JULIAN "K 
 SMYTH 
 
 :K5 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 D 524.S66 
 
 Heart of the war: 
 
 3 1924 027 858 483 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027858483 
 
THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
THE 
 HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 THE WAR AS A CHALLENGE TO FAITH 
 
 ITS SPIRITUAL CAUSES 
 
 ITS CALL FOR A NEW ALLEGIANCE . 
 TO THE PRINCE OF PEACE 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. JULIAN K. SMYTH 
 
 AUTHOR OF FOOTPRINTS OF THE SA VIOUR, HOLY NAMES, 
 RELIGION AND LIFE, ETC. 
 
 "Depart from evil and do good; 
 Seek peace and pursue it." 
 
 — Psalm xxxiv, 14. 
 
 THE NEW CHURCH PRESS, Ihc. 
 NEW YORK. 
 
 UlvilVLK! 
 

 Copyright, 1914, by 
 The New Church Press, Inc. 
 
 THE DE VINNE PRESS. NEW YORK 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 This book is written in the conviction that within the 
 present war, terrible as it is in its extent and in its 
 outward violence, and momentous as are its po- 
 litical, industrial, and social consequences, a yet 
 greater conflict is raging. We see slaughter, spolia- 
 tion, brutality, wide-spreading misery, and we cry: 
 "O Lord ! how long?" Not less surely, however, not 
 less determinedly, and with consequences that are 
 even more far-reaching and vital, there is a war of 
 ideas, of principles, of motives and purposes, of 
 spiritual forces both good and evil, that is shaking 
 our mental world to its depths. 
 
 It is this inner phase of the great struggle that I 
 have ventured to denote as the "heart" of the war. 
 It is of these elemental forces and the issues involved 
 in their strife that I have attempted to speak. The 
 
 5 
 
6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 new philosophy of life, with its leading principle, 
 "the will to power," urged so confidently by Nietz- 
 sche, Treitschke, Bernhardi, and others, has hurled 
 itself against the Law of Love as established and per- 
 sonified by the Prince of Peace. With such a contest 
 waging, I have felt impelled, through this little book 
 and to the best of my ability, to respond to the call 
 of old: 
 
 "Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be 
 able to withstand in the evil day; and, having done 
 all, to stand." 
 
 Julian K. Smyth. 
 New York City, 
 December, 1914. 
 
CONTENTS 
 I 
 
 MEMORABLE WORDS ON WAR, 
 PATRIOTISM, AND PEACE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I The Call to Peace 1 1 
 
 II The President's Proclamation for Peace 
 
 Sunday 13 
 
 III God's Purposes and War 15 
 
 IV Wars: Their Origin and Nature ... 17 
 V The Love of Country 19 
 
 VI The Duty of Commanders, Officers and 
 
 Soldiers 21 
 
 II 
 SERMONS ON THE WAR 
 
 I Unsafe Defences 29 
 
 II Can the Prayers of a Nation for Peace 
 
 Avail? 51 
 
 III The Peace of Christ for Which We Pray: 
 
 — What is It? 65 
 
 IV Why are Wars Permitted? 81 
 
 V The Axe Laid at the Root of the Trees — 
 
 Fixing the Responsibility 99 
 
 VI " The Will TO Power" 115 
 
 VII "Love Your Enemies!" 133 
 
I 
 
 MEMORABLE WORDS 
 
 ON WAR, PATRIOTISM, 
 
 AND PEACE 
 
THE CALL TO PEACE 
 
 /N the last days it shall come to pass, that the 
 mountain of the house of the Lord shall be 
 established in the top of the mountains, and it shall 
 be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow 
 unto it. 
 
 And many nations shall come, and say. Come, 
 and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and 
 to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach 
 us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths; for 
 the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the 
 Lord ffom Jerusalem. 
 
 And He shall judge among many people, and 
 rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat 
 their swords into ploughshares, and their spears 
 into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword 
 against nation, neither shall they learn war any 
 more. 
 
 But they shall sit every man under his vine and 
 under his fig tree; and none shall make them 
 afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath 
 spoken it. 
 
 Micah iv, 1-5. 
 
THE PRESIDENT'S PROCLAMATION 
 FOR PEACE SUNDAY 
 
 rHEREAS, Great nations of the world have 
 taken up arms against one another, and war 
 now draws millions of men into battle whom the 
 counsel of statesmen has not been able to save 
 from the terrible sacrifice; and 
 
 WHEREAS, In this, as in all things, it is our 
 privilege and duty to seek counsel and succor of 
 Almighty God, humbling ourselves before Him, 
 confessing our weakness and our lack of any wis- 
 dom equal to these things; and 
 
 WHEREAS, It is the especial wish and longing 
 of the people of the United States, in prayer and 
 counsel and all friendliness, to serve the cause of 
 peace; 
 
 Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of 
 the United States of America, do designate Sunday, 
 the fourth day of October next, a day of prayer 
 and supplication, and do request all God-fearing 
 persons to repair on that day to their places of 
 worship, there to unite their petitions to Almighty 
 God that, overruling the counsel of men, setting 
 straight the things they cannot govern or alter, 
 taking pity on the nations now in the throes of con- 
 
 13 
 
flict, in His mercy and goodness showing a way 
 where men can see none. He vouchsafe His chil- 
 dren healing peace again and restore once more 
 that concord among men and nations without 
 which there can be neither happiness nor true 
 friendship nor any wholesome fruit of toil and 
 thought in the world; praying also to this end that 
 He forgive us our sins, our ignorance of His holy 
 will, our willfulness and many errors, and lead us 
 in the paths of obedience to places of vision and to 
 thoughts and counsels that purge and make wise. 
 
 In witness whereof I have hereunto set my 
 hand and caused the seal of the United States to 
 be affixed. 
 
 Done at the city of Washington, this eighth day 
 of September, in the year of our Lord one thou- 
 sand nine hundred and fourteen, and of the inde- 
 pendence of the United States of America the one 
 hundred and thirty-ninth. 
 
 WOODROW WILSON. 
 
 14 
 
GOD'S PURPOSES AND WAR 
 
 THE purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and 
 must prevail, though we erring mortals may 
 fail to accurately perceive them in advance. We 
 hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war 
 long before this; but God knows best, and has 
 ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His 
 wisdom, and our own error therein. Meanwhile 
 we must work earnestly in the best lights He gives 
 us, trusting that so working still conduces to the 
 great ends He ordains. Surely He intends some 
 great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which 
 no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay. 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 [From a letter dated Washington, September 4, 1864, 
 and written to Mrs. Eliza P. Guerney, a leader among 
 the Quakers, who had appealed to the President to 
 bring the War of the Rebellion to an end.] 
 
 IS 
 
WARS: THEIR ORIGIN AND NATURE 
 
 /T is not of the Divine Providence that wars exist, 
 for they are connected with manslaughter, 
 plunderings, violence, cruelties, and other enor- 
 mous evils, which are directly opposed to Chris- 
 tian charity. And yet they must needs be permit- 
 ted, because, since the time of the most ancient 
 people, the life's love with men has become such 
 that it wills to rule over others and finally over all; 
 also to possess the wealth of the world and finally 
 all wealth. These two loves cannot be kept in 
 bounds, for it is according to the Divine Provi- 
 dence that every one be allowed to act from free- 
 dom in accordance with his reason; and that with- 
 out permission man cannot by the Lord be led 
 from evil, thus cannot be reformed and saved. 
 For unless evils were permitted to break out man 
 would not see them, and therefore would not 
 acknowledge them, and thus could not he led to 
 resist them. For this reason, evils cannot be pre- 
 vented by any Providence: for if they were, they 
 would remain shut in, and like the diseases called 
 cancer and gangrene would spread and consume 
 all that is vital in man. 
 
 17 
 
For man from birth is like a small hell, and 
 between it and heaven there is perpetual discord. 
 No man can be withdrawn from his hell by the 
 Lord, unless he sees that he is in hell and wishes 
 to be led out; and this cannot be done without per- 
 missions, the causes of which are laws of the Di- 
 vine Providence. For this reason there are wars, 
 lesser and greater, — the lesser between the posses- 
 sors of estates and their neighbors, and the greater 
 between the rulers of kingdoms and their neigh- 
 bors. Between the lesser and the greater there is 
 no difference, except that the lesser are kept within 
 limits by the law of the nation, and the greater by 
 the laws of the nations; also that while both the 
 lesser and greater wish to transgress their laws, the 
 lesser cannot, and the greater can, but still not be- 
 yond what is possible. 
 
 The spiritual man acknowledges that the wars 
 in the world are ruled by the Divine Providence of 
 the Lord, but the natural man does not acknow- 
 ledge this except when a celebration of victory is 
 appointed, that he may then on his knees return 
 thanks unto God who has granted the victory; and 
 likewise by a few prayers before going into battle. 
 But when he returns to himself, he then ascribes 
 the victory either to the prudence of the general or 
 to some plan or some occurrence in the midst of 
 the battle, which they had not thought of, but from 
 which nevertheless the victory had come. 
 
 Swedenborg's "Divine Providence," No. 251. 
 
 i8 
 
THE LOVE OF COUNTRY 
 
 THAT every man is bound to love his country, 
 not as he loves himself, but in preference to 
 himself, is a law inscribed on the human heart; 
 from which has come the well-known principle 
 which every true man endorses, that if the country 
 is threatened with ruin from an enemy or any 
 other source, it is noble to die for it, and it is 
 glorious for a soldier to shed his blood for it. This 
 is said because so great should be one's love for it. 
 Swedenborg's "True Christian Religion," 
 No. JfU. 
 
 OUR country is our neighbor . . . because it is 
 like a parent; for a man is born therein, and 
 is thereby nourished and protected from injuries. 
 Good is to be done to our country from a principle 
 of love according to its necessities, which princi- 
 pally regard its sustenance, and the civil and spir- 
 itual life of those therein. He who loves his coun- 
 try and does good to it from good will, in the other 
 life loves the Lord's Kingdom; for there the Lord's 
 Kingdom is his country, and he who loves the 
 Lord's Kingdom loves the Lord, because the Lord 
 is all in all in His Kingdom. 
 
 Swedenborg's "New Jerusalem and Its 
 Heavenly Doctrines," No. 93. 
 
 19 
 
THE DUTY OF COMMANDERS, 
 OFFICERS, AND SOLDIERS 
 
 1. THE COMMANDER OF AN ARMY 
 
 "OY the commander of an army is meant its high- 
 J3 est officer, whether he be a king or grand- 
 duke, or one appointed general, who holds author- 
 ity from them. If such a commander looks to the 
 Lord and shuns evils as sins, and if he acts sin- 
 cerely, justly, and faithfully in the affairs of his 
 leadership and command, he performs the goods 
 of use which are the goods of charity. If he be a 
 king or a grand-duke, he does not love war but 
 peace; even when in war, he continually loves 
 peace. He does not go to war except for the pro- 
 tection of his country, and thus is not an aggressor 
 but a defender; but afterwards, when war has 
 commenced, if so be that aggression is defence, he 
 becomes also an aggressor. In battle, — unless he 
 be born of a different disposition, — he is brave and 
 valiant; after battle he is mild and merciful; in 
 battle he would be as a lion, but after the battle, 
 as a lamb. Within himself he does not exult 
 in the overthrow of his enemy or in the glory of 
 
victory, but in the deliverance of his country and 
 his people from the invasion of the enemy and 
 from the destruction and ruin which they would 
 inflict. He acts prudently; cares faithfully for his 
 army as the father of a family for his children and 
 servants; and he loves them, all of them, as they 
 do their duty sincerely and valiantly. Cunning, 
 with him, is not cunning but prudence. 
 
 2. OFFICERS IN COMMAND 
 
 Every one of them may become charity, that is, 
 an angel of heaven, if he looks to the Lord and 
 shuns evils as sins, and sincerely, justly, and faith- 
 fully performs the duty of his office. For thus they 
 also do goods of use perpetually, which are of 
 charity; for their minds are in these things, and 
 when the mind is perpetually in the goods of use, 
 it becomes a form of charity. His country is his 
 neighbor; in a spiritual idea he is its defence and 
 security from invasion and destruction. He does 
 not falsely exult in what is of no merit; nor does 
 he exult even in that which is of merit. This he 
 thinks ought to be, which makes him of a con- 
 tented mind, and not vainglorious. In war he loves 
 the soldiers under him, according to their valor, 
 sincerity, and obedience; he is thoughtful for them, 
 and desires their good as he does his own; for they 
 are victims to the glory of his use. For officers 
 
have the glory of the use and the glory of the 
 honor: the soldiers have the glory of the use, but 
 not the glory of the honor. 
 
