Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER II DO CHRISTIANS WANT WAR? A Great many people contend that this war has demonstrated the futility of Christianity, the impotence of all organised religion. Whichever way we turn some one is ready to remind us that if Christianity stands for anything at all it stands for peace on earth, good will to men. We are not permitted to forget for an hour that the Gospel of Christ, whatever else it may be, is an evangel of peace; that the message of Jesus was a challenge to a warring world. The force of love and righteousness, it is explained, came into the world to displace the force of Roman arms. Furthermore, it is pointed out that this Gospel has now been preached to the uttermost parts of the world, that every European nation is nominally Christian, and that the Church numbers its adherents by the millions — more than twenty-four million Protestants and more than thirteen million Roman Catholics. And yet when war threatened, the whole structure went to pieces like a frame house in San Francisco. That Christianity has failed has been whispered among churchmen in their cloistered retreats, and proclaimed from the housetops by the enemies of the Church. It is one of those half-truths that are more dangerous than falsehoods. The ready reply to the accusation is that Christianity has not failed because Christianity has never been tried. As well say, as some do, that democracy has never been tried. Of course both have been tried — after a fashion. Those who say that Christianity failed to prevent this world war speak the unvarnished and undeniable truth. The Christianity that has been tried has certainly failed. And the fact of the war is the reproach of Christianity. But the particular kind of Christianity that has been weighed in the balance and found wanting is nominal and formal and mystic Chris...