not
co-operate until they did. The theory is preposterous in every respect.

Finally, we have the very large class of candid or of hopelessly puzzled
Christians who give up the matter as a mystery. They do not understand
how this ruling of the universe which they seem to see clearly in stars
and flowers should become so obscure or disappear altogether in the
human order. They realise that, if this war were an isolated
occurrence, they might imagine God holding his hand for a season, for
some reason unknown to us; but they know that it is not an isolated
occurrence: it is part of the human order of things. It has been
preceded by other wars at intervals of every few years, and war itself
is only one of a series of catastrophes and calamities that splash the
human chronicle with innocent blood. They give it up, sorrowfully, and
find a thin consolation in learned formulae about the impossibility of a
finite mind understanding an infinite mind, and so on: which give, as I
say, thin consolation, for one may at least see that an infinite
benevolence ought not to act worse than a moderate human benevolence.

Now if there were any very strong evidence of divine ruling outside the
human order, we might find a certain amount of logic in this position.
The mystery of a God who moves the stars and inspires the bees, yet
leaves man to his own unhappy impulses (after putting those impulses in
him), would be, one imagines, painful enough; but if there were
irresistible evidence that God does move the stars and quicken the bird
and beast, we might be compelled to reconcile ourselves to that unhappy
dilemma. There is, however, no such irresistible evidence. This is not
the place to examine such evidence as is adduced. I must be content to
recall the fact that it is all highly controverted; that theologians
tear to pieces each other's "proofs" of the existence of God; and that a
large and increasing body of cultivated men and women discard the
evidence entirely. So that, in the last resort, the situation is this:
on the one hand we have a number of very disputable suggestions, which
are growing fainter in proportion as science investigates these matters,
of divine action in stars and rocks and reptiles, and on the other hand
we have a stupendous mass of suffering, starting millions of years ago
at the very birth of consciousness and piled up mountains high in this
year 1915, which no thinker has ever yet reconciled with the notion of a