the ghastly facts of the war. Not, let it be observed, that these constitute any new problem. Probably the years of peace contained as much grotesque evil as the years of carnage. Cancer, consumption, to say nothing of syphilis, existed then; and the under-world was crawling with iniquities much more unlovely than the shattered forms of a battlefield. All that the war has done has been to make the problem of evil living to many minds that had hitherto known little of the more tragic aspects of life. We must not allow ourselves to imagine that our experiences of these past three years have created any new difficulty for Christianity. They have only diffused the knowledge of their existence, and have given edge and point to them for us all. We walk on paths that Job knew well, when we traverse the regions where human pain and divine love meet in seeming opposition. But, at the same time, a painful novelty is given to the question to-day, because of the number of people who are interested in it. Never before, in all the world's history, were so many hearts sad. Never before did the bat-like wings of despair cast so wide their hateful shadow. Hence it is that the thought of those who would heal has fastened itself anew on this age-long problem; hence the irritation with answers that seemed to satisfy in less poignant days.

For theology, the battle rages round one word, the word "omnipotent." Many of the younger clergy will have nothing to do with it. They perceive clearly the logical pitfalls to which it is an unerring guide ; and they desire to see " all-conquering" in its place. Warnings as to the dangers contained in its use are not new. They have been pointed out for long. John Stuart Mill bluntly told us that if we laid it aside many of our difficulties would be laid aside with it. Mr. Thomas Hardy has been no less explicit:

"Beneficent He is not, for He orders pain, Or, if so, not Omnipotent:

To a mere child the thing is plain,"

None can fail to feel sympathy with an attitude of mind which desires to part company with so uneasy a comrade as this word has proved to be. The fact that the Scriptures are full of it, and particularly the devotional Scriptures, need not distress us. For, apart from questions as to niceties of translation, the devotional Scriptures are not theological treatises. Indeed, they have suffered greatly from being so regarded. A word like omnipotent may be used in a hymn of adoration, where a theological writer might feel called upon to hedge it about with explanatory clauses. What we are to be concerned about is not a word, but the idea that the word conveys. The question for the Church is not whether she believes in the omnipotence of God, but what meaning she puts into the term. The settlement of that question is likely to agitate us for some time to come.

Ill

First of all, we must come to agreement that the doctrine of the omnipotence of God does not include power to do everything that can be expressed in a grammatical sentence. Some critics of Christianity seem to imagine that a point is made if it is admitted that the Almighty can not perform some manifest absurdity, such as the creation of a world in which the laws of thought are blue and syllogisms are round. If God could do these things, we are all mad, for the juxtaposition of such ideas seems to us insane; and all our thoughts of Him are the thoughts of fools, and the sooner we forget them the better. Occasionally stout supporters of verbal orthodoxy play into the hands of these logical artists. A soldier in a hut in France not long ago claimed that God could do these very things, and thereby caused the ungodly present to rejoice. But even he found a limit to his thought of omnipotence. God could, according to him, make the laws of thought to be untrue ; He could make black to be white, and an object to be both at the same time and in the same respects ; He could secure that two and two should make five. But when he was asked if God could lie, he drew the line sharp and distinct. God cannot lie, he said; therein wisely agreeing with Scripture.

Whereby we are brought to the presently most important proposition upon this matter — namely, that there are some things that God cannot do. Any doctrine of omnipotence must start from that point. The range of impossibility is, for the moment, of no importance. It is the fact that matters. We do not claim for God a power to do anything, however immoral or absurd. On the contrary, we vigorously deny not only that He would, but that He could, do anything of the sort. The extent of the limitation we do not attempt to define, but we admit its existence. And we are bound to try to make explicit the source from which it springs, which is none other than the moral nature of God Himself. God, the Ancient Truth, is true to Himself in all His ways ; and consequently much that we can imagine as possible, or know to be actual, can never issue from His will.

There seems at present a tendency to discover a compulsion upon God outwith Himself. The Platonic doctrine of Necessity is frequently appearing in a Christianised form. God is regarded as the Divine Artist, who is limited by the nature of the material in which He works. He has to make attempts to find

IS GOD TO BLAME?

out the noblest forms in which matter can be moulded: and His dream of a perfect world is thwarted by the intractable nature of that which constitutes the world. It is the old bargaining between Reason and Necessity over again; and the majority of Christian people will fail to find relief along that line. Apart from the insoluble dualism to which it leads, such views are opposed to the thought of the relation between God and the world, which is one of the clearest teachings of Scripture. Behind the world stands God; forth from the word of His power came all created things ; and without Him was not anything made that was made. The conception of a God struggling to reduce chaos to order, and continually rinding Himself hampered by a grim master more potent than Himself, may conceivably be true, but it is distinctly not Christian; and it would be better to admit the failure of the Christian view than to attempt to graft such ideas upon Christianity. Necessity manifestly exists ; but it must be a Necessity in the nature of God alone.

