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EBRATIONS 
 
 1917 
 By PROFESSOR STALKER M.A..D.D. 
 
 ^fEW TOBK 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHEBa IN AMBBICA FOB HODDEB i 8TOUGHTON 
 MIMXVII 
 
THE LUTHER 
 CELEBRATIONS OF 1917 
 
 By Professor Stalker, M.A., D.D. 
 
 THE various Presbyterian bodies, at 
 their annual Synods or General As- 
 semblies, in the early part of this 
 year, agreed to recommend to their minis- 
 ters and Christian people the commemora- 
 tion at the end of October of the great 
 events in Luther's life, and, as the date is 
 now drawing near and the situation is diffi- 
 cult and delicate, a few words may not be 
 out of place. 
 
 It chanced that the present writer in 1883 
 formed one of a delegation from several of 
 the Churches in Great Britain which went 
 to Wittenberg to participate in the celebra- 
 tion of the Reformer's birth. It proved to 
 be an enjoyable and memorable occasion. 
 Many thousands were present, drawn partly 
 from the town and partly from north, south, 
 east and west ; and the enthusiasm was un- 
 bounded, displaying itself at every oppor- 
 
4 THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 
 
 tunity in the spontaneous singing of Luth- 
 er's hymn, "A safe stronghold our God is 
 still." The Imperial Court was represented 
 by the Crown Prince Frederick, father of 
 the present Kaiser — a man of singularly 
 noble presence, every inch a king — and he 
 conversed long and graciously in English 
 with the representatives from the British 
 Isles. The greatest orators of the country 
 were there, including such well-known 
 names as Kostlin, Beyschlag and Kogel. 
 But the favourite was the Berlin garrison- 
 preacher Frommel, who experienced that 
 day a rare triumph; for, having to return 
 to town in the evening, he glanced up at the 
 steeple, to see the time, after he had spoken 
 about an hour in the open air ; but ten thou- 
 sand voices instantly shouted to him from 
 every part of the square, "Oh, do not look 
 up!" Perhaps more interesting, however, 
 was the Court-preacher Stocker, then at the 
 zenith of his fame. In appearance he bore 
 not a little resemblance to Luther himself; 
 and, when he said that Germany was a steed 
 which few could ride, but that Luther knew 
 the way, all felt that he knew the way too ; 
 for his seat at the moment seemed one of the 
 most secure, and none then dreamed of his 
 
THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 5 
 
 being hurled from it by the caprice of an im- 
 perial master, the present Kaiser. As 1917 
 drew near it was certain that there would be 
 many competitors in this country for the 
 honour and pleasure of renewing the hom- 
 age rendered to Germany's great Reformer ; 
 and, till the fatal day in August, 1914, 
 arrived, it would have been denied by nearly 
 all lovers of Germany in this country that 
 war between the two countries could pos- 
 sibly take place. 
 
 Of course there can at present be no send- 
 ing of delegates from this side, and these 
 would not be welcomed on the other ; yet the 
 Churches have recommended that the cele- 
 bration should not be passed by in silence; 
 and, though the commemoration must be 
 shorn of its glory, it may be sincere. Luther 
 belongs to history, and his contribution to 
 the progress of the world is an accomplished 
 fact, which cannot be undone. As we should 
 consider it evidence of a petty spirit and 
 limited intelligence if any Germans were 
 induced by the War to blaspheme such names 
 of ours as Shakespeare or Lord Bacon, Sir 
 Isaac Newton or Charles Darwin, so it 
 would be unworthy of us to belittle in any 
 
6 THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 
 
 way such names of theirs as Kant, Goethe 
 and Beethoven, that have long ago secured 
 their niche in the temple of fame, or to re- 
 fuse to rejoice with those who are remem- 
 bering them. 
 
 Luther was a hero, if ever there was one. 
 The incident of his life chosen for commem- 
 oration by the Germans themselves in 
 1817, when the celebration made so deep a 
 mark on the national mind that it is con- 
 stantly mentioned in books on Church His- 
 tory as among the causes of the revival of 
 religion which formed a feature of the first 
 half of the last century, was the nailing-up 
 of the Theses on Indulgences on the door of 
 the Castle-church at Wittenberg, and it is to 
 the same event that the present commemora- 
 tion looks. It was a great event, from which 
 the Reformation is in Germany, at least 
 usually dated; but there were other inci- 
 dents, some of which might appeal even 
 more to the general mind, especially in coun- 
 tries outside of Germany. The burning of 
 the Pope's bull outside the Elster Gate at 
 Wittenberg was one of these, which illus- 
 trated not a few aspects of Luther's char- 
 acter, and especially the humour which 
 
THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 7 
 
 never deserted him even in the most tragic 
 circumstances: the Pope might burn him, 
 but he would take the first turn at burning, 
 and he hurled not only the bull but the decre- 
 tals — the very embodiment of papal tyranny 
 — into the flames. But unquestionably the 
 most significant incident of all was his ap- 
 pearance at the Diet of Worms, when, in the 
 presence of the principalities and powers of 
 both Church and State, he took his stand on 
 conscience and the Word of God, throwing 
 off the authority of popes and councils. 
 This has been called by Carlyle the grandest 
 scene of modern history, and it exhibited to 
 perfection both the great qualities of the 
 man and the greatness of the cause of which 
 he was the champion. Everything of su- 
 preme importance in the centuries since was 
 implicit in that hour, and by those to whom 
 October 31, 1917, may prove to be an im- 
 practicable date, April 18, 1921, the anni- 
 versary of this scene, may well be looked 
 forward to as a substitute. 
 
 Many love to associate the hero especially 
 with the Castle of the Wartburg, in which 
 he was detained for a year after the Diet of 
 Worms by his own prince, Frederick the 
 
8 THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 
 
 Wise, in quasi-imprisonment, but really 
 with the intention of protecting him from 
 the machinations of his enemies and restor- 
 ing his mind to health after the excessive 
 excitement of the preceding years.' There 
 his leisure was occupied with the translation 
 of the Bible into the language of his native 
 land, and a masterpiece was produced, not 
 inferior in its influence on the German 
 language and literature to that exercised 
 by King James' Version on the English 
 tongue. "Luther," remarks the poet Heine, 
 "created the German language. This he did 
 by his translation of the Bible. The divine 
 Author of this Book Himself chose him to be 
 its translator and gave him the marvellous 
 power to translate from a dead language, 
 which was already buried, into a living one, 
 which was not yet born. How Luther came 
 to the language into which he translated the 
 Bible I cannot conceive to this day. This old 
 Book is a perennial fountain for the renewal 
 of our native tongue." The Wartburg looks 
 out over an incomparable panorama of 
 mountain and pine in the Forest of Thurin- 
 gia; and it is a happy circumstance for 
 Luther's fame that, when his countrymen 
 are on pilgrimage to this shrine, they are at 
 
THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 9 
 
 the same time turning their steps to one of 
 the most lovely regions in the Fatherland. 
 
 Of such felicities there are not a few in 
 his life. Such is his birth in an inn, where 
 his parents were resting for the night, re- 
 calling that other scene where the Mother 
 bore her Child in a stable and laid it in a 
 manger. In his boyhood there is the friend- 
 ship of Ursula Cotta, the motherly dame at 
 Eisenach, who introduced him to a more 
 gentle existence than that of a miner's 
 home. It was by his singing that he won 
 her attention ; and all his life music was to 
 him a consolation and a priceless gift of 
 God. "After working his mind weary," 
 says Heine, "with his dogmatic distinctions 
 during the day, he took his flute in the eve- 
 ning, looked up to the stars, and melted into 
 melody and devotion. The same man who 
 could scold like a fishwife could be as soft as 
 a tender virgin. He was at times wild as 
 the storm which uproots the oak, and again 
 as gentle as the zephyr which kisses the 
 violets. He was full of the most awful fear 
 of God, full of consecration to the Holy 
 Spirit ; and yet he knew very well the glories 
 of the earth and could fully appreciate them. 
 
10 THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 
 
 He was a complete man — I might say, an 
 absolute man — in whom spirit and matter 
 were not separated." 
 
 As the years proceeded his troubles were 
 many and his burdens crushing. Some of 
 these came from the perils to which his life 
 and his cause were exposed to his dying day. 
 From these he never flinched, bearing them 
 with faith and prayer. But those by which 
 he was most tormented were the fancies and 
 vagaries of adherents of his own who did 
 not know where to stop. When a hundred 
 things were altering, why should not the 
 hundred-and-first also be altered, to suit the 
 taste and fancy of this scholar or that 
 prince? At one point he himself was sup- 
 posed by some of his best friends to be mak- 
 ing the mistake of not knowing where to 
 stop. This was when he married Katharine 
 von Bora — an escaped nun. But it was by 
 them that the mistake was being made, be- 
 cause this turned out to be one of the wisest 
 steps of his whole life. 
 