 3. THE SOLDIER IN THE RANKS 
 
 If such a one looks to the Lord and shuns evils 
 as sins, and sincerely, justly, and faithfully does his 
 duty, he also becomes charity; for as to this there 
 is no distinction of persons. He is averse to unjust 
 depredation; he abominates the wrongful shed- 
 ding of blood. It is otherwise when in battle. 
 There he is not averse to it; for he does not think 
 of it, but of the enemy as an enemy, who desires 
 his blood. When he hears the sound of the drum 
 calling him to desist from the slaughter his fury 
 ceases. He looks upon his captives after victory as 
 neighbors according to the quality of their good. 
 Before battle he raises his mind to the Lord and 
 commits his life into His hands, and when he has 
 done this he lets his mind down from its elevation 
 into the body and becomes brave, the thought of 
 the Lord, which he is then unconscious of, remain- 
 ing still in his mind, above his bravery. And then 
 if he dies, he dies in the Lord; if he lives, he lives 
 in the Lord. 
 
 Swedenborg's "The Doctrine of Charity," 
 Nos. 105-107. 
 
 »j 
 
II 
 
 SERMONS ON 
 THE WAR 
 
UNSAFE DEFENCES 
 
"Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help, and 
 rely on horses, and trust in chariots because they 
 are many, and in horsemen because they are very 
 strong: but they look not unto the Holy One of 
 Israel, neither seek the Lord!" 
 
 Is. xxxi, 1. 
 
I. UNSAFE DEFENCES 
 
 CAN you feel the concern, can you feel the con- 
 sternation, which must have stirred the proph- 
 et's soul as, under inspiration, he cried out in these 
 words against what he regarded as the supreme folly 
 of his people? 
 
 Let us get the situation clearly in mind. Imagine 
 ourselves to be Jews in Palestine in the year 700 b.c. 
 What are the questions in which we would be the 
 most interested? They would not be questions of 
 theology or of ritual. They would be questions of 
 policy. With others we would wonder why it was 
 that notwithstanding God had bestowed such favors 
 upon His people. He yet had not made them a great 
 nation. We would say: "Why is it that a heathen 
 power like these Assyrians in the North, or Egypt in 
 the South, should be so much stronger than we, so 
 that at any time they may come up against us and 
 swallow us up?" We would say: "It is actually 
 rumored that the armies of Sennacherib will soon be 
 
 29 
 
30 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 thundering at our gates. What chance have we 
 against these trained horsemen and archers of As- 
 syria?" We would be advised by leading men that 
 the most advantageous thing to do would be to make 
 an alliance with Egypt and thus meet force with 
 force. It would be urged that such a course would 
 be progressive; that new problems and new oppor- 
 tunities were before us, and that unless we met them 
 in a practical way and employed new methods we 
 would make no advance, but would remain an 
 obscure people. 
 
 Against these worldly policies and reasonings, 
 Isaiah the prophet thundered, "No ! It is weakness, 
 it is apostacy thus to turn to Egypt because her horses 
 and chariots are many, and her horsemen very strong, 
 instead of continuing steadfast to Jehovah who 
 brought our fathers out of Egypt, out of the house 
 of bondage." 
 
 But the answer to this might be : "Conditions have 
 changed. The world about us is expanding and its 
 forces are gathering strength. Instead of the religion 
 of our fathers increasing in might, and the preten- 
 sions of Egypt and Assyria being humbled, it seems 
 to be the other way: they seem to be alert; they seem 
 to be full of enterprise whilst lue seem to be standing 
 still." 
 
UNSAFE DEFENCES 31 
 
 Now there is something wonderfully modern about 
 all this, the moment we see its spiritual significance. 
 And this we should do readily. Israel in the Scrip- 
 tures stands for the Church of the living God in this 
 or in any other age. Its dominant characteristic 
 should be spirituality. Other institutions may ex- 
 press wealth, practical efficiency, public enterprise, 
 learning, art, and the like, but the Church of the liv- 
 ing God, the true "House of Israel," is intended to 
 be "the gathering and distributing point of spiritual 
 life." In that is her distinctiveness; therein lies her 
 essential power. Because of that element the Church 
 is intended to be "the illumination, the inspiration, 
 and the attraction of mankind." 
 
 Egypt, on the other hand, stands for the world of 
 practical knowledge and achievement, — especially as 
 expressed by its various sciences. All that we know 
 about man's life — his achievements, beliefs, institu- 
 tions, and so on, — are stored up in the treasure cities 
 of Egypt. 
 
 Assyria, which Israel came to fear more than any 
 other foe, stands for the spirit of rationalism, with its 
 bold, trained, self-confident power. It is that spirit, 
 looming up so threateningly in our time, which 
 waves aside spiritual beliefs as if they were nothing, 
 asserting its power to explain life and its problems 
 
32 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 without having any recourse to churches, to Scrip- 
 tures, to a spiritual worid, or to God. 
 
 To make these interpretations more plain, I ven- 
 ture to put them in this way: 
 
 Egypt is the land of the Edisons, the Teslas, the 
 Marconis. It is the land that supports the institu- 
 tions for research endowed by the Camegies, Rocke- 
 fellers, and the like. On the other hand, men like 
 IngersoU (except that the rationalists of to-day are 
 far more cultured), men like Treitschke, Nietzsche, 
 and others, who, in their university chairs or from 
 lecture platforms, are subjecting Religion to the 
 most exacting and merciless intellectual tests, — these 
 are the Assyrians, the bold horsemen, the slashing 
 swordsmen whom Isaiah characterized as the great 
 boaster, who shook his mailed hand over Jerusalem 
 and declared with a laugh that he would yet rifle it of 
 its spiritual treasures as easily as he would reach out 
 his hand and rifle the nest from which he had fright- 
 ened the mother bird ! 
 
 Get this last representation clearly in mind. All 
 that offers its self-confident explanation of beliefs we 
 have held most dear — God, His Incarnation in Jesus 
 Christ our Lord, Redemption, an inspired Bible, Di- 
 vine Providence, the future life — all, I say, that 
 seems to find an almost savage delight in casting 
 
UNSAFE DEFENCES 33 
 
 these things aside as of no account for a modem man, 
 is the Assyria of our day and generation. "It is," 
 exclaims a writer, "precisely now as then, a rush of 
 new powers across the horizon of our knowledge, 
 which makes the God who was sufficient for the nar- 
 rower knowledge of yesterday seem petty and old- 
 fashioned to-day." It is that flood of successful, 
 scornful forces which burst upon our simple confi- 
 dence with their challenge to make terms and pay 
 tribute, and which for many, alas, has already 
 "bleached the beauty" out of truths which once were 
 looked upon with the eye of faith as suffused with 
 the very tints of heaven. 
 
 I take no pleasure, surely, in declaring that the 
 Christian civilization to which you and I belong 
 stands in danger of losing its spirituality. It is a dan- 
 ger that is affecting the Churches themselves. Fur- 
 thermore, the temptation depicted by Isaiah is upon 
 them : the temptation to take refuge in Egypt because 
 of its horses and its chariots. And that means to 
 substitute for faith, clarified by truer knowledge, 
 facts and theories which man by the diligent use of 
 his natural intelligence has acquired in such abun- 
 dance and to such good purpose that they seem to 
 many to be better adapted for our immediate needs. 
 
 And here we need to think justly of this spiritual 
 
34 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 Egypt. If the Bible does hold it up as the symbol of 
 that kind of knowledge which is covered by the term 
 "science," it would be the most foolish, it would be 
 the most short-sighted thing to rail against it. Again 
 and again, as might be shown, the Bible points to 
 Egypt with every evidence of interest and hope. It 
 predicts that some day a great altar will be reared in 
 Egypt: — prophecy, as you see, that some day the 
 element of religion will be something which the sci- 
 entists themselves will claim to be essential. It 
 reminds us that, as a representative act, the Child of 
 Bethlehem was carried down for refuge into Egypt, 
 — as much as to say that even He who had the words 
 of eternal life found the readiest and truest ways of 
 expressing them through the facts of nature which. 
 He acquired: the lilies of the field, the birds of the 
 air, the occupations of the plowman, the vine-dresser, 
 the fisherman, the merchant, the builder. 
 
 For facts of nature are always true. Look into 
 them deeply enough, they are always absorbingly in- 
 teresting. God has never placed a ban against the 
 study of these things. It would be foolish to suppose 
 that He is against man's effort to acquire knowledges 
 of this kind and coordinate them into systems which 
 we call sciences. The progress in this kind of know- 
 ledge during the last hundred or hundred and fifty 
 
UNSAFE DEFENCES 35 
 
 years has been, as every school-boy knows, astound- 
 ing. It has been so wonderful, it has been so fas- 
 cinating, it has been so extensive that it has made 
 possible the very temptation which the Bible here 
 sets before us : the temptation of being carried away 
 by this kind of knowledge and putting our main de- 
 pendence upon it. All these discovered facts of 
 nature seem and are newer than the established 
 truths of religion. They attract more attention 
 because they come as a surprise. Many of them, 
 like the discovery of anaesthetics, electricity, radium, 
 etc., result in immediate benefits which change the 
 whole aspect of our every-day conditions. We can- 
 not help being impressed by them. We cannot help 
 admiring the skill of the men who discover these 
 facts, who work out their uses, who accomplish these 
 results. 
 
 You know how absolutely true this is. You know 
 —if I may express it in the language of corre- 
 spondences — how Egypt has been growing in fas- 
 cination and power until now the temptation is 
 strongly upon us to trust in its horses and its chariots 
 because they are many, and in its horsemen because 
 they are very strong. Quote Darwin with his theory 
 of evolution against Isaiah with His ancient truth of 
 God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and 
 
36 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 earth; quote Herbert Spencer with his doctrine of 
 the unknowableness of the Infinite against that ex- 
 clamation of St. John: "That which we have heard 
 from the beginning, that which we have seen with 
 our eyes, that which we beheld and our hands have 
 handled of the Word of Life"; quote Edison with 
 his dictum against immortality on the ground that 
 human beings are only an aggregate of cells, and the 
 brain is only a wonderful machine, against the simple 
 testimony of the seer of Patmos: "I saw the dead, 
 small and great, stand before God" ;— place, I say, 
 the statements of acknowledged leaders of science in 
 comparison with the declarations of men who claim 
 to have spoken from the spirit of God, and multi- 
 tudes, as you know, would place their reliance on the 
 former rather than on the latter. They would excuse 
 themselves by claiming that in doing this they were 
 resting on facts, and that proved facts are the only 
 basis on which an intellectually honest man should 
 place his reliance. 
 
 And so it has come about that through this mar- 
 vellous acquisition of natural knowledge, a notable 
 change of attitude towards the declarations of re- 
 ligion has taken place. The eyes of the many are 
 upon Egypt. They are eager to know the latest word 
 of science on any given subject, rather than what 
 
UNSAFE DEFENCES 37 
 
 God through His Word is trying to say to us about 
 the most vital problems of our daily life. Never did 
 the chariots, the horses, and the horsemen of Egypt 
 seem so imposing and so necessary as they do to the 
 man of to-day. 
 
 But the pity and the folly of it is when the man 
 of the Church is ready to give up the helps and the 
 safeguards of religion, and place his main dependence 
 on natural knowledges, theories, and instrumental- 
 ities. We hardly realize, perhaps, how far this has 
 gone. 
 
 1. Take the fact of immortality. No greater 
 proof of immortality should be asked for by a Chris- 
 tian man than the established fact of our Lord's 
 resurrection and His assertion: "Because I live, ye 
 shall live also." And yet, instead of being content 
 with that; instead of reminding ourselves how im- 
 possible the rise of the Christian Church would have 
 been without it; instead of steeping ourselves, so to 
 say, in the assurances and experiences of religion that 
 we have souls and must be immortal, many are cry- 
 ing, "No ! we will flee into Egypt and hear what the 
 latest word is which Sir Oliver Lodge or some well- 
 trained psychic researcher has to say on the subject !" 
 