What, then, are the Christian axioms concerning the nature of the Supreme Being?

They are two, first that God is infinite Energy, and second that He is infinite Love. The former we learn from the works of His hands ; the latter through Jesus Christ. Not that we exclude the thoughts of God as holiness, or as altogether righteous, which the prophets were never weary of proclaiming. Far from it; we maintain that they are implicit in the conception of Love as given by our Lord. Wherefore, we do not need especially to mention them. A love that is not holiness and justice is not the love of Christ. When we have said that God is love, we have said everything that lips can say concerning the moral majesty of the Most High.

It is from these two fixed points that we must start, when we would speak about the compulsions within God. Theology has erred when it has begun from the Divine Sovereignty as axiomatic. The range and the type of any sovereignty is determined by the nature of him who wields it; and we cannot describe it in any terms, such as omnipotent, until we know that nature. It is, of course, always possible for theologians to say that, considered as Will,

God is free to do anything. But that does not take us much further, because God is not unconditioned Will. He is Love; and His Will moves at the dictates of love. To take a human illustration, an ordinary Christian man, considered as Will, is free to murder his mother. He has plenty of opportunity and plenty of means. Failing all others, his two bare hands could choke the life out of her. Nevertheless, the mother may sleep in peace. The sons simply could not do it. Contrariwise, the sons may be conceived as free to refuse to go to their mother's aid if another attacker threatens them; but there are few sons who could sit still in the presence of such a spectacle. Action to defend would be inevitable. In both cases they would will according to their love.

Similarly with God. It is beyond controversy to say that, if He is Love, there are some things that He cannot do, and others that He must needs do, or fail to be Himself. And the conception of omnipotence must square itself with that fact. If the logicians demand it of us, we freely grant them that God is not only impotent to do that which contradicts love, but that He is impotent to avoid doing that which love demands.

Can we, further, discern any definite acts in which this inherited compulsion of the divine Nature displays itself? Surely we can; even to the extent of laying down two propositions which go far to meet our difficulties : (1) that God, being energy, was compelled to create; and (2) that God, being love, was compelled to create this world. They are at least worth glancing at as subjects for discussion.

IV

Our Lord Jesus once Himself made statement of the ceaseless activity of God: "My Father," He said, "worketh hitherto: and I work." It is a picture of the God displayed in Nature — never quiescent, never passive, but ever bringing forth new forms of life. What else could a God who is Force be doing? We have sometimes thought of Him as One Who had a choice between dwelling in eternal inactivity, like some pale King of endless death, and "out of His mere good pleasure" fashioning the worlds ; as if He were a Being Who has power, rather than One Who is power. Science has come to rebuke and correct us, and to give us the conception of a God Who is a Cause. Words like "creation'* have perhaps too specialised a meaning. We should go no farther than to say that God must needs be continually expressing Himself in forms of life that flow from Him, and that continually are being moulded so to become a perfect expression. All that we mean is that it is impossible for God eternally to do nothing. He must do something ; and our world is a part of the something, which, in point of fact, He has, by Himself, been compelled to do.

The more important proposition is the second, that the Divine Energy, which is love, had no choice but to express itself in our world. For here lies all our difficulty. It is such a tragic world — so filled with sin and sorrow. If we had been denizens of regions full of radiance, we should never have asked ourselves whether there were any theological problems in the existence of the world. It is solely the existence of a world such as this in which we live that has brought our anxious enquiries into being. But it is a less assailable position to occupy, to maintain that this world had to be, than to maintain that some creation had to be; provided we admit that God is Love. That fact, which is the sad world's hope, is also explanation.

For love cannot exist in a vacuum. It is easier to believe in a God of eternal inaction, than in a God of Love without beings on whom the love can be exerted. To call a single Being love, with no object to love, is as near a contradiction in terms as may be; for love involves a relation between two at least. There is a well-known theological argument upon the Holy Trinity, which is an admission of this fact. Dorner found that the thought of love in God was dependent for him upon the existence of Persons within the Godhead, who could love each other. But, apart from the fact that this high region is "dark with excess of light," there is also the fact that such love must be the love of God for Himself, and does not, therefore, afford opportunity for the complete display of the loving principle. The doctrine of the Trinity is a great attempt to make credible the conception of absolute Personality; but its truth would not afford scope for the action of the love of God. That requires beings distinct from itself. Wherefore, we find from the Most High creatures proceeding, as children from a Father, made in His own image, but separate from Him, whom the Divine Heart can love and from whom it can receive love in return.

Once this principle is admitted, the subsequent difficulties for Christianity are greatly simplified. If the principle of love in God contains within itself the necessity of the creation endlessly of beings with the power of loving, at once the possibility of evil is in the world. For love is the free-est thing we know. Obedience, allegiance, service can be compelled; but love, never. It has to be given. The moment that God created beings with a dower to love, He created them free; and the moment He created them free, He created the power to hate instead of to love, and, consequently, the possibility of the jarring of all the harmonies of the world that should be so full of concord and of loveliness.

