uished preachers, reproduced with pride and honour in the leading
religious periodicals. Yet no person can coldly reflect on these
pronouncements and fail to realise that our generation acts not
unnaturally in passing by the open doors of the Churches; that the
clergy are, as usual, shirking the most serious questions of the modern
intelligence, and trusting mainly to profit by the heated and disordered
and confusing emotions of the hour.

One of the most extraordinary of these deliverances reaches me from
Australia, but as it comes from one of the leading prelates of the
Commonwealth and does assuredly express what multitudes of preachers are
saying everywhere, I do not hesitate to give it prominence. Archbishop
Carr, of Melbourne, set out in the middle of the war to enlighten his
followers, and his words are reported with great deference in the
Melbourne _Age_ (December 28th). The prelate observed that he had "very
strong ideas about the war" (I quote the words of the _Age_), and "did
not believe it had happened by accident, or by the chance action of some
king or emperor." He believed that "the great God who provided for all
human creatures, through the war was punishing sin that had prevailed
for a long time, particularly in the shape of infidelity." The
Archbishop proved from history and the Bible that war did come sometimes
as a punishment of sin, and he concluded, or the journal thus summarises
his conclusion:

"The reason that God was using the present war for the punishment
of the nations was that for a very considerable time there had been
not merely neglect of the worship and service of God, which had
always existed to a greater or less extent, but a regular upraising
of human light and human understanding and human will against the
existence of the providence of God. It was not so common among us
here [it is just as common], but there were countries in Europe in
which the spirit of infidelity and the absence of supernatural
faith had been increasing for many years. Men were coming to think
they were quite sufficient in themselves for the working out of
their own destinies, but the war had come, and it was humbling such
men."

Archbishop Carr is not adduced here as a representative type of clerical
culture. On what grounds the Roman Catholic authorities select men like
him and the late Cardinal Moran to preside over the destinies of their
Church i