 2. Take the prime fact of man. Revelation de- 
 clares he is the child of God, because, in his inmost 
 
38 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 being, he is a spirit or soul created that he may re- 
 ceive and be blessed by the love and wisdom of God. 
 But a thousand voices are crying : "We will go down 
 into Egypt and find out what man is." And so they 
 do. They mount upon horses; they step into 
 chariots. They pursue man through "the chemical 
 combinations of his bodily organism, track him 
 through his automatic and influential systems," only 
 to find in the end that there is what the scientists are 
 willing to call "a residuum" ; but a residuum which 
 eludes the keenest investigator, which "the knife of 
 no anatomist can detect, which the exhaustive anal- 
 ysis of no psychologist can define, which refuses to 
 be ignored, which knows beyond the certitude of all 
 knowledge that it is, which simply smiles when it is 
 told that it is the ripest product of chance or the re- 
 sult of a fortuitous concourse of atoms set in motion 
 no one knows how, which cognizes the universe and 
 calls itself '7,' which finds itself thinking, feeling, 
 resolving, perceiving in spite of life-long atomic 
 flux!" 
 
 3. Bring the matter to a practical issue,— the issue 
 of man's conduct. More and more men are placing 
 their reliance upon purely natural resources. Each 
 day they are becoming more dependent upon legisla- 
 tive enactments. We really seem to be depending 
 
UNSAFE DEFENCES 39 
 
 upon the State to regulate man's conduct, and by 
 means of one commission and one ordinance after 
 another to make it impossible for him to transgress, 
 no matter how evil his intentions may be. Many 
 seem to think that this is the only sure way to right- 
 eousness, forgetting, apparently, a principle, so much 
 truer, so much deeper, so much more influential and 
 lasting, which a Psalmist has thus expressed: 
 
 "Thy word have I hid in my heart 
 That I might not sin against Thee." 
 
 Ah, my friends, the difference between Egypt and 
 Israel is, in a way, summed up in that little verse! 
 One trusts in natural facts, in scientific principles, in 
 the formulation of moral maxims and civil regula- 
 tions: the other trusts in spiritual facts, in the revela- 
 tion of the mind of God to the mind of man as His 
 child; and not only that, but to the influences of His 
 love and wisdom which enter man's soul to strengthen 
 and illumine it. This, however, is true: If one is 
 bound to go down into Egypt for help, he will go. 
 But God, through His prophet, warns him that he 
 will be disappointed. He will, indeed, find horses, 
 and chariots, and horsemen, as he expects. He will 
 find physiological and civil and psychological facts 
 
40 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 and laws, with experts to explain them. But this he 
 will find, — and the prophet was inspired to put it 
 very simply : "Now the Egyptians are men, and not 
 God; and their horses flesh and not spirit." 
 
 That is a difference that is fundamental. It makes 
 known limitations from which there is no escape. 
 Human resources multiplied indefinitely are never 
 final, they are not infallible. At their best they are 
 natural and partake of the qualities of the natural. 
 "That which is bom of the flesh is flesh." If we are 
 essentially spiritual beings, that cannot suffice us. 
 "That which is bom of the spirit is spirit." Am I, 
 are you, with all the knowledge that science may 
 yield, sufficient unto ourselves^ Can we stand the 
 strain of rebuffs, of mis judgments, of outward re- 
 verses, of temptations that will never cease, of sor- 
 rows that may lay us prostrate in the dust, of sins 
 that may sue in vain to man for mercy and forgive- 
 ness? The horses and the chariots of Egypt are 
 many, and their horsemen are very strong; but — 
 "the Egyptians are men and not God." From Him 
 and His holy Word is the power which can not only 
 enable us to go through life believingly and right- 
 eously, but sustain us in such a life and in the end 
 regenerate us. That saving power has been revealed 
 to us in Jesus Christ our Lord. Why should we 
 
UNSAFE DEFENCES 41 
 
 doubt Him? Why should we forsake Him? Why 
 should we think to better ourselves by substituting 
 for His leadership, His words of eternal life, any- 
 thing which man has said or devised? His assertions 
 of divine authority and power are stupendous. His 
 promises to the man who will really live from His 
 spirit are extraordinary. But has He not fulfilled 
 them? Did any one ever become genuinely Christian 
 and not feel blessed and sustained by an inward 
 power such as the world could not possibly give? 
 
 And what about this question of "facts," on 
 which men profess to place such reliance? Are the 
 only proved facts on which we can rely facts of 
 natural knowledge? That would be a most impos- 
 sible proposition to maintain. I will take two simple 
 instances. 
 
 1. Here is the fact of light. How many of us 
 know what light really is? How many of us could 
 even give a reasonably good definition of it? Men 
 can tell us many wonderful things about light; but 
 light itself? A fact; because here is this subtle, 
 ethereal something which makes things visible. But 
 when Religion comes to a man with the assertion of 
 the Lord, "/ am the light of the world" it states a 
 fact which has the most abundant and undoubted 
 proof, and one which is far easier to understand. For 
 
42 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 the light of the Christ-life is the light of His wis- 
 dom; and the light of that wisdom, although it is so 
 wonderful, is something which any man, any youth, 
 any child can obtain. A Psalmist has put it very 
 simply : 
 
 '"the entrance of 'thy words giveth light: 
 It giveth understanding to the simple." 
 
 A few divinely inspired words entering a believing 
 mind, and, lo, a light that brightens the mind and 
 makes something which had been obscure before so 
 visible that we cry out in joy: "I see!" A fact, I 
 repeat; a fact of undoubted experience. 
 
 2. I have asked, I have searched in vain, for a sci- 
 entific explanation of the power of gravitation — that 
 something because of which there is "a tending to- 
 wards a center of attraction." Every object which 
 falls to the earth is an instance of it; but what is it in 
 itself? And yet when I hear the Lord say: "And I, 
 if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me" I not 
 only recognize it as a fact that has been abxmdantly 
 verified by earnest souls who have tended toward 
 Him as a center of attraction, but the nature of it is 
 not even obscure. It is the power of His infinite 
 love; and that is as immutable, and surely it is as 
 wonderful as the power of attraction between ma- 
 
UNSAFE DEFENCES 43 
 
 terial objects in nature. And the purpose of it is so 
 much higher ! Not earthward, but heavenward is its 
 attraction; — heaven, our intended destiny. And hea- 
 ven, as another has said, "is heavenly-mindedness; 
 and heavenly-mindedness is character; and character 
 is the result of decisions, and decisions are made by 
 the will, and the will is the executive of the con- 
 science," and the conscience is nothing less than the 
 voice of God, "the still small voice" speaking to the 
 soul of man and saying to him what the prophet was 
 inspired to say to his people : 
 
 "In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quiet- 
 ness and confidence shall be your strength." 
 
 My Christian Brethren, I am addressing you at a 
 time when the folly of relying on horses and trusting 
 in chariots because they are many, and in horsemen 
 because they are very strong, is being exemplified in 
 a manner and to an extent that appals the entire 
 world. Men do not, perhaps, think of the terrible 
 conflict now waging in this way. It is natural to 
 look to the more immediate causes, such as econo- 
 mists and statesmen point to, for an explanation of a 
 calamity that outgoes anything of its kind that has 
 ever taken place on this earth. We think to lay the 
 
44 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 blame at some one's door; when yet there is not a 
 ruler but protests that he has entered this strife un- 
 willingly, and that it has been forced upon him by 
 conditions which he could not avert, nor honorably 
 avoid. All hold themselves guiltless of the greatest 
 civil crime in all history. 
 
 Pray God that these protestations are sincere : for 
 there is no one so evil, so drunk with power and 
 worldly ambition that you could wish upon him the 
 punishment of feeling that he was directly respon- 
 sible for all this horrible carnage that is slaying and 
 maiming men by thousands and tens of thousands, 
 desolating homes, ruining industry, paralyzing arts, 
 creating poverty, sweeping nominally Christian coun- 
 tries with flames of passion and hatred that are 
 scorching men's souls. 
 
 It is a tremendous moment for the Church of 
 Christ. For nineteen centuries the Gospel of the 
 Prince of Peace has been preached; and now, sud- 
 denly, the floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods 
 have lifted up; the gates of hell have burst open, and 
 among the very nations that have professed them- 
 selves Christian all that makes war horrible, das- 
 tardly, inhuman is having its way ! 
 
 God have mercy on us in this monstrous sin 
 against Him who laid down His life that He might 
 
UNSAFE DEFENCES 45 
 
 claim us and hold us in "the new covenant of love" 
 for Him and for each other! God have mercy on 
 us ! — and something more : may He open our eyes to 
 see and to repent of the evil that has made this catas- 
 trophe possible. It is the sin of faithlessness : — 
 faithlessness not so much to each other as to Him. 
 Year by year we have been growing in the love of 
 power, the greed for wealth, the lust of bodily com- 
 fort and indulgence. We have served Mammon un- 
 til it has become as real a cult as was Baal worship 
 which apostasized the houses of Judah and of Israel. 
 Instead of accepting the blessings of the new age 
 with humble hearts and believing minds, and con- 
 secrating them to purposes of use, we have seized 
 upon them with growing self-confidence; we have 
 given them our chief interest; we have come to place 
 our main dependence upon them. And so, more 
 fatal than all, there has grown up a spirit of pride 
 and trust in self, which, to a great extent, has made 
 religion unreal; a form, and even that diminishing, 
 with less dependence upon prayer and the daily use 
 of God's Word; a neglect of the devotional obser- 
 vance of the Sabbath and the holy ordinances of 
 religion, our systems of education becoming more and 
 more godless, with the inevitable result that^instead 
 of feeling the need of being born from above and 
 
46 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 acquiring the humble and teachable spirit of the 
 child, as our Lord commended, we have encouraged 
 that sense of self-importance and reliance upon the 
 things of this world which causes men to say in the 
 secret of their hearts, "Our talents, our possessions, 
 our powers are our own: who is Lord over us?" 
 
 Alas, it is the folly of long ago, only more subtle, 
 more deeply rooted — the folly of forsaking the Lord 
 and His covenant and of saying with a stubbornness 
 that could not be broken: "We will flee upon horses 
 ... we will trust in chariots because they are many, 
 and in horsemen because they are very strong." This 
 means in the terms of to-day: "We will extort the 
 most out of big business. 'Prosperity' shall be our 
 watchword. We will build forts, and navies, and 
 air-ships, and instruments of destruction, and main- 
 tain armies that shall make us and keep us secure." 
 
 Secure! Ah, the mockery of it! What is the 
 ghastly verdict of ruined cities and villages across 
 the sea? — those battered forts, those blood-soaked 
 trenches, those sunken cruisers ! And yet in this fate- 
 ful hour let us bear ourselves as Christians. It is not 
 a time for us to despair. It is not the time to doubt. 
 When clouds and darkness seem to hide from many 
 the very Being in whom they trust, a voice out of 
 His holy revelation cries : "Be still and know that I 
 
UNSAFE DEFENCES 47 
 
 am God." It may be, it must be that in the infinity 
 of His Providence this scourge of war has been per- 
 mitted because only so can obstacles be removed 
 which were piling up for our own destruction, and 
 making it impossible for the establishment of the 
 Lord's Kingdom upon earth, which He came into the 
 world to make known and to inaugurate; a Kingdom 
 intended to be the goal of our highest desires and 
 efforts, the law of which is as simple as this: "One is 
 your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren." 
 Be assured that the Lord has not abandoned His holy 
 purpose to help us establish that Kingdom, even if 
 we have. We have been putting our trust in unsafe 
 defences. We have gone down into Egypt for help, 
 relying on its horses and trusting in its chariots, for 
 they are many, and in horsemen because they seemed 
 so strong. Never in the world's history was there 
 such need of taking to heart those inspired words 
 spoken through God's servant the prophet: 
 
 "In returning and rest shall ye be saved: in quiet- 
 ness and confidence shall he your strength" 
 
CAN THE PRAYERS OF A 
 NATION FOR PEACE AVAIL? 
 
