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 conduct, they have no raison d'être. Few of them to-day will plead that their function is merely to interpret to their fellows what they regard as the revealed word of God. In face of the challenging spirit of our time they maintain that they discharge a moral mission of such importance that society is likely to go to pieces if Christianity is abandoned. We therefore ask very pertinently where they were, and what they were doing, during the months when the nations of Europe were slowly advancing toward a declaration of war.
In examining the charge that, for some reason or other, they neglected their mission at a crisis of supreme importance, we must recall that few of us believed that a great war would occur until we actually heard the declaration. No indictment of the clergy is valid which presupposes that they are more sagacious or far-seeing than the rest of us. Yet, however much we may have doubted the actual occurrence of war, we have known for years, and have quite complacently commented upon, the danger that half of Europe would sooner or later be involved in the horrors of the greatest war in history. Now it is notorious that the Christian Churches have done little or nothing, in proportion to their mighty resources and influence, to avert this danger. No collective action has been taken, and relatively few individuals have used their influence to moderate or obviate the danger. The supreme head of the most powerfully organised and most cosmopolitan religious body in the world, an institution which has its thousands of ministers among each of the antagonistic peoples—I mean the Church
