10 - On a sense of providence

Summary

I have considered two kinds of unsettlement: unsettlement in society, mainly due to new machines, growth of big cities, massive transfer of populations; and unsettlement in minds, rising out of a heap of new knowledge in science and in history, and out of the consequent argument. We saw how easily the two unsettlements merged. Now we pause on a stable element in European society and the European mind. The churches still harnessed the worship and the aspirations of a mass of people, and exercised influence far beyond the edges of their congregations, among many who because of urban habits or rural conflicts sat more lightly to once-accepted customs of churchgoing.

Naturally, these events made much difference to their internal lives. Bertrand Russell's father tells you that religion is shortly to disappear. Then, if you value your relation to God as source of what is best in you, you feel a little under siege. You close the mind to noise without, and listen to the voice which you hear within. Defenders of Christian orthodoxy looked to their gates, lowered the portcullis, raised the drawbridge and boiled the oil. They had too little consciousness that part of the assault arose out of some of their own principles. And this devotional siege, most powerful in the Ultramontane movement within the Roman Catholic Church, but powerful among Protestants, repelled intelligent men and widened the sense of breach.