. . • "Because of the tender mercy of our God, 
 Whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited 
 
 us. 
 To shine upon them that sit in darkness and in 
 
 the shadow of death, 
 To guide our feet in the way of peaces 
 
 S. Luke i. 78, 79. 
 
II. CAN THE PRAYERS OF A NATION 
 FOR PEACE AVAIL? 
 
 I'. WISH to speak this morning in anticipation of 
 the special services to be held next Sunday, not 
 simply in this Church but in all Churches throughout 
 this country. Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, 
 Protestant, Evangelical, Non-evangelical, Jews, 
 Orientals, the New Church — all, in fact, who believe 
 in God and in the brotherhood of man, whatever 
 their race, or creed, all have been invoked by the 
 President of these United States "to repair ... to 
 their places of worship, there to unite their petitions 
 to Almighty God, that, overruling the counsel of 
 men, setting straight the things they cannot govern 
 or alter, taking pity on the nations now in the throes 
 of conflict, in His mercy and goodness showing a 
 way where men can see none, He vouchsafe His chil- 
 dren healing peace again and restore once more that 
 concord among men and nations without which there 
 
52 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 can be neither happiness, nor true friendship, nor any 
 wholesome fruit of toil and thought in the world; 
 praying also to this end that He forgive us our sins, 
 our ignorance of His holy will, our wilfulness and 
 many errors, and lead us in the paths of obedience 
 to places of vision and to thoughts and counsels that 
 purge and make wise." 
 
 Like every one here, I doubt not, I have, from the 
 outbreak of this war, read whatever I could of the 
 words of statesmen, of scholars and authors, of poets, 
 of military experts, of soldiers writing their letters 
 home, of refugees. Like you, no doubt, I have read 
 the "White Papers" of England and of Germany and 
 the speeches of prime ministers and chancellors. Of 
 all that has been said or written I know of nothing 
 that strikes a deeper note than this Proclamation of 
 the President of the United States, calling upon all 
 of us who believe in God and exercise good will to 
 men to unite in one supreme effort of our spiritual 
 natures and pray; pray to the God of the whole 
 earth; pray to our Father who is in heaven. Why? 
 Not for any selfish purpose. Not because we feel 
 ourselves to be in any immediate danger. Not that 
 victory may be given to the forces with whom our 
 sympathies may be enlisted, and on whose success our 
 hopes are set. We are not even urged to pray that 
 
CAN PRAYERS FOR PEACE AVAIL? 53 
 
 war may suddenly cease. With far deeper wisdom 
 the President has enjoined us to come together as a 
 nation and pray because kings and counsellors having 
 failed, because the affairs of state between nations 
 having become so involved, and the ways of di- 
 plomacy so twisted, and the means resorted to for 
 remedying these things so crude and barbarous and 
 insufficient, and the counsels of men having proved 
 themselves unable to straighten or govern them, it is 
 the part of wisdom and a sacred privilege for us as 
 one of the influential nations of the earth to seek 
 counsel and succor of Almighty God, "humbling our- 
 selves before Him, confessing our weakness and our 
 lack of wisdom equal to these things." 
 
 This is something new in international relations : a 
 nation as great as ours not attempting to direct, to 
 control, or to arbitrate, but with one heart and one 
 mind asking God in His mercy and goodness to show 
 a way where men can see none, whereby healing 
 peace may once more be vouchsafed to all. It is so 
 easy to stand to one side of a great situation, watch it, 
 criticize or praise it, but let it work itself out without 
 taking a part in it ! Here is an occasion of profoimd 
 significance : a nation praying, not for itself but for 
 others; humbling itself before God; urged to confess 
 its own unworthiness and shortcomings and not play 
 
54 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 the part of a Pharisee, thanking God that we are not 
 as other peoples now at strife; putting ourselves, 
 rather, in their place and confessing that we, like 
 them, need light and strength from above. 
 
 Let us make the most of such an occasion. I ear- 
 nestly hope that no able-bodied member of this 
 parish who can possibly do so, even if it should be at 
 the sacrifice of personal convenience, will fail as an 
 American citizen, and above all as a Christian, to do 
 what has been urged by the chief executive of the 
 country. Doubtless you scan the morning and even- 
 ing papers for tidings of the war. You eagerly fol- 
 low the fortunes of the belligerents, as, now this way, 
 now that, those battling lines sway forward and 
 back. I can think of nothing more profitless and 
 nothing more — I had almost said contemptible — 
 than to profess that our feelings are harrowed by the 
 accounts we read, and then, when an occasion as sig- 
 nificant as this Peace Sunday offers itself for our 
 active participation, to remain passive. This, surely, 
 is not to be. Realize what this Day of Prayer for 
 the Nations means. Stir up your brethren if that is 
 necessary. We are not at war, the Lord be praised! 
 The better, then, our opportunity and the dearer our 
 privilege to pray for the welfare of others. We are 
 not at war : but the word has gone forth to mobilize 
 
CAN PRAYERS FOR PEACE AVAIL? S5 
 
 our spiritual forces; to enlist the faith and the love 
 of the men and women, aye, and of the children of 
 this country; to hold these things not subconsciously, 
 but to project them as forces that must be reckoned 
 with and which will yet prove to be superior to siege 
 guns and rifles, dreadnoughts, mines, and aeroplanes. 
 
 Will such prayers avail? Of course they will 
 avail. When did any sincere prayer for a righteous 
 purpose not avail? Does this mean that after next 
 Sunday, when, let us hope, the 100,000,000 people 
 in this country have prayed together, we shall see 
 signs of a breaking up of the war? Does it mean 
 that one side or the other will gain some decisive bat- 
 tle and people will cry : "Behold ! Our prayers have 
 been heard: the end is at hand!" Oh, it is nothing 
 unintelligent like that ! 
 
 Prayer has been derided. 
 
 "Through all the world," declares a writer, "men 
 and women are invoking the aid of the God of Bat- 
 tle; priests and peoples of every nation are crying to 
 God that He is the Lord of Hosts and that they alone 
 are His chosen people; and to-day in every temple 
 throughout Christendom, prayer goes up that the 
 Prince of Peace may incline the scales of war. It 
 surely humbles those within the Churches, who have 
 been wont to overestimate the influence of religion 
 as ministered by them, now to realize how little influ- 
 
56 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 ence the Churches really had in averting or with- 
 standing this overthrow of their highest ideals and 
 sternest standards." 
 
 And here are other words to the same effect : 
 
 "It discloses how futile has been the summons and 
 dependence upon 'the Church' to stand out apart 
 from and against the national and economic system 
 of our times, as though its members were consciously 
 and organically apart from the life and spirit of their 
 age, or were not involved in the errors and sins of 
 their generation." 
 
 To some, this purpose to pray for peace, now that 
 the battle is on, is about as likely to succeed — to 
 quote another's words — as "the passing of resolutions 
 on the conservation of natural resources on the edge 
 of a prairie fire." 
 
 You surely see the mistake, the ghastly misap- 
 prehension in all this. The Churches by their pray- 
 ers next Sunday do not expect to silence the guns that 
 are dealing death and destruction. They do not ex- 
 pect that the commanders of armies will be moved to 
 give orders to the soldiers under them to lay aside 
 their arms. Why pray, then? 
 
 Why pray? Why, because, as another has ex- 
 pressed it, "never in the history of the Church or the 
 world have the sanity and stability of Jesus' attitude 
 
CAN PRAYERS FOR PEACE AVAIL? 57 
 
 against war and for peace, against self-seeking and 
 for human brotherhood, been more completely dem- 
 onstrated than by the logic of events, ground out 
 between the diplomatic premises and the terrible con- 
 clusions of this war." We are to pray for the reasser- 
 tion and the rehabilitation of the essential truths of 
 the Gospel, We are to pray, not that England, or 
 France, or Belgium, or Russia, or Servia, or Ger- 
 many, or Austria may win, nor even that they sud- 
 denly cease from fighting and patch up terms of 
 peace, but that through this terrible experience we 
 may as nations and as individuals, combatants and 
 non-combatants, statesmen and civilians, heads of 
 armies and loyal soldiers, — that one and all we may 
 have our minds and hearts opened as never before to 
 the necessity of loving God and man as the only 
 enduring basis of national security, happiness, and 
 prosperity. We are to pray that we, and the peoples 
 of other nations as well, may realize more deeply 
 than ever before that militarism, commercialism, or 
 even intellectual culture are not the bulwarks of a 
 nation's safety and should not be the objects of a 
 nation's ambitions. Our prayers are to be confes- 
 sions that as nations we have erred from the Lord's 
 ways, we have followed the devices of our own 
 hearts, and there is no health in us. We are to pray 
 
58 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 for forgiveness in our national shortcomings. We 
 are to acknowledge as a people that, trusting in our 
 own righteousness and intelligence, we are sure to 
 fail. We are to pray for the revival of a true and 
 living faith. We are to pray for a more thorough- 
 going application of the Golden Rule. We are to 
 pray that the Day-Spring from on high may visit us; 
 that this war may mean the casting out forever of 
 despotic, materialistic, selfish principles and ways, 
 and that a new and glorious day of righteousness and 
 peace may be ushered in. 
 
 To pray for these things earnestly and believingly 
 is, in a sense, to set these forces free in the world; to 
 give them actuality. It is to promote a way of think- 
 ing and feeling through which the Lord can act, as 
 He cannot act through guns and torpedoes which are 
 blowing men's bodies to pieces; helping them to "see 
 the things which belong to their peace before they be 
 hid from their eyes." 
 
 Can a true and lasting peace come in any other 
 way than through a rational acceptance of principles 
 which shall lead men to do justly, to love mercy, and 
 to walk humbly with their God? An enforced 
 peace, won only through the crushing out of one 
 force by another, would prove no more reasonable or 
 desirable than an "armed peace," the folly of which 
 
CAN PRAYERS FOR PEACE AVAIL? 59 
 
 stands revealed and its continuance doomed. It 
 would settle nothing. It would simply be a survival 
 by the strongest. All history teaches us that. Peace 
 must come through man's rational and willing ac- 
 ceptance of ideals and principles that make possible 
 the better course, the more righteous way. For, 
 peace is more than a mystical feeling. It cannot be 
 secured through a state merely of religious emotional- 
 ism. It cannot establish itself among men except as 
 they prepare for its coming through a true and rea- 
 sonable way of life. 
 
 Let me appeal, then, to a figure employed by St. 
 Luke's Gospel to describe the influence of the Lord's 
 coming, not alone in that supreme event of the In- 
 carnation, but at any time when the spirit of His 
 love and wisdom awakens grateful recognition — 
 the figure of the Day-Spring, the Sun-rising, the 
 dawn of a new and happy day. Far down, walled in 
 by mountain slopes, the valley lies. The people sit 
 in darkness. Death has come into the valley. All is 
 fear and gloom. Men know not what to do. How 
 can they stay? whither shall they go? The cold 
 dank air has numbed them. And then the day springs 
 from above. The sun arises with healing in his 
 wings. Far into the valley he flings his beams on all 
 who sleep, or moan, or wait. The light, the warmth 
 
6o THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 bring new life. Men take heart and cry : "The day- 
 spring from on high hath visited us, to give light to 
 them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, 
 to guide our feet in the way of peace !" They look 
 up in happy wonder at the ever-old, ever-new miracle 
 of light and love. It thrills them, it vivifies them, it 
 clears the vale of shadows, it uncovers ways of peace. 
 
 The Gospel takes this figure and it says : "It is true 
 that Christ your Lord came into the world. He rose 
 upon it as the Sun of Righteousness, coming when all 
 was dark, and there seemed to be neither room nor 
 chance for His advent; coming silently, but coming 
 with the peaceful, irresistible strength of the sun- 
 rise." So must He ever come. So comes He to the 
 life of an individual. So comes He to a people. And 
 only by so coming, by the diffusion of the light and 
 warmth of His creative and sustaining spirit, can 
 that element of peace, which the world finds to its 
 bitter cost it cannot give to itself — only so can the 
 true peace come. 
 
 The night has overtaken us once again. It has 
 closed in upon a day of tragic mistakes and failures. 
 Men sit in the darkness of their fears and disappoint- 
 ments, and in the shadow of the death of many a vain 
 ambition. We pray for peace. We pray for the 
 dawn of a new day. If men really desire it, and if 
 
CAN PRAYERS FOR PEACE AVAIL? 6i 
 
 they pray true; if they pray with believing minds 
 and sincere hearts for the light and love of Him by 
 whose spirit it is that the night passes and the day 
 comes, their prayers will avail. They will avail : 
 
 "Because of the tender mercy of our God, 
 Whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited 
 
 us, 
 'to shine upon them that sit in darkness and in the 
 
 shadow of death, 
 to guide our feet in the ivay of peace" 
 
THE PEACE OF CHRIST FOR 
 
 WHICH WE PRAY:— WHAT 
 
 IS IT? 
 
"Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you: 
 not as the world giveth, give I unto you." 
 
 S. John xiv, 27. 
 
III. THE PEACE OF CHRIST FOR WHICH 
 WE PRAY:— WHAT IS IT? 
 
 THIS is the great Peace Proclamation ! the most 
 wonderful, the most authoritative ever sent 
 forth into the world of men. To those who are 
 afar oflF and to those who are near; to those who are 
 enrolled under the banner of the Prince of Peace, 
 and to Aose who have not yet learned and owned the 
 sovereignty of His name, may this Declaration of 
 Infinite Love be brought home to-day to countless 
 thousands by Christ's ambassadors with new assur- 
 ance and power ! "My peace I give unto you." May 
 the spirit of love and wisdom within these words 
 reach, in some way, the souls of soldiers who feel 
 that they are doing right in fighting under the flag of 
 their country ! May it, in God's great mercy, be as 
 balm to sore hearts who are lying wounded on fields 
 of battle or in hospitals, and who, in their agony, are 
 
 6s 
 
66 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 thinking of home and their loved ones! May it 
 bring a power of assurance to the dying, aye, and to 
 those whose lot is harder than death : the defenceless, 
 the homeless, the fatherless, the widow, the people 
 who must endure privation and suffering, and who, 
 harmless and guiltless, must leave their homes, their 
 all in this world, and flee from the wrath, the indig- 
 nities, the wanton destruction that follow in the 
 train of war ! 
 
 "My peace I give unto you." Are there command- 
 ers of those armies fighting so desperately and with 
 such unbroken courage; are there statesmen on 
 whom so much of the responsibility for this awful 
 strife rests; are there rulers looking, it may be, with 
 dismay upon the ruin and desolation which all this 
 violent uprising of nation against nation and king- 
 dom against kingdom has brought upon the whole 
 world — can any of them, through the united prayers 
 of this nation on this great day consecrated to the 
 cause of Peace, be made susceptible to the spirit of 
 Him who said: "Peace I leave with you; My peace I 
 give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto 
 you"? 
 
 The Lord grant that it may be so ! In any case, I 
 can conceive of nothing finer than that a strong and 
 independent nation like ours, having no part in the 
 
THE PEACE OF CHRIST 67 
 
 actual struggle, should, out of love and sympathy 
 for fellow-men, unite and pray to our Father in 
 heaven that war may cease and that a true and last- 
 ing peace may be established. If any to-day are in- 
 different to so great a purpose, I pray the Lord that 
 He may shame them out of their spiritual lethargy ! 
 One of the judgment-hours is come upon Christen- 
 dom. Do we believe in Jesus Christ as the Redeemer 
 and Saviour of the world? and do we believe in 
 human fellowship because all men are the children of 
 God? Do we believe in the Gospel of Love which 
 Christ our Lord laid down His life to establish? And 
 do we believe — believe, my brethren, with all our 
 minds, and with all our souls, and with all our 
 strength — that He spake true when He announced 
 Himself to be the great Peace-giver? 
 
 If this is your faith — as I pray the Lord it is! — 
 think how wonderful and blessed is this declaration. 
 Of a truth, it summons Faith to the heights of belief. 
 We can think of a great personality as giving of his 
 wisdom. We can think of him as pouring out his 
 love to his fellows. We can think of Him as bestow- 
 ing unstintedly of his earthly possessions for the gen- 
 eral good. Great men try to inspire lesser men with 
 words of counsel; with courage if their hopes are 
 drooping; with inspiration by the simple, spon- 
 
68 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 taneous shining of their lives. But Peace ! What 
 wisest, what saintliest man thinks to say to his fel- 
 lows : "My peace I give unto you" ? 
 
 Peace ! When we think of it worthily, we think 
 of it as a condition of blessedness that is positive and 
 not negative. We associate it with great things : the 
 peace that follows storm when winds and waves have 
 sobbed themselves to rest; the peace of the day-dawn, 
 when the curtains of the night have been silently 
 drawn aside and the sun in his splendor and resistless 
 might comes to awaken men to the golden oppor- 
 tunities of a new day; the peace that comes to tired 
 brains and aching hearts of men and women night 
 after night, and enables them to forget their worries 
 and temptations while a power divine renews them 
 with strength; the peace of that last mysterious 
 sleep, which at the very end enfolds all souls alike,— 
 the evil not less than the good, the just and the un- 
 just, — enabling them to rest in undisturbed content, 
 with angels near; the peace which imparts to the soul 
 of sinner or saint who has shunned some evil as sin, 
 and done some deed of service from a genuine love 
 of doing good to others, a feeling of joy and security 
 and utter thankfulness impossible to put into words. 
 Peace ! the miracle of miracles ! What would we not 
 give to be able to bestow it upon loved ones and 
 
THE PEACE OF CHRIST 69 
 
 friends? What would we not give to receive it with- 
 in our own troubled souls? — that calm, that perfect 
 poise, that blessed strength that fortifies a man 
 against all sufferings, all dangers, all "assaults of the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil," and makes and keeps 
 him the man God intended him to be? 
 
 Whom can you think of as having the power di- 
 vine to bestow this supreme gift, save the One whose 
 name is on many lips to-day, and who rises before the 
 world's vision as its veritable "Prince of Peace"? 
 Why do we turn to Him in this way? Why do we 
 think that He can really help us, and that from Him, 
 as from no other, there is the power Divine which 
 can inspire and promote a condition of thinking and 
 feeling among men now hostile that will make it pos- 
 sible for them to be joined together in a righteous 
 peace? Why do we, feeling the futility of any 
 human intervention, even though it should be prof- 
 fered with the best of intentions by so great a nation 
 as ours, — why do we turn by hundreds of thousands 
 to-day to that One Divinely-human Being, who re- 
 vealed Himself to the world nineteen hundred years 
 ago, not as a general, nor as a statesman, but, su- 
 premely, as the Son of Man, who suffered Himself 
 to be nailed to a cross? Why, I ask once more, do 
 we turn to Him as our chief hope in this time of the 
 
70 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 world's sorest trial, and on bended knees pray that 
 He may grant us peace? 
 
 Oh, the wonder of it ! Or are we only shamming? 
 In our heart of hearts do we think there is nothing 
 in this attitude of our souls? No; it is not sham- 
 ming. I will not believe it is a religious pose. On 
 the contrary, it is the most significant, the most mag- 
 nificent assertion of faith that the world has seen. 
 This war, it has been declared, has brought the re- 
 ligion of Jesus Christ into eclipse. This is not true. 
 I venture to assert that this day is seeing a greater 
 outpouring of men and women who call themselves 
 Christians, and who have come thronging into their 
 Churches because in some way they dimly recognize 
 that the surest help is to come through the spirit of 
 our Redeemer and Saviour, than has ever been wit- 
 nessed before. The world has not forgotten the pic- 
 ture of Him walking the sea in the greatness of His 
 strength. Men have not forgotten the record which 
 declares that when He said, "Peace, be still!" the 
 winds and the waves ceased and there was a great 
 calm, and those who but a moment before had given 
 themselves up as lost exclaimed : "What manner of 
 man is this, that even the winds and the seas obey 
 Him?" It may outrun our power of intelligence to 
 understand how such a mighty transformation in 
 
THE PEACE OF CHRIST 71 
 
 nature could be wrought. All the more significant is 
 it that instinctively men take it to mean that in Him, 
 as in no other, is the power Divine that can prove 
 itself mightier than all the forces of evil even when 
 they rage. We do not forget that on the evening of 
 the resurrection, as He stood amid His frightened 
 disciples. He is declared to have breathed on them, 
 saying as He did so: "Receive ye the Holy Spirit"; 
 and that from the moment of that typical act, there 
 passed from His spirit into theirs a power Divine that 
 set all their doubts and fears at rest, that nerved 
 their souls and illumined their minds, sending them 
 forth from that closely-guarded room as fearless wit- 
 nesses and the spiritual teachers of the race. 
 
 Do not shrink from bringing your faith to this su- 
 preme test. Dare to ask : "What do we really believe 
 when we declare the Lord Christ to be the Prince of 
 Peace? What is His peace for which we pray to- 
 day? How does He give it?" 
 
 The Lord is the Prince of Peace — which is a beau- 
 tiful way of saying that He is the Giver of peace and 
 Peace itself — because He brought about in Himself 
 the perfect imion of the Divine, which He was essen- 
 tially, with the Human which He assumed by incar- 
 nation. Sunday after Sunday we declare in our pro- 
 fession of faith: 
 
72 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 "He glorified His Hiomanity, uniting it with the 
 Divinity of which it was begotten." 
 
 The words have a theological sound. Nothing is 
 farther from my purpose than to give the subject 
 uppermost in our minds to-day a theological turn. I 
 think of the words just quoted as stating a most vital 
 fact. Essentially — by which I mean, in His inmost 
 nature — the Lord Jesus was Divine. He was the 
 Lord God, come to seek and to save us from our sins. 
 Outwardly His nature was human, like yours and 
 mine, for it was born of woman. We all of us should 
 be able to see that between that Divine Self and that 
 Human Self there must at first have been a differ- 
 ence amounting to opposition. We should be able to 
 understand this, because we every one of us know 
 that we have an inner and an outer self, a higher and 
 a lower nature, which, almost from the first, are at 
 war with each other. We, who have come up out of 
 our childhood and youth, know that this difference 
 and this opposition, instead of growing less, seem to 
 become more pronounced. We may also know that 
 it is this opposition between what we believe and 
 love in our higher nature, and what we think and 
 desire in our lower nature, that keeps us in a state of 
 unrest, prevents us from being at peace with our- 
 selves, and deprives us of that perfect coordination 
 
THE PEACE OF CHRIST 73 
 
 and unification of our powers which would so greatly 
 increase the strength of our nature. "He united His 
 Divinity with His Humanity." 
 
 What our Lord loved and knew and felt as God, 
 He learned to love and know and feel in the nature 
 with which He was clothed, that is, as man. Divin- 
 ity and humanity, which seem to and do stand so far 
 apart, were brought into absolute union. What God 
 loves and thinks in Himself was fused, so to say, into 
 what He felt and thought as One who shared our lot 
 as men. What philosophers declare to be an impas- 
 sable chasm — the difference between the Infinite and 
 the finite, between God and man — He bridged. He 
 made them at-one. Nothing in His bodily nature 
 stood in the least opposition to what He thought and 
 felt in His Divine nature. The result of that unity 
 of His Divinely-human life is what our Lord speaks 
 of as His peace. That peace, as we all must see, is 
 power. It is more than gentleness, more than sweet- 
 ness. It is positive, not negative. It is power result- 
 ing from this fusing into oneness of what is Divine 
 with what is truly human. No one else has it in that 
 same way or in like degree. That is why we instinc- 
 tively own Him as the Prince of Peace. That is why 
 He, and He alone, is the great Peace-giver. "My 
 peace I give unto you." It is the spirit of His won- 
 
74 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 drous life and nature, so high, so transcendent, and 
 yet in such immediate and sympathetic touch with 
 ours. 
 
 Oh, grasp this stupendous truth of the Divinely- 
 human Lord, as, on this day, we pray that the spirit 
 of peace may enter the world with new power! 
 Grasp it and prize it ! Think what He really means 
 when He says: "My peace I give unto you." Not in 
 boastfulness or pride, surely, does He declare : "not 
 as the world giveth, give I unto you." He would 
 have us know and revere the uniqueness of the gift 
 which the spirit of life from Him assures us. 
 