 His lucky star did not desert him at the 
 last ; for, through a freak of chance, he died 
 in the same village in which he had been 
 
THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 11 
 
 born, after intervening with success in a 
 dispute among the Counts of Mansfeld, 
 whose castle crowned the hill at the bottom 
 of which his father dwelt. When asked on 
 his deathbed if he adhered to the doctrine 
 which he had taught to the world, he an- 
 swered with an unhesitating affirmative; 
 and he died, like his Saviour, in the act of 
 commending his spirit to his Maker. 
 
 The doctrine of the Reformation has been 
 summed up by historians in two principles 
 — one formal and one material. These are 
 terms of the schools ; but the meaning of the 
 one is that, when the authority is sought on 
 which a human being can rely when exer- 
 cised about the question of questions, "What 
 must I do to be saved?" he will find it in the 
 Word of God; and the other means that, 
 when the message is sought which the Bible 
 supplies for such an inquiring spirit, it is 
 briefly comprehended in Justification by 
 Faith alone. Those in search of an ampler 
 exposition of these principles may seek it 
 with advantage in his three chief works, 
 none of them long, written at the height of 
 his conflict with the powers of evil — the 
 Address to the Christian Nobility of the 
 
12 THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 
 
 German Nation, in which he attacks mer- 
 cilessly the evils of the time, and especially 
 the papacy; The Babylonian Captivity of the 
 Church, in which the sacramental theory is 
 similarly dealt with, and The Liberty of a 
 Christian Man, in which, soaring far above 
 the region of controversy, he demonstrates 
 the two propositions — that a Christian man 
 is the most free lord of all and subject to 
 none, and that a Christian man is the most 
 dutiful servant of all and subject to every 
 one. To the ordinary mind, however, Luth- 
 er has a sufficient title to honour in the gift 
 to the world of three blessings — an open 
 Bible, the worship of God in the language of 
 the people, and the Protestant manse with 
 wife and children. 
 
 Such are the topics with which our pulpits 
 would have resounded if the Luther Cele- 
 bration had fallen before the commencement 
 of the War; and, as has been stated above, 
 the Courts of the Church have judged that, 
 in spite of the War, the pulpit should not be 
 silent. The time, however, is one of im- 
 mense strain and irritation; and it would 
 be easy to sound the praises of Luther and 
 the Reformation in such a way as to do more 
 
THE LUTHEKAN CELEBRATIONS 13 
 
 harm than good. Since the day of the in- 
 vasion of Belgium the conscience of Britain 
 has been in absolute clearness and unanim- 
 ity about the righteousness of our cause; 
 diplomatic and other revelations have been 
 convincing the country more and more of 
 the vainglorious and sinister designs of 
 Germany, and far worse have been the 
 means by which she has been carrying these 
 out; those who have lost their nearest and 
 dearest feel that their sacrifices would be 
 turned into ridicule unless security were 
 found that Europe could not be brought 
 again into such a situation. In short, no 
 preacher can decline the responsibility of 
 connecting what he has to say of Luther and 
 the Reformation with the present War. 
 
I. 
 
 We claim to be better disciples of Luther' 
 than the Germans are themselves. 
 
 The political opinions of Luther it would 
 not be easy in a short space to define. In 
 this region he was not a systematic but a 
 temperamental thinker. He always ex- 
 pressed with force the opinion in his mind 
 at the time; but his opinions were not al- 
 ways the same, and it would not be difficult 
 to extract from his writings sentences sup- 
 porting almost any political view. In his 
 earliest and best time he was the champion 
 of freedom and conscience, denouncing the 
 tyranny of Rome, which wanted to enslave 
 the whole world, and claiming for the Em- 
 pire and for every German state the right 
 to have a mind and a will of its own. At the 
 outbreak of the Peasants' War he expressed 
 deep sympathy with the wrongs of the vic- 
 tims of serfdom and charged the nobles to 
 their faces with the inhumanity with which 
 they had long been treating their humble 
 fellow-Christians. But, when the insur- 
 gents refused to fellow his advice, he was 
 betrayed into language which was felt by 
 
THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 15 
 
 many at the time, as it has been by many 
 since, to be unworthy of him, and which 
 might perhaps be quoted in justification of 
 the "frightfulness" practised at present by 
 those in authority. It was the opinion of 
 Principal Lindsay, whose numerous writ- 
 ings on Luther give unusual attention to the 
 political side of his career, that at this point 
 Luther experienced a mental shock from 
 which he never afterwards entirely recov- 
 ered. He lost faith in the common man, and 
 was too disposed to put his trust in princes. 
 As the movement the success of which meant 
 life or death to him made headway almost 
 exclusively in the regions of the country 
 where the princes were favourable, he was 
 induced to concede to these an amount of 
 power inside the Church which has ever 
 since been a weight and a hindrance. This 
 timidity has clung to German churchmen 
 ever since ; and one of themselves, a scholar 
 of great eminence, whose specialty is the 
 comprehensive survey of history, has 
 acknowledged that Lutheranism naturally 
 allies itself too easily with the monarchical 
 and the aristocratic, being afraid of the 
 freer and more progressive forces in so- 
 ciety; since the French Revolution it has 
 
16 THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 
 
 identified itself with reaction in Church and 
 State ; and it has had not a little to do with 
 the growth of the military and power-loving 
 spirit in the Germany which has Prussia for 
 its head (Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der 
 christlichen Kirchen, pp. 602-5). 
 
 It is not, however, to profound political 
 theories in Luther's writings that we need 
 to appeal, but to his plain teaching on the 
 simplest elements in the Moral Law — not to 
 violate one's spoken or written word, not to 
 covet the possessions of one's neighbours, 
 not to steal, not to kill. There never was a 
 prophet of righteousness who uttered his 
 mind on such topics more forcibly; and one 
 could wish back in the world again, for the 
 purpose of denouncing in the terms they 
 deserve such deeds as the horrors unveiled 
 in the Report of Lord Bryce's Commission, 
 the mistreatment of prisoners in certain 
 camps, and the sinking of the "Lusitania," 
 the voice that exposed the abuses of papal 
 misrule in the Address to the Christian No- 
 bility of the German Nation. At all events, 
 Great Britain does not require to be afraid 
 of holding her corner of the book of Luther's 
 teaching, if Germany will hold the other, so 
 
THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 17 
 
 that the turning of the leaves may make the 
 evildoer tremble and the sophist blush who 
 attempts to be the defender of outrages per- 
 petrated against the laws of God and of 
 humanity. 
 
II. 
 
 We appeal from the new Prussianised 
 Empire to the old Land of Luther. 
 
 At the outbreak of the War a friend of 
 the present writer, who had been educated 
 at Leipzig, exclaimed, "Oh, what a change 
 from the simple, friendly, pious Germany of 
 my youth to the boasting, overbearing, 
 Prussianised Germany of to-day !" And to 
 many of us, familiar with Germany, it has 
 been one of the bitterest experiences of life 
 to see the difference in teachers and friends 
 whom we have known and loved. In no de- 
 partment of Christian thought has German 
 scholarship a prouder record than in Chris- 
 tan Ethics — witness the works of Schleier- 
 macher, Rothe, Dorner, Luthardt — yet, 
 when a practical ethical question of im- 
 measurable importance has arisen, the men 
 of character and learning appear to have 
 utterly failed, and we have listened in vain 
 for any condemnation from their mouths of 
 the most flagrant cruelties and injustices. 
 It may, indeed, be replied that it is we who 
 have failed and changed. But, if this be 
 said, then the neutrals must decide between 
 us; and it is here that the coming of the 
 
THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 19 
 
 United States into the struggle is for us so 
 valuable. Much as their immeasurable re- 
 sources may help us, we estimate still more 
 highly their approval of the course we have 
 pursued and disapproval of the conduct of 
 the enemy; for to us America is a second 
 conscience, whose judgments weigh with us 
 more than those of any other people on 
 earth. 
 
 In another neutral country, Denmark, a 
 Christian scholar has taken the trouble to 
 put together a book which has been trans- 
 lated into English and published under the 
 title of Hurrah and Hallelujah. It is a col- 
 lection of utterances about the War, com- 
 piled from German preachers and profes- 
 sors ; and it has been published for the very 
 purpose of exposing the depths of futility 
 and fatuity to which these have descended, 
 not a few of the extracts bordering on in- 
 sanity or blasphemy. What, however, can 
 be expected from common men when a 
 scholar like Professor Herrmann, of Mar- 
 burg, himself a distinguished writer on 
 Christian Ethics, has published a book, 
 under the title of The English, the Turks 
 and Ourselves, of which the thesis is that it 
 
