il. As if any person
ever said that it was. The point is simple, and ought not to be
obscured. A few incidental advantages do not reconcile us to this
colossal misery, suffering, and waste, and do not in the slightest
degree alleviate the position of the man who thinks that God directed
human events to this awful consummation. If an earthly ruler employed
such agencies to educate his subjects, with such an extraordinary
disproportion between the suffering inflicted and the results attained,
what should we think of him?

The parallel reminds us that of infinite wisdom we expect infinitely
more than of a human ruler. Once unintelligent nature had a crude,
wasteful, hard method of producing new and higher types of life. Man,
having intelligence, produces the same result without waste or
suffering. We expect immeasurably higher procedure of such an
intelligence as Christians ascribe to God. One can understand the man
who says that the plan of such an intelligence might be beyond human
ken, but I am discussing the opinions of people who contend that they
bring it within human ken. In fact, there is no need here to remind us
of the mysteriousness of the ways of an infinite intelligence. If the
war was designed for certain practical uses, such as those we have had
suggested by various divines, one may reply at once that a more brutal
and unjust way of attaining those ends could not have been devised. It
is almost impossible to conceive any man seriously entertaining the
notion. Yet all the jubilation and thanksgiving that will follow the
war, all the supplication that accompanies its fortunes to-day, and the
whole teaching of Christian theology, imply that God did direct the
political movements and military ambitions which have culminated in the
war. Even a human statesman could have devised a less terrible method of
attaining any end that has yet been conceived for the war. The idea of
the war as a punishment is quite logical and intelligible, though five
hundred years out of date. But the idea of the war as a medicinal or an
educative process has neither logic nor intelligibility, and does not
even attain that consistency with modern ethical sentiments which it
seeks. The colossal amount of suffering inflicted on innocent people and
on children puts it entirely out of court.

Thirdly, this theory, as I said, raises the question whether the end
justifies the means. Here we have another illustration of the way in
which Chris