 The world is so clumsy and it is so misguided in 
 its efforts to produce peace ! Its eyes are set on our 
 natural, earthly conditions. If these are violently 
 disturbed it tries to smooth them out. If they be- 
 come twisted it tries to disentangle them. Some- 
 times it tries to secure peace by force. Sometimes it 
 draws up agreements and makes treaties, which, alas! 
 are too readily forgotten or set aside under provoca- 
 tion. The natural man thinks he is at peace when his 
 natural ambitions are gratified, when his life moves 
 smoothly and prosperously, when he feels that he has 
 all that he needs for the present and for the coming 
 years, not realizing what a little thing— a sickness, a 
 reverse, some hostile act from friend or foe— may 
 
THE PEACE OF CHRIST 75 
 
 throw all this supposed peaceful condition into hope- 
 less confusion. Nor can he hide it from himself for 
 long that, although he counts himself happy, there is 
 something deep within that is not satisfied. If his 
 conscience is not clear, if his thoughts are not true, if 
 his feelings are not pure, if there is a restlessness of 
 the spirit because it is not fed and because it has not 
 been made a partner in living, there is no real, no 
 established peace. Misgivings arise, unsatisfied 
 longings spring up, and they increase. The world 
 cries: "I have given you the peace you asked for. 
 You have what many think would make them happy 
 for life. Be content." But this is not real peace, 
 and the man comes to know it. Sometimes he comes 
 to know it when it seems to be too late. 
 
 Take to heart, then, the great yet simple words of 
 the Peace-giver : "My peace I give unto you : not as 
 the world giveth, give I unto you." His peace is so 
 different! It comes through such a different way! 
 Its purpose is so different: not to accumulate "things" 
 we call blessings, but to bring about a true unity of 
 life, the higher and the lower, the angel in the man 
 and the human in him, so that they shall act to- 
 gether, mutually respecting each other, brought into 
 oneness, so that whether a man be poor or rich, yet he 
 has this blessing of a nature that is at peace with it- 
 
76 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 self and with God. And this means power. It means 
 a great and deep content. The world did not give it: 
 —it has nothing of that kind to give. It is from 
 within. It is from the Lord God. 
 
 How does He give it? Recall once more that 
 scene on the night of the resurrection. The risen 
 Lord stood there in the midst of His disciples. He 
 quieted their fears, saying, "Peace be unto you!" 
 Was it not a sign of how they were to obtain that 
 peace that He breathed on them, saying, as He did 
 so : "Receive ye the Holy Spirit" ? Life of His life; 
 spirit of His spirit ! So the great power comes which 
 produces peace. 
 
 For this we pray to-day. How great is this act of 
 national devotion, how high the faith, if all who, in 
 compliance with the President's proclamation, have 
 gathered together in their Churches to pray for peace 
 have lifted up their souls to Jesus Christ, believing 
 and praying that through the spirit of life which 
 emanates from Him, as from no other, the Divinely- 
 human power of His love and wisdom will enter the 
 souls of all who are open to receive it, and make it 
 possible for them not only to desire but to see the 
 way to secure a true and lasting peace ! For the sake 
 of all who are fighting; for the sake of all who lie 
 wounded and all who are in misery; for the sake of 
 
THE PEACE OF CHRIST 77 
 
 those in authority and on whom so much of the re- 
 sponsibility of war rests; for the sake of our common 
 humanity which the spirit of our Lord would bind 
 together into a great, rejoicing brotherhood on the 
 earth, let us pray with all our souls that Christ's 
 promise of peace may indeed be fulfilled. 
 
 "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto 
 you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you." 
 
WHY ARE WARS PERMITTED? 
 
"Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee: 
 The residue of wrath shalt Thou restrain." 
 
 Psalm Ixxvi, iO, 
 
IV. WHY ARE WARS PERMITTED? 
 
 FOR years this little verse has admonished me. 
 When events and circumstances have been dark, 
 so that the ways of the Divine Providence have 
 seemed inexplicable, it has bade me remember a prin- 
 ciple, which should never for a moment have passed 
 out of mind. What principle? This: God never 
 ordains, never sends-an evil. He only permits it to 
 the extent that it can subserve some use. Anything 
 less, or anything more than this. He does not allow 
 to come to pass. The residue of evil in any form, 
 natural or spiritual, individual or collective, which 
 cannot be made to serve any useful purpose what- 
 soever — that is restrained; it is divinely overruled 
 or suppressed. Only that which, in the end, can lead 
 to some good, is allowed to gain actuality in the 
 world. 
 
 "The wrath of man shall praise Thee : 
 The residue of wrath shalt Thou restrain." 
 
 8i 
 
82 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 This is the truth which I would urge upon you 
 to-day, in the face of conditions so dreadful that they 
 fairly stagger us. 
 
 During the last days of July, when rumors of war 
 multiplied and became increasingly ominous, and 
 the mobilization of armies was actually begun, I, 
 with others, could not bring myself to believe that 
 a general war, such as was being predicted, could 
 really break forth. True, the mines Were laid, as 
 every one was being warned. It needed but a spark 
 to ignite them. If this should happen, every one was 
 forewarned how terrific the explosion would be. And 
 still it seemed as if there must be some intervention 
 that would make this impossible, and that at the last 
 moment some word would be spoken, some incident 
 would occur, which would save us from the dread 
 catastrophe. It seemed as if the nations at issue 
 were too far advanced in civilization, and as if there 
 was too much enlightenment, too much altruism to 
 make a swift, determined recourse to arms possible. 
 War! bloody, relentless, and on a scale never ap- 
 proached before — surely, it seemed as if we had ad- 
 vanced too far in this new age, which we fondly 
 think and speak of as "the crown of all the ages," 
 for such a thing to really be ; and that the prediction 
 of armed strife among the leading Christian nations 
 
WHY ARE WARS PERMITTED? 83 
 
 of Europe would prove to be no more than the cry of 
 alarmists. 
 
 Then the storm broke. Then the mighty armies 
 rushed at each other. Soon the deadliness of "mod- 
 ern warfare" stood revealed. Man's inventiveness, 
 his training, his greater resourcefulness — all con- 
 tributed to make war not more merciful but more 
 frightful than ever. Where spears and arrows and 
 "flint-locks," in fightings which we look back upon 
 as primitive, claimed their hundreds, Maxim and 
 Krupp guns, shrapnel and bombs, claimed their thou- 
 sands and tens of thousands. War had come with 
 all its aboriginal fury, its lust for blood, its cruelties, 
 its pillage and outrage, its sufferings, worse, if any- 
 thing, than were ever known before. War had come ! 
 and it was soon seen that men who had been good, 
 peaceful citizens, and who belonged to nations prid- 
 ing themselves on their industrial progress and cul- 
 ture, could be not simply as dauntless in danger, as 
 stoical amid hardships, but could also be as fierce 
 in charges and hand-to-hand fighting as warriors of a 
 more primitive type. And then was seen that strange 
 anomaly, which the world has witnessed again and 
 again : the commanders of armies confidently claim- 
 ing the special aid of the Lord of hosts to fight for 
 
84 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 their side, each of them asking Him to help them 
 vanquish the other ! 
 
 It seemed as if all this must be the signal for a 
 fresh outbreak of infidelity, and as if there would be 
 many who would cry out with the mockers of all 
 ages, "Aha, aha, our eye hath seen it!" But, the 
 Lord be praised ! this has not been the case. It may 
 be that this catastrophe is too stupendous. It may 
 be that men are at heart more anxious to believe than 
 we think. Whatever the reason, it certainly is true 
 that there has been a spontaneous turning towards 
 Religion during these past weeks such as has not been 
 witnessed in a long time. It is the testimony of many 
 a minister and priest in Europe, that men who have 
 not sought the Church for counsel or blessing for 
 years have come to its services and knelt in the Com- 
 munion before going forth to offer their lives for 
 their country. In this time of great bitterness, when 
 the hearts of so many are riven in seeing their loved 
 ones going to the front, there is no sign that God is 
 being mocked; but, rather, that He is being turned 
 to as the one supreme Refuge. 
 
 The experience of our own nation is significant. 
 We are far from the zone of war. A large part of our 
 citizenship is drawn from the very nationalities that 
 
WHY ARE WARS PERMITTED? 85 
 
 are at strife. And yet I doubt if there has ever been 
 so general and so spontaneous an outpouring of peo- 
 ple of all classes and creeds as was witnessed last 
 Sunday in answer to the President's proclamation 
 appointing a day of prayer for the nations. 
 
 Men's attitude towards the war is reassuringly 
 reasonable. They are not saying: "Why, if there be 
 an infinite God, did He not prevent this war? Why, 
 if He loves His people, does He allow such terrible 
 suffering? If we are appalled by the horrors of war, 
 if we sicken at the tales of suffering, why does He 
 stand mutely by?" There has been very little mock- 
 ing of this kind. Something is helping men to see 
 and to say that anything so cataclysmic as this must 
 be permitted for some vast ultimate good. The con- 
 science of the nations seems to be telling them that 
 something is fundamentally wrong, and has been 
 wrong for some time, in our so-called modern life; 
 and that this terrible experience may be the way — 
 the hard, costly way — of renouncing errors and evils 
 that were blinding and poisoning us, and show us 
 how to reach entirely new regions of righteousness 
 and power. 
 
 If this interpretation of the present attitude is 
 right, or reasonably so, it may well reassure us. It 
 
86 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 means the modern man's recognition of the truth 
 stated so ruggedly in this ancient Psalm : 
 
 "The wrath of man shall praise Thee." 
 
 The wrath of man! His self-will] his hot-head- 
 edness ; his unscrupulousness in considering the rights 
 of others so long as he has his own way; his utter 
 imcharitableness when once his blood is up and he is 
 bound, by fair means or by foul, to gain his advan- 
 tage — is it possible that the Divine Providence can 
 make any good use of this? Is it possible that it can 
 hold its own holy indignation in restraint and not 
 blot the whole hateful thing out of existence because 
 the Lord in His omniscience sees that by this very 
 means the man may learn a lesson of wisdom which 
 could not be brought home to him in any other way? 
 
 This is a wonderful principle if it be true. And 
 that it is true, every man who reads history with 
 any understanding must see. Man's history in this 
 world is tragic: dynasties rising and falling; racial 
 antipathies resulting in bloodiest wars; usurpations, 
 conquests which could not in themselves be just in 
 the eyes of a righteous God; civilizations which once 
 were so brilliant and influential passing into the 
 shade as others hurled them from their place or tram- 
 
WHY ARE WARS PERMITTED? 87 
 
 pled them in the dust. And yet, in spite of all these 
 manifestations of man's selfish wrath, who does not 
 know that a great advance has in some mysterious 
 way been maintained? What but a power greater 
 than man's, bringing good out of evil when he least 
 ■suspected or intended it, could have accomplished 
 this? 
 
 The work wrought by man in his ambition and 
 self-love, the depredations he has committed and the 
 desolations he has caused throughout the earth — 
 even these have been so ordered and have been at- 
 tended by after-ministries so wonderful that they 
 have all been made to serve a use. They have been 
 — to recall some of the stem figures of the Scriptures 
 — as hammer and anvil, the smelter's fire, the axe 
 laid at the root of the trees, the plowshare, the win- 
 nowing shovel, crushing, purging, condemning, un- 
 earthing, separating what is false and evil when 
 gentler and more righteous forces did not avail. 
 
 "The wrath of man shall praise Thee : 
 The residue of wrath shalt Thou restrain." 
 
 Here, then, is a general answer to the question: 
 Why are wars permitted? When they break forth, 
 it is not that God is helpless or baffled. Much less 
 
88 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 does it mean that He is indifferent. May we not 
 confidently declare, rather, that all the infinite re- 
 sourcefulness of His government must be ceaselessly 
 active, inspiring angels who are His messengers, and 
 all good men and women who are His ministering 
 spirits here on the earth, to deeds of self-sacrificing 
 love which shall greatly re-enforce truth and good- 
 ness in the world and enable them to survive the 
 shock of battle and come out stronger than before? 
 
 We ought to try to understand this. The words 
 of great men are being freely quoted in condemna- 
 tion of war. The terse, biting characterization of it 
 by that dauntless fighter. General Sherman; the piti- 
 less scorn of it by that furious old champion, Car- 
 lyle — we feel the righteousness of their burning 
 wrath. The words of Abraham Lincoln, when his 
 soul was bowed under the weight of responsibility, 
 sound more prophet-like than ever: 
 
 "Fondly do we hope, fervently do wl pray, that 
 this scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if 
 God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled 
 by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of 
 unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop 
 of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by an- 
 other drawn with the sword, as was said three 
 thousand years ago, so still it must be said: 'The 
 
WHY ARE WARS PERMITTED? 89 
 
 judgments of the Lord are true and righteous alto- 
 gether.' "* 
 
 Let our minds be fortified by the highest truths in 
 such times as these. For this reason I counsel you 
 to weigh well what Swedenborg, as one of the great 
 minds of the world, and one whom we have every 
 reason for regarding as illuminated, enabling him to 
 see into the spiritual causes of things, was led to 
 write about wars. I find here great underlying prin- 
 ciples which seem self-evidently true. 
 