20 THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 
 
 is no disgrace to be allied with Turks, 
 though it would be disgraceful to be allied 
 with Englishmen, in whom is to be found 
 nothing but falsehood and hypocrisy? 
 There is no living teacher in Germany who 
 has been more honoured in this country than 
 Dr. Herrmann; and such a performance 
 does not excite our indignation so much as 
 shame and pity that one who had stood so 
 high should stoop so low. How extem- 
 porised and artificial, however, is the sen- 
 timent of his pamphlet may be inferred 
 from the words of another great writer on 
 Christian Ethics in a work published in 
 1905: discussing the possibility of com- 
 pletely stopping war. Professor Lemme, of 
 Heidelberg, says: "Christian sentiment 
 cannot recommend the total ending of war 
 as long as there exists such a miserable 
 image of a state as Turkey : the never-ceas- 
 ing massacres of Christians and the enmity 
 to all culture of the Turkish race compel the 
 judgment that the continued existence of 
 this government is ten times worse than the 
 wars which would be needed for its re- 
 moval" (Christliche Ethik, p. 1020). Can 
 it be doubted which of these two is the true 
 voice of Germany? 
 
THK LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 21 
 
 In a small work, entitled German Phil- 
 osophy in Relation to the War, Professor 
 Muirhead, of Birmingham University, has 
 proved that the War is not traceable to the 
 great figures of the German philosophical 
 dynasty from Kant to Fiehte, but to later 
 and inferior practitioners, and it would not 
 be difficult to date the commencement of the 
 deterioration, as far as religion and the- 
 ology are concerned. It was out of the 
 victories of the Franco-Prussian War that 
 the inordinate ambitions of Germany were 
 born. Soon after that the present writer 
 happened to hear in the Cathedral of Berlin 
 a sermon from a Court-preacher, delivered 
 on the anniversary of one of the great bat- 
 tles of that war. The Emperor was present, 
 and so were numerous officials of the Court 
 and officers of the army. The preacher 
 described the late war — its hope^ and fears, 
 its losses and victories. But he proceeded to 
 expatiate on the consequences which had 
 ensued — the payment of the French mil- 
 liards, the outbreak of luxury and extrav- 
 agance, the haste to be rich and the mad 
 rush of speculation. And he finished with 
 the sentence, "We expected roses to grow 
 
22 THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 
 
 on the graves of our heroes — but, lo, net- 
 tles !" These words went through the build- 
 ing like the flash of a flaming sword, and 
 you could feel the start of the whole con- 
 gregation. 
 
 Since then the sowing of nettles has gone 
 on apace. One of the sowers has been 
 Treitschke. In this man's teaching there 
 are not wanting elements of nobleness and 
 truth, for a people cannot but aspire after 
 political liberty, and cannot but cleave to the 
 State or the dynasty which has given them 
 the chance. But the light that leads astray 
 may be light from heaven, and unregulated 
 love of country may prove as dangerous as 
 excessive love of home, which Jesus Himself 
 condemned in such severe terms when it led 
 away from Himself. The pagan worship of 
 the Roman Emperors is revived in the Prus- 
 sian deification of the State ; and Christian 
 Ethics must face, the question whether there 
 is a Christian law only for the individual 
 but not for the community, and whether the 
 rules and decencies observed in times of 
 peace may be exchanged in time of war for 
 the scheming and violence of savages. 
 
THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 23 
 
 The real poisoner, however, of the mind 
 of Germany has been Friedrich Nietzsche. 
 It is true he scoffed and sneered at Prussia, 
 but this was only the trick of the literary 
 artist, who knew the piquancy of contradic- 
 tion ; for his teaching is the very essence of 
 Prussianism. It is true that many Chris- 
 tian teachers have written against him ; but 
 they have done so with marked restraint, as 
 if conscious that he had behind him a 
 numerous and powerful following, which it 
 would not do to offend. It is to be feared 
 that his disdain for Christian morality and 
 his blasphemy of the Name that is above 
 every name have sunk deeply into the gen- 
 eral mind in Germany and will not be easily 
 extirpated. 
 
 Lovers of Germany in this country have 
 been watching eagerly for signs of a better 
 mind; and though these have been few and 
 far between they have not been altogether 
 wanting. One aged scholar, a year or more 
 before the War, published a volume of ex- 
 tracts from books, leading articles and 
 speeches, to show how the mind of the coun- 
 try was being abused by the military spirit, 
 and how imminent was the peril of a univer- 
 
24 THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 
 
 sal war. At least one well-known Christian 
 writer protested against the invasion of Bel- 
 gium, and another, of still greater eminence, 
 condemned the Hymn of Hate, censuring its 
 puerility and warning the country how vain 
 was the attempt to make hatred the foun- 
 dation of prosperity instead of love. The 
 names of such men it would not perhaps be 
 safe now to repeat; but these acts of wisdom 
 will not be forgotten in happier days, and 
 perhaps they are the harbingers of the re- 
 turn of public opinion in Germany to right- 
 eousness "and humanity. 
 
