This situation makes more violent than ever the contrast between the
political and religious relations of men, and gives a strong _prima
facie_ case to the charge against the Churches which I am considering.
It is wholly artificial and insincere to say that men are brothers
socially and religiously, yet are justified in marching out in millions,
with the most murderous apparatus science can devise, to meet each other
on the field of battle. We condemn crime for social reasons. We have
relegated to the Middle Ages, to which it belongs, the notion that the
criminal is a man who has affronted society, and that society may take a
revenge on him. In the sane conception of our time the criminal is a
mischievous element disturbing the social order, and, in the interest of
that order, he must be isolated or put out of existence. It is not the
_guilt_, but the _social effect_, which we regard. And from this point
of view a single great war is far more calamitous than all the crime in
Europe during whole decades. It is estimated by high authorities that if
the present war lasts only twelve months it will cost Europe, directly
and indirectly, including the destruction of property and the loss to
industry and commerce, no less a sum than £9,000,000,000; and it will
certainly cost more than a million, if not more than two million, lives,
besides the incalculable amount of suffering from wounds, loss of
relatives, outrages, and the incidental damage of warfare. The time will
come when historians will study with amazement the wonderful system we
have devised in Europe for the suppression of breaches of the social
order at a time when we complacently suffer these appalling periodical
destructions of the entire social order of nations.

It is quite natural to arraign the Christian Churches in connection
with this disastrous outbreak. Unless they discharge the high task of
the moral direction of men, in international as well as in personal