 1. Wars, small or great, because they involve the 
 killing and maiming of man by man, because, too, 
 they involve the destruction of property, plundering, 
 cruelties, and other enormities, are not from the Di- 
 vine Providence. Every one of these things is in 
 itself evil and diametrically opposed to the prin- 
 ciples of justice and charity which the Lord has 
 ordained. God, therefore, does not and cannot bring 
 about war. If it were otherwise. He would be con- 
 tradicting Himself. He does not and cannot give 
 the signal for war to begin. That would be equiva- 
 lent to telling men to set aside almost every prin- 
 ciple that He has taught them. It would be bidding 
 the men of one army to regard the men of an oppos- 
 ing army not as brothers but as aliens and enemies. 
 
 '^Second Inaugural Address. 
 
go THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 Instead of saying, as He has said, "Love your ene- 
 mies," He would be saying : "Go out and shoot them; 
 bayonet them; maim them; destroy their property; 
 pillage; steal and burn; create panic and terror 
 wherever you go." These, alas, are inevitably the 
 conditions and modes of war. When they come to 
 pass, it simply cannot be that God has ordained 
 them. They do not exist from the Divine Provi- 
 dence. 
 
 2. And yet wars have to be permitted. Why? 
 
 (a) 1'he causes of war are always spiritual. We 
 search for and we find what seem to be the immediate 
 provocations. And upon these we lay full stress and 
 blame. But the Seer of the North was surely right 
 when he pointed out that within these more obvious 
 causes there burn in individuals and in races the twin 
 lusts of dominion and of possession. Man, poten- 
 tially, "is a little hell" It takes a war, perhaps, 
 which transforms ordinarily peace-loving men into 
 wild-eyed, howling, cruel fighters intent on dealing 
 death and destruction, to verify such a statement. 
 There are hateful, fiendish elements latent within us 
 all. In times of peace they are, so to say, caged. The 
 ordinary conventions of society keep them within 
 bounds. We are hardly aware of them ourselves. 
 
WHY ARE WARS PERMITTED? 91 
 
 War lets them loose like wild animals from their 
 cages. 
 
 (b) War, then, enables evils to come forth, and 
 show themselves. When they do this they can be 
 recognized and cast out. For that reason they are 
 permitted. Like the devil-legion at Gadara, they 
 work their own destruction. Evil is like— in fact, it 
 is — a disease. If it be hidden, if it be unsuspected, 
 it carries on its secret ravages so far that assistance 
 may come too late. It is like a hidden fire that 
 slowly spreads and chars everything in its way, 
 where, if it had but broken into flame, it would have 
 been seen and quenched. Who would have believed 
 it possible that twentieth-century men were capable 
 of the enormities which have been committed? Is it 
 not well, may it not be absolutely necessary, that 
 pride in self, which is one of the most marked charac- 
 teristics of the men and the nations of to-day, should 
 be brought to view, so that we may all take to heart 
 as we have not done that fundamental law of Jesus 
 Christ: "He that exalteth himself shall be abased; 
 and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted" ? 
 
 All the world knew that there were national rival- 
 ries; but who would have believed that the love to be 
 supreme and the lust of possession were such a con- 
 suming fire within the breasts of those who brought 
 
92 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 on and declared war? If these evil elements exist, 
 the only chance of being purged of them is to let them 
 come forth. Let men see how deadly they are and 
 thus come to hate them. For it is with nations as 
 with individuals : "none can be drawn from their hell 
 by the Lord, unless they see that they are there, and 
 wish to be led out." Wars, therefore, are permitted. 
 And being permitted, "they are not repressed by the 
 Lord . . . neither in the beginning, nor in their 
 progress, but only at the end, when the power of one 
 or the other has become so reduced that he is in dan- 
 ger of destruction." These last words which I have 
 quoted are as a searchlight on that "peace at any 
 price" principle which true peace-lovers to-day are 
 condemning, and justify them in believing that cer- 
 tain elemental evils which are becoming more and 
 more clearly unmasked must be brought to an end 
 and not merely suppressed. 
 
 3. And then there is the principle of our human 
 freedom. I refer now to the freedom which God 
 ordains, by which we are allowed to feel ourselves 
 to be men with the power and the right to act as of 
 ourselves. We derive our life from Him; we could 
 do nothing apart from Him; and yet this fundamen- 
 tal fact of bur being is carefully guarded, even from 
 our own consciousness, lest it should deprive us of all 
 
WHY ARE WARS PERMITTED? 93 
 
 apparent initiative in what we will and do, destroy- 
 ing all zest and all sense of responsibility, and re- 
 ducing us to little more than machines. We cannot 
 even conceive what life would be if we were made 
 to feel that our wills are not our own, that we were 
 being shadowed by the Almighty in such a way that 
 our acts were acts of necessity, and that we dared not 
 attempt to act according to the desires of our nature. 
 The world would be no better than a prison yard. 
 Life would be without interest and without meaning. 
 There could be no progress. The most wonderful 
 thing about our existence is this God-given freedom 
 to use the life which is bestowed upon us momen- 
 tarily and unconsciously in whatever way we choose. 
 Not even the horrors of war will tempt the Lord God 
 to violate this right to be ourselves with which He 
 has endowed us; and when men collectively deter- 
 mine upon war, God does not deprive them of the 
 power to carry out so dreadful a purpose. 
 
 But He does not forsake men when they rise up 
 and fight. He does not simply let them go on killing 
 each other, doing nothing to alleviate the horrors of 
 war. "He maketh the wrath of man to praise Him." 
 After everything has been said against war that can 
 and should be said, we may wonder all the more at 
 the good which also manifests itself at such a time. 
 
94 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 A war of aggression, undertaken from lust of con- 
 quest or hatred, is always evil; but a war of defense 
 is honorable. 
 
 Again, although wars are in themselves evil and 
 not from the Divine Providence, yet we are not to 
 think lightly of the quality of patriotism, nor meanly 
 of the soldier who fights for his country. The same 
 enlightened teacher who has disclosed the spiritual 
 horrors of war, was moved to inscribe these noble 
 lines : 
 
 "That every man is bound to love his country, not 
 as he loves himself, but in preference to himself, is a 
 law inscribed on the human heart; from which has 
 come the well-known principle, whict every true man 
 endorses, that if the country is threatened with ruin 
 from an enemy or any other source, it is noble to die 
 for it, and it is glorious for a soldier to shed his blood 
 for it." ^ 
 
 Wars are evil; but war being declared, it surely 
 is not evil for a man to be willing to give himself, 
 leaving home and friends, facing hardship, suffering, 
 perhaps death itself, for the sake of his country. It 
 was the Prince of Peace who declared : "Greater love 
 hath no one than this, that one lay down his life for 
 his friends." 
 
 ^Swedenborg's True Christian Religion, No. 414. 
 
WHY ARE WARS PERMITTED? 95 
 
 We all admire bravery and self-sacrificing devo- 
 tion of this kind. He who would speak meanly or 
 patronizingly of it puts himself under suspicion of 
 not being a true man. The elements of courage, en- 
 durance, devotion in the soldier are elements of 
 power. They express on the physical plane those 
 moral virtues in which men show themselves fearless, 
 determined, high-minded in coping with temptations 
 and evils. For that reason the Bible exalts the func- 
 tion of the soldier. God Himself is revealed as the 
 Lord of Hosts, and the warrior who battles for the 
 right is moved to cry: "Blessed be the Lord, who 
 teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight !" 
 
 In times of war, we may feel sure that the Lord 
 maketh the wrath of man to praise Him by the stir- 
 ring up of some of the better elements in our nature. 
 Do you remember "The Volunteers of Death"? 
 Soon after the war broke out in Europe, a regiment 
 was formed in Belgium known as "The Volunteers 
 of Death." It was composed of wealthy young men 
 who each declared that, having been of no particular 
 use in the world thus far, they now desired to be 
 exposed to the greatest dangers. 
 
 In valor of this kind is there not a carrying out 
 3f the law: "Surely the wrath of man shall praise 
 Thee" ? Have we not a right to believe that already 
 
96 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 this terrible war is making the merely idle, pleasure- 
 hunting, useless life seem more ignoble than ever 
 before? And the great tide of sympathy that is ris- 
 ing everywhere to its high-water mark — surely that 
 is not going to leave humanity quite as selfish and 
 worldly as it has been? Are we not going to look 
 upon life and our human relations with clearer eyes? 
 Are we not going to enter into the duties of life with 
 more unselfish wills? We pray God for the day 
 when a righteous peace shall be established ; for wars 
 in themselves are a terrible evil, and they are not 
 from the Divine Providence. But blessed be God, 
 
 ""the wrath of man shall praise 'thee: 
 'the residue of wrath shall thou restrain." 
 
THE AXE LAID AT THE ROOT 
 
 OF THE TREES — FIXING 
 
 THE RESPONSIBILITY 
 
"Even now the axe lieth at the root of the trees; 
 every tree, therefore, that hringeth not forth good 
 fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire." 
 
 S. Matt. Hi. 10. 
 
V. THE AXE LAID AT THE ROOT OF THE 
 TREES-FIXING THE RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 SOLEMN judgment words ! Stern figure ! At the 
 master's command the trees are to be judged. 
 No superficial investigation will answer; no easy- 
 going treatment will do. The mere lopping off of 
 a limb here and there; the stirring up of the ground; 
 a little more fertilization — such measures will not 
 suffice. A point has been reached where something 
 more radical is needed. Every tree that bringeth not 
 forth good fruit must be hewn down and cast into 
 the fire. As a sign that this is to be done, the axe is 
 laid at the root of the trees. 
 
 It was with a figure as bold as this that John the 
 Baptist was commissioned to usher in the Christian 
 Religion. Scribes, Pharisees, publicans, soldiers, the 
 crowd — all were told to face the fact that a crisis had 
 been reached. Judaism could not go on as it was. 
 The world could not keep on in its course. False and 
 useless principles had grown up. They must be 
 
 99 
 
loo THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 brought to an end; for the kingdom of heaven was 
 at hand. A better order of things was divinely 
 planned, and all that hindered it must be removed. 
 
 I pass at once from those days of the First Advent 
 to this present time, when, as we believe, a new 
 Christian era is being inaugurated. We feel instinc- 
 tively that we are facing a great crisis, the outcome 
 of which is to have a marked effect upon the entire 
 world. Apparently this great struggle, before which 
 we stand aghast, is to determine the status of the 
 leading nations of Europe. International rivalries, 
 broken treaties, racial antipathies — these are to have 
 a settlement. But the conviction deepens that some- 
 thing more vital is involved. The fact that the na- 
 tions now at war are, with a single exception, pro- 
 fessedly Christian,^ is significant. The vastness of 
 the struggle, the desperateness with which it is being 
 carried on, the instinctive feeling that the welfare of 
 the entire world is involved in it, — these considera- 
 tions are resulting in the conviction that in some way 
 this is a time of judgment; The axe is laid at the 
 root of the trees. The quality of our so-called mod- 
 ern civilization is being explored. The principles by 
 which men live are being tested. Outwardly this 
 war is not a religious war; but the sincerity of men's 
 religious professions is being searched. 
 
 * This was written early in October. 
 
FIXING THE RESPONSIBILITY loi 
 
 When the war began we were all intent on under- 
 standing what had provoked so mighty a conflict. 
 Who or what was responsible? We could, with some 
 degree of accuracy, trace the successive steps, al- 
 though the question of right and wrong was not 
 always clear. The quarrel between Austria and Ser- 
 via; between Russia and Austria* between Germany 
 and Russia, France and England, and (tragedy of 
 tragedies!) the invasion of Belgium — we could see 
 how these national differences and antagonisms, with 
 their charges and counter-charges, demands and 
 counter-demands, linked themselves up into a chain 
 of fateful consequences. 
 