III. 
 
 We, who stand in need of repentance our- 
 selves, hope yet to collaborate with a 
 penitent Germany in bringing in the 
 Kingdom of God. 
 
 When Luther and the Reformation are 
 considered in the light of the War, the sad 
 reflection forces itself on the mind, how lit- 
 tle Protestantism at the critical moment 
 affected the decision! It did not delay the 
 outbreak of war even for a day; and this 
 could not be without great guilt on both 
 sides. Germany, Great Britain and the 
 United States, the three great Protestant 
 Powers, could have not only kept peace 
 among themselves, but imposed peace on 
 the world. In such a combination the lead 
 could probably only have been taken by the 
 German Emperor. He had often claimed to 
 be an apostle of peace, and it is possible that 
 this claim was sincere ; for, although at the 
 present time he is the Aunt Sally which the 
 populace always in such a case requires 
 against which to discharge the missiles of 
 blame and scorn, he may be the victim of 
 the war-machine, which has passed beyond 
 
26 THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 
 
 his control. But he missed his opportunity, 
 and no man ever threw a larger heritage 
 away. Had he made himself the leader of a 
 league of peace he would have died the 
 greatest monarch on earth, and been re- 
 membered as one of the greatest benefactors 
 of the race. His country, too, would have 
 had the place in the sun of which he has 
 spoken — the sunshine of the respect and 
 honour of mankind. But this golden har- 
 vest cannot now be reached ; and, the more 
 genuine the Kaiser's religious professions 
 may be, the more haunting must be the re- 
 flections in his secret mind on the misery he 
 has brought on mankind and the millions 
 whom his policy has sent before their time 
 to their account. 
 
 But the three great Protestant nations 
 were, besides, the three great missionary 
 nations; and those whose vocation it 
 was to teach the rest of mankind to 
 love one another are at one another's 
 throats in the sight of the heathen. 
 At the Edinburgh Conference in 1910 all 
 the Protestant Churches and Missionary 
 Societies were seen in such union and co- 
 operation that the young and sanguine be- 
 
THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 27 
 
 gan to talk about the christianisation of the 
 world in a single generation. The growth 
 of income was a common theme of congratu- 
 lation. Yet the income of all the missionary 
 bodies for a year is surpassed by the expen- 
 diture on the War for a day, and the total 
 expenditure on this single war will infinitely 
 exceed the expenditure on Foreign Missions 
 since the world began. The more conscious 
 any side is of its own share in such colossal 
 folly, the less will it be inclined to exagger- 
 ate the guilt of another ; and, the deeper the 
 sense of guilt, the less distant will be the 
 day of reconciliation. 
 
 In an article in the September number of 
 The Nineteenth Century and After a mili- 
 tary contributor advocates the suspension 
 of all intercourse with Germans for a gen- 
 eration; and doubtless in the Teutonic 
 nations there could be found plenty ready 
 to return the compliment. But the humaner 
 policy of President Wilson, to wage the War 
 not against the German people, but the 
 Prussian autocracy, will hold the field. 
 From the first the President has endeav- 
 oured to keep his people to the wise maxim 
 that the end of war is peace, and if there be 
 
28 THE LUTHERAN CELEBRATIONS 
 
 established among the civilised nations a 
 league for compulsory peace, and, if, at the 
 same time, among the Christian peoples 
 there arise a voluntary league for the 
 evangelisation of the world, on a scale of 
 expenditure imitated from the sacrifices 
 and services of the present struggle, then 
 may the calamities of this generation prove 
 to be the gateway to a new era of human 
 happiness and progress, although it must 
 not be forgotten that, when Christian men 
 or nations have allowed themselves to drift 
 so far asunder, they can only hope to return 
 effectively to one another through first re- 
 turning to Him who is the fountain of 
 wisdom, love and concord. 
 
 THE END 
 
arVISSZs'^'"'™" """"'^*y "-Ibrary 
 ^II«II|5MIIIIMiiii^*'°"^ »' 1917 / 
 
 oI.n,an? ^^^4 031 404 506 
 

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