The Incarnation and the Human Order

Extract

If there is one temptation more strong than any other in this time of falling bombs and unbelievable cruelties it is to despair of man. As in the time of Tacitus we have entered upon ‘a time rich in disasters, gloomy with wars, rent with seditions and savage in its very hour of peace.’ Purges within the states, wars between the states, cities flaming to heaven, women and children buried beneath the ruins, death raining from the sky, a new and brutal generation of scientific killers riding down fleeing refugees in their tanks or spraying machine-gun bullets on defenceless streets, on children at play—the list is endless. And this is human society. These are men. What can we hope from such corruption? Even if we survive the war, what can be built upon a generation whose nerves have been shattered by constant bombing and whose characters are maimed by the orgy of killing in which they have grown up? Even where bodies are intact, what can be hoped from these twisted souls? It is an obvious reaction to abandon all interest in the future of human society, to concentrate on the otherness of the spirit, the transcendance of God, the nothingness of creation, to adopt an apocalyptic attitude towards the present struggle.