Even, therefore, without going further, as we are bound to do presently with the special teaching of the Christian religion, this conception of the Potter and the Clay relieves our minds of its worst fears. God _does_ care for His human children; this slaughter of one man by another is not according to His first or even His ultimate design. He does not stop the mischief any more than He will pick off with His Hand obstacles placed to-night in the path of the Scotch express. He will not stop the wreck of it by main force, but meanwhile He is not inactive. The moulding Hand is hard at work; monuments of fortitude in matrons and wives, glorious specimens of unrivalled courage in their sons and husbands, issue from the workshop every day, and, to use the words of the Psalmist, "The fierceness of man turns to GOD's praise."
III. But now we have a more formidable task, and that is to meet the charge that the very existence, and especially the virulence of the War, constitutes a _breakdown of historic Christianity_. I have already admitted the force of the _prima facie_ case which can be made out to sustain this argument, but a singular circumstance may well make us pause before we follow this specious, but, as I hope to show, shallow argument.
(1) _Japan_ has always held a very detached view with regard to Christianity. Owing to local circumstances for a time a persecutor, our great ally soon became too enlightened to follow a policy of persecution, and when, later on, an alliance was concluded with ourselves, a natural admiration for the great Western Power which had become its ally led to at least a respectful attitude towards the religion which that ally at heart nominally and officially professed.
Then occurred the War, and here you might have expected the intelligent and clear-sighted watcher from a distance to have discovered the _flaw_ in the religion which its great ally professed. It is an open secret that it has had the precisely opposite effect; never were the Japanese more favourably disposed to give a hearing to Christianity than they are to-day, and the reason is not far to seek.
_They saw a great nation act up to the principles of the religion it professed._