It must be observed that a great deal depends on this idea of inherent compulsion. If

God could have refused to create a world of free beings, why did He not do it, seeing the ghastly horrors that freedom has brought in its train? We claim for Him foreknowledge, or rather the omniscience of One Who, from the high places of the Everlasting Now, looks down upon the tides of time ; and if He, before the foundation of the world, saw the agonies and heard the shrieks that are multiplied a thousandfold to-day between Flanders and the Vosges, why did He not stay His hand? It will not do to ride off on pleas of "self -limitation." If a man refuses to fashion an evil himself, but restrains himself from its removal, though it be within his power to end it, he is no less blameworthy ; and we think poorly of God, if we apply to Him meaner ethical standards than we would apply to ourselves. Either God had to create a world of free beings, or He had not. If He had not, He is ultimately responsible for the tragedies which they suffer and cause. But if Love must needs bring into being creatures that can love, and if they choose to use their freedom banefully, then there are no shoulders on to which to lay the blame but their own.

Let us, then, assume that the appearance of a world of creatures with a power to love, and therefore free, was of necessity, owing to the nature of God. It is clear that rebellion against the perfect Will was a possibility; in point of fact, we all know that it is a reality. But it may be doubted if we realise how vast that reality is.

There can be little question that most of us suffer from too good a conceit of our own world. We speak as if this little earth were the universe; whereas it is a somewhat inconsiderable member of a third-rate planetary system. We regard ourselves as the grand rebels against Eternal Love, when, in fact, we are grasshoppers and the children of grasshoppers. Ancient Christian teaching should come back and help us to be humble. We learn, in ancient story, of high rebellion against the Most High, from which our little tragedies have issued.

There is nothing in reason which should make it difficult for us to think that the universe contains greater created intelligences than our own. From the Primal Source there surely has flowed a stream of beings of vaster make than we are — great Angels that do His bidding, Cherubim and Seraphim that continually do praise Him. And tradition has it that the chief est of all (for Lucifer was first of all creatures in loveliness and power) was he who found it earliest in his heart to misuse his freedom. From him the miasma spread, until an atmosphere was developed, which is the real Prince of the Power of the Air, which has tended, for those that breathe it, to make rebellion easier than obedience, and sin than righteousness.

The fact is that the Church must consider again the doctrine of the Devil. In recent times it has been laughed out of court; but it is far from a laughing matter. Not that we are called upon to believe in an absolutely malignant Will, that opposes itself to the Will of God; but that we must consider the possibility of the existence of beings, vastly greater than ourselves, which, like ourselves, are sinful in the sense of resisting God's purposes, and which, with us, are creating a "tone," that sur-

IS GOD TO BLAME?

rounds us — in which, in a tragic sense, we live and move and have our being — whereby God's Will is thwarted and the beauty of His world is marred.

In fact, the dire possibility seems to have occurred. The freedom that comes with love has been misused ; and that on a terrific scale. God finds the world, that came from Him at Love's impulse, in a turmoil of opposition to Himself. Is He to blame? How can He be to blame? The devices and desires of selfwilled hearts are to blame. It is sin that has brought all these horrors upon us. Even the poor earth itself, which was meant to be so fair, has been turned to ugliness thereby. France used to be called "la Belle France." Go to Contalmaison to-day and mark how fair she is. Her once lovely undulations, dotted with peaceful villages, are one long, desolated sea of mud. God may be unable to prevent the misuse of freedom; but He can secure that we make its results extremely ugly, and thus urge us to seek beauty and peace in harmony with His Will. All unloveliness, all that brings terror to the heart in Nature, ultimately, perhaps, may be traced to the door of rebellion against God. If men can make such travesties of the beauty of France, cannot the influence of the larger revolts against God's Will be seen in the confusions that perplex us in Nature? After all, all phenomena are the expression of spiritual realities ; and devil-fish and octopuses may be only indications of the confusion brought into God's world by the invasion of it by spirits that have turned from Him. If a stranger, say from Mars, were brought into the world and told that God had made it, and then was taken to see the ruins of Ypres, he would be puzzled about God. He would be eased in his mind if he knew that these desolations of once happy homes were due to man in his proud rage. Similarly, if we knew more, that which seems terrible in Nature may be explained. The influence of misused freedom may very easily spread more widely than we are ordinarily inclined to admit.

VI

In any case, God is no more to blame for the world's tragedies, than a father is to blame for the sorrows of a wilful son. But if that be so,

IS GOD TO BLAME?

where is our confidence? If the world has turned against God, and if there be forces in it that work against Him, where is His control? What happens to the quiet confidence of a mother, who, in prayer, leaves her lad in God's hands ? Our one security is this — "the Son of God goes forth to war."