The Russo-Japanese war gave to Russia its
first representative assembly, the Duma. It is not unreasonable to hope
that the present European war will result in greatly enlarging the
powers of the Duma and establishing true constitutional government in
Germany, a government in which the Ministry will be responsible not to
the Emperor but to the Reichstag; and the power both of the purse and
the sword will not be in the hands of an aristocratic oligarchy but in
the hands of the common people.
It is not strange that men should point to this, perhaps the greatest
war of history, as an evidence that Christianity is a failure. If
Christianity professed to be able by a miracle to transform human nature
at once, such a war would be fatal to its claim. But no such claim can
be made for Christianity. It is a great human movement, a phase of the
gradual evolution of man, governed by conscience and reason, out of the
brute, governed by appetite and passion.
Man as he is seen in the world to day is an unfinished product. He is in
the making. The best that can be said of a Christian is that he is
further along toward the goal of humanity than the barbarian.
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