oblem acutely in the
prime of his intelligence, had really a very much lighter task than the
modern divine. He had merely to suggest why evil was permitted in the
narrow world he knew; and he had the great advantage of being able to
appeal to a primitive sin and primitive punishment of the race. The
problem became more serious when original sin, or at least the notion
that the race might justly be damned for one man's fault, was abandoned.
It became graver still when science discovered the tombs of inhabitants
of this globe who had lived during millions of earlier years, and showed
that the very law of their life and progress was struggle against evil.
Every attempt to minimise the struggle of those earlier ages has failed.
At a time when there was no possibility of "spiritual advantage" there
was acute consciousness of pain, the struggle and suffering were
prodigious. Theistic literature of the last half century, growing more
weary and more wistful in each decade, reflects the increasing
difficulty. If any man can see in this war a relief of the difficulty,
and not an appalling accentuation and illustration of it, he must be
gifted with a peculiar type of mind and emotion. It is more probable
that an increasing number will conclude that, if God is indifferent to
these things, they will be indifferent to him. Professor William James,
in his _Varieties of Religious Experience_, declared that the only gods
the men of the new generation would recognise would be gods of some use
to them. The war does not encourage the chances of the Christian God.

A few modern religious thinkers seem to imagine that they have found
some relief by devising the formula that God's plan is to "co-operate
with man," and in those modern advances which I have freely admitted
they see indications of this co-operation. This new formula is not a
whit better than the other phrases which have, at various stages, been
regarded by religions people as profound thoughts. In the recent history
of moral progress we have, as a rule, a minority of high-minded men and
women struggling to impress their sentiments on the inert majority. The
new theologian is not daunted in the application of his theory by the
fact that a large proportion of these pioneers did not believe in God at
all, so I will not discuss that aspect; though no doubt the plain man
will find it interesting to trace how, in the earlier and more difficult
days of modern humanism, so few of the ref