more shocked by the sudden outbreak of this fierce war than our
ancestors were by the almost chronic condition of desultory campaigning
to which they were accustomed. The latter is probably the true reason.
The belief in progress, which at the beginning of the industrial
revolution was an article of faith, had become a tacitly accepted
presupposition of all serious thought; and even those who were dubious
about the moral improvement of mankind in other directions, seldom
denied that we were more humane and peaceable than our forefathers. The
disillusion has struck our self-complacency in its most vital spot.
Nothing in our own experience had prepared us for the hideous savagery
and vandalism of German warfare, the first accounts of which we
received with blank amazement and incredulity. Then, when disbelief was
no longer possible, there awoke within us a sense of fear for our homes
and women and children--feeling to which modern civilised man had long
been a stranger. We had not supposed that the non-combatant population
of any European country would ever again be exposed to the horrors of
savage warfare. This, much more than the war itself, has made thousands
feel that the house of civilisation is built upon the sand, and that
Christianity has failed to subdue the most barbarous instincts of human
nature. Christians cannot regret that the flagrant contradiction between
the principles of their creed and the scenes that have been enacted
during the last three years is fully recognised. But the often repeated
statement that 'Christianity has failed' needs more examination than it
usually receives from those who utter it.

History acquaints us with two kinds of religion, which, though they are
not entirely separate from each other, differ very widely in their
effects upon conduct and morality. The _religio_ which Lucretius hated,
and from which he strangely hoped that the atomistic materialism of
Epicurus had finally delivered mankind, has its roots in the sombre and
confused superstitions of the savage. Fear, as Statius and Petronius
tell us, created the gods of this religion. These deities are mysterious
and capricious powers, who exact vengeance for the transgression of
arbitrary laws which they have not revealed, and who must be propitiated
by public sacrifice, lest some collective punishment fall on the tribe,
blighting its crops and smiting its herds with murrain, or giving it
over into the hand of its enemies. This