The Henson Journals

[343]

Thursday, August 19th, 1915.

381st day

'What awkward judgments must they make of men

Who think their hearts are pictured by their pen!

Few authors tread the path they recommend,

Or, when they show the road, pursue the end;

Few give examples where they give advice,

Or, though they scourge the vicious, shun the vice.'

Lord Harvey.

This is the verdict of a man of the world, and carries the suggestion of that self–excusing cynicism which demolishes all virtue in order to excuse some vice. Yet it is uncomfortably near the truth, and certainly no 'author' will be disposed to dispute it.

The post brings from the 'Weekly Dispatch' a quotation, inviting my comments. It is from an article on "War & Religion" by Gilbert Murray, in 'The Atlantic Monthly' for June: and it is sufficiently suggestive to merit admission here. It runs thus:–

"I have talked to two soldiers who gave vivid accounts of the hideous proceedings of the war in Flanders, & of their own feelings of terror. Their accounts agreed, but the conclusions they drew were different. One man ended by saying with a [345] sort of gasp, 'It made you believe in God, I can tell you.' The other, a more thoughtful man, said, "It made you doubt the existence of God." I think that the effect of this year of History will be to discourage the higher kind of Religion and immensely strengthen the lower.

The lower, & often more passionate, religion will be directed toward a God who is a projection of the worshipper's own terrors & angers & desires & selfishness. The higher religion weaves its conception of God more out of its duties and its aspirations. For one of those soldiers whom I mentioned above, God was evidently a being of pure terror, fitly mirrored by the action of a host of explosive shells.'

This seems to me very shallow & unjust. Far nearer the truth would it be to say that the spectacle of such immense wickedness, brazen & seemingly triumphant, stirred the conviction in the naturally religious human mind that above Man, beyond Time, must stand the Sovereign Vindicator of Innocence, Whose Victory could not be finally averted. And the realization of the pathetic weakness of man against that monstrous artillery does not make for irreligion in normal minds. It is not that God is perceived of as 'evidently a being of pure terror', but that man, crushed by the shells, cannot & will not believe that the 'last word' is with them, but insists on referring himself to Another, over whom the shells have no power. On other grounds, however, I agree with Gilbert Murray that War is not favourable to spiritual religion, but makes mainly for superstition.

[347]

Ella took all our guests (except Olive) for a motor expedition, repeating the route we followed on Tuesday viz: through Pittington, Sherburn, & Brancepeth. After lunch I shewed the Spooners over the Cathedral, and then walked with them till dinner–time. Olive sang delightfully after dinner.

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