e a cruder and more barbarous idea. Attila
did not scourge the Romans, but he did scourge other peoples; and we
hold him up to execration for ever for it. But Archbishop Carr, and many
other preachers, think that an all-holy and all-intelligent God can do
infinitely worse than Attila. He is going to punish the unbelievers in
eternal fire when they die: meantime he will make a hell on earth for
the innocent as well as the supposed guilty, the child and the mother as
well as the free-thinking father. Of a truth, it is not surprising that
a reluctance to listen to sermons has spread to Melbourne, and that men
are wondering whether they had better not take in hand their own
destinies rather than entrust them to such spiritual guides as this.

Note, particularly, in passing the emphasis which the Archbishop puts on
the determination of our generation to control its own destinies. Until
the nineteenth century men entrusted their destinies, on the moral side,
to guides like Archbishop Carr. I have described the result. In the
nineteenth century there began this practice, which the Archbishop
thinks worthy of so inhuman a chastisement, of men attending to their
own moral interests. Of this also I have described the result. The moral
sentiment of Europe has greatly improved, and there is at least a
widespread revolt against warfare and a prospect of abolishing it. For
this God, the more than human, scorched Europe with the horrible flames
which Archbishop Carr thinks he keeps in his arsenal of
torture-implements. The Archbishop says that infidelity has not spread
so much in Australia. I should, if I were not well acquainted with the
Commonwealth, be disposed to see in that the reason why eminent prelates
can still utter such gross medieval nonsense in that country.

In England this particularly crude type of nonsense is not usually
uttered by preachers of distinction,[2] though it is common enough among
less responsible preachers; but there is a dangerous approach to it in
some of the sermons which the religious periodicals regard as
important. Looking over the current issues of the religious press, I
notice a sermon on the war by Professor Clow, in which the Allies are,
in harmony with his test, described as "the vultures of God." Germany,
it seems, is the prey, and Germany's sins are painted black. Professor
Clow, it is true, shrinks from the very natural implication of his
words, but he clearly intimates that he sees the acti