 Nearly every one felt, at first, that the questions 
 at issue were not beyond the possibility of arbitration. 
 Was it not tragic that the most gigantic of all wars 
 should be begun at the very time when the Church 
 Peace Conference at Constance, Germany, was in the 
 act of convening? It had been called and planned 
 long before war was thought of as a probability. It 
 had been assured of a welcome by the ruler of the 
 German Empire. He had personally advised the 
 German delegates to attend; and only a few days 
 before he had intimated that a message from that 
 body would be welcomed. The Conference assembled 
 on Sunday morning, August second. It adjourned 
 
102 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 that evening to continue at London because word had 
 come that the last train out of Germany would leave 
 the next morning. Twelve nations, including our 
 own, had prospective delegates. All did not reach the 
 place of meeting, some being prevented by railroad 
 "tie-ups," some through their arrest and detention. 
 But at the very moment when armies were being mo- 
 bilized, this group of earnest. Christian, peace-loving 
 men, in the midst of their distress and danger, sent 
 forth this memorial to the rulers of Europe and the 
 President of the United States : 
 
 "The Conference of members of Christian 
 Churches, representing twelve countries and thirty 
 confessions, assembled at Constance to promote 
 friendly relations between nations, solemnly appeals 
 to Christian rulers to avert a war between millions 
 of men amongst whom friendship and common inter- 
 ests have been steadily growing, and thereby to save 
 from disaster Christian civilization and assert the 
 power of the Christian spirit in human affairs." 
 
 The nations represented were Great Britain (in- 
 cluding Canada), France, Germany, Holland, Den- 
 mark, Sweden, Norway, Bulgaria, and the United 
 States. Thirty of the fifty-five delegates who started 
 out for the Conference were able to reach it. It was, 
 indeed, as one of its members has said, "an occasion 
 
FIXING THE RESPONSIBILITY 103 
 
 not so much for the discussion of programs as for 
 sober thought and earnest prayer." The storm had 
 broken so suddenly ! The memorial was passed. The 
 Conference adjourned to meet in London, which, it 
 was confidently expected, would be in neutral terri- 
 tory. These Christian ambassadors of peace hastened 
 on their way. Through Alsace and Lorraine they 
 sped, "passing between rows of bayonets by day, 
 witnessing the instant shooting of hesitant conscripts 
 on the station platforms," their passage at night 
 being "in the lurid glare of searchlights sweeping the 
 heavens for hostile air-ships"; seeing "the sad faces 
 of men and women heavy of heart," and, worse still, 
 hearing "the roistering of those who, deceived by 
 autocracy, under a false sense of patriotism, were 
 ready to shoot their brothers of the day before with- 
 out cause or thought of cause." * 
 
 But the war-spirit travelled faster than the dele- 
 gates. When they assembled in the Westminster 
 Palace Hotel, London, August fifth, England was 
 arming for war against the nation undeif whose pro- 
 tection they had met three days before. The general 
 feeling was that "the old political order had broken 
 
 ^From an account by Charles S. Macfarland, Ph.D., 
 D.D., Secretary of the Federal Council of the Churches of 
 Christ in America. 
 
104 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 down, and that a new order must arise." Instead of 
 panic or pessimism, a report was unanimously ap- 
 proved which bravely declared that "the immediate 
 events confirmed their Christian idealism, showed 
 brute force to be as unintelligent and inefficient as 
 it is unchristian, bore witness to the reluctance of the 
 peoples summoned to war, and that the Churches 
 must undertake the work of undeceiving them." 
 
 This last we must do; but surely we must do 
 something more. The words of the historian Lessing 
 come to mind : 
 
 "The Christian religion has been tried for eighteen 
 centuries : the Religion of Jesus Christ remains to be 
 tried." 
 
 Something has been blocking the way to the full 
 acceptance — mind, heart, and life — of the truths of 
 eternal life as they came in all their pristine clear- 
 ness and warmth from the lips of Jesus Christ. 
 They are so spiritual! They are so searching! 
 They are so vital! And yet, something has been 
 making it increasingly difficult for the man of 
 to-day, much as he exalts them, to really incorporate 
 them into his life and make them the ruling convic- 
 tions of his soul. He likes to think he believes them. 
 He is rarely heard speaking in dishonor of the Son of 
 Man. And yet something is causing him, almost in 
 
FIXING THE RESPONSIBILITY 105 
 
 spite of himself, to take a questioning attitude to- 
 wards some of the very truths which Christ, whom 
 he honors, taught. 
 
 Christ bade men ground their faith in the Sacred 
 Scriptures. Every jot and tittle, He declared, has 
 an enduring value. Those sacred books, beginning at 
 Moses and continuing throughout the prophets and 
 the Psalms, testify of Him. They do this in no un- 
 certain way. Their testimony of Him is the spirit 
 of prophecy. And this is the burden of this hidden 
 evangel : Jesus the Christ is the fulfilment of proph- 
 ecy. He is the incarnation of Grod, who bowed the 
 heavens and came down to be man's Redeemer and 
 Saviour, He is the Word made flesh. He is the liv- 
 ing Bread come down from heaven to give life unto 
 the world. He is as essential to men's souls as food 
 is to their bodies. Without Him they can do noth- 
 ing. 
 
 The Lord Jesus Christ is still exalted: but some- 
 thing has been making it more and more difficult for 
 men to accept Him in the plenitude of His Divinity. 
 Something has raised the question in their hearts as 
 to whether His teachings may not be too spiritual; 
 whether, in these stirring, stressful times, men can 
 be born from above, as He declared they must be, 
 and become as teachable as a child, and whether 
 
io6 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 individuals and nations can really live by the Golden 
 Rule. 
 
 The Churches, conscious of the inadequacy of 
 the theological explanations which they had to 
 offer, have been temporizing. They have allowed 
 a purely scholastic criticism to drive them from their 
 original strongholds of faith. Surrendering these, 
 they have fallen back more and more upon external 
 devices for holding and recruiting their membership.. 
 Something has caused men to take a compromising 
 and a patronizing attitude towards the Christian 
 Religion. They do not wish to see it pass away; 
 and yet many only half believe in it. With their lips 
 they praise many things about it; but when it comes 
 to an out-and-out acceptance of its fundamental and 
 originating truths, as that the Lord Jesus is not sim- 
 ply an Exemplar but is man's Redeemer and Saviour, 
 and that it is from Him in His Divine and Glorified 
 Humanity that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the 
 Infinite God, goes forth to illumine, to strengthen, 
 and to bless — when, I say, it comes to an out-and-out 
 belief in this, there is a strange but obvious shririking. 
 
 What has caused this, and what relation does it 
 bear to the present dreadful situation? 
 
 I will state my belief in a very few words. I be- 
 lieve that along with our undoubted advance in 
 
FIXING THE RESPONSIBILITY 107 
 
 knowledge and in natural efficiency there has sprung 
 up a pride in our supposed self-derived intelligence, 
 which, more than anything else that can be named, 
 has had a blighting effect upon man's spiritual pow- 
 ers. The advance in natural knowledge has been 
 great. It has resulted in a power of efficiency that is 
 astounding. Business, industries of every kind, the 
 arts and crafts, religion itself — all these have been 
 brought under the spell of the modem man's con- 
 fidence in his newly-acquired natural intelligence. 
 The typical twentieth-century man does not make 
 war upon religion; he is amiably tolerant towards it. 
 It does not grip his soul. It does not shape his con- 
 victions. It does not inspire his motives. It is 
 looked upon as something which, for some, probably 
 exercises a salutary influence, and is a good thing to 
 have. 
 
 Let me come straight to the point. If any one 
 should ask, "Why is Lessing's judgment true; why, 
 after the Christian Religion has been on trial for 
 nineteen centuries, do we feel that we have a right to 
 claim that the Religion of Christ is yet to be tried^" 
 I would answer without hesitation: Because man, 
 through pride of intelligence and trust in self, has 
 made it possible for him to subject the Christian 
 Religion to his opinions and ambitions, instead of 
 
io8 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 being subject unto it. This intellectual pride— con- 
 fident, aggressive — has seriously injured in him that 
 "afBrmative principle" which, we are taught, is one 
 of the most precious qualities in a man's life, since it 
 renders him more susceptible to heavenly influences, 
 makes him more ready to believe than to doubt, and 
 helps him to submit himself to the divine guidance. 
 It has undermined the reality of religion, robbing it 
 of that element of authority which it ought to exer- 
 cise. As a result, instead of being actively opposed 
 to it, many men to-day regard it and treat it with a 
 patronizing tolerance which is many times worse. It 
 is ignored. Figuratively speaking, men may take off 
 their hats to it who would not think for a moment of 
 submitting themselves to its spiritual demands. The 
 Church is often accused of having lost its hold upon 
 the people, and the Churches in their distress invent 
 all manner of ways to regain their influence. It is 
 time the statement was turned about. Leaving out 
 the question of affiliation with a religious or ecclesias- 
 tical organization, the question might fairly be asked 
 of many a man : "Why is not the Religion of Jesus 
 Christ a more real thing with you? Why do you 
 treat it with this lazy indifference? Why do you 
 speak patronizingly of it, or ignore it? Why has it 
 not called you to its standard with as strong a sense 
 
FIXING THE RESPONSIBILITY 109 
 
 of your spiritual obligation as sends many a man 
 to-day to 'join the colors' when he sees the danger 
 confronting his country?" 
 
 This lack of allegiance to the Christian Religion is 
 not always due to an evil life. It is not always be- 
 cause of any deeply thought out objection. It is an 
 indifference begotten of a complacent but dangerous 
 trust in self. It is this which is being encouraged to 
 so alarming an extent in nearly all the forms of our 
 so-called "higher education." It is this which has 
 wormed its way into the Churches themselves, and 
 made so much of their teaching halting, vapid, and 
 lacking in spiritual strength. 
 
 Do you say: "It is a far cry from this to the 
 causes of the war now waging?" I do not think so. 
 Name all the other causes that you will, — national 
 rivalries, racial antipathies, the lust for commercial 
 aggrandizement and supremacy, the determination 
 to rule, — it comes to this : if we were genuinely Chris- 
 tian we would be actuated by different motives; we 
 would be under the sway of this wonderful law of 
 chivalry and of use : "Let him that is greatest be as 
 the younger, and him that is first as he that doth 
 serve." The Lord lived and died to make that truth, 
 that state of brotherly, helpful life real to men. We 
 would believe in it and be living that life if it were 
 
no THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 not for this aggrandizement of self, with its love of 
 ruling and its self-confident pride, so fatal to any 
 religion, especially to the religion of Jesus Christ our 
 Lord. This, so to say, is the pest that has attacked 
 the trees in our modern paradise, and made so many 
 of them unlovely and unwholesome. Our commerce, 
 our inventions, our greater efficiency, our education, 
 our culture, religion itself — something is preventing 
 these things from being grandly useful and beautiful, 
 as they might be, free of the extravagances and in- 
 dulgences bom of selfish rivalries. The trees are not 
 as they should be. For some reason the leaves wither 
 and fall, and the fruit is disappointingly scanty and 
 bitter. The canker-worm of pride and trust in self 
 has done it. 
 
 And now the axe lieth at the root of the trees. 
 The judgment is come. Surely our self-confidence 
 and pride are having a rude awakening. In the light 
 of present events, with their daily lengthening list of 
 tragedies, miseries, and destructions, how vain our 
 boastings are! We seem to be mocked in the very 
 things where we thought ourselves so strong: our wis- 
 dom, our natural security, our ability to take care of 
 ourselves. "The axe lieth at the root of the trees!" 
 May it not be that one of the deep lessons that will 
 be learned from this wkr is that trust in self is folly 
 
FIXING THE RESPONSIBILITY in 
 
 and it is weakness? With all the suffering and ruin 
 already wrought, can we ever be quite so aggres- 
 sively self-confident again? Can we be quite so 
 reckless in our disregard of the prime requisites of 
 true prosperity, true power, true manhood and wo- 
 manhood, which God the Lord has taught men from 
 the very beginning in the two great commandments : 
 "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
 thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with 
 all thy mind, and with all thy strength . . . 
 And THOU shalt love thy Neighbor as thy- 
 self"? 
 
 Men have not seriously disputed the truth of these 
 great laws. They have not challenged our Lord's 
 wisdom and omniscience when He solemnly de- 
 clared: "On these two commandments hang all the 
 law and the prophets." Men have been repeating 
 them or hearing them repeated in a passive, formal 
 way. But when we have learned the delusiveness of 
 our supposed self-sufficiency — learned at such cost! 
 —are we not going to take them more seriously? Is 
 it not going to get into our brains and then into our 
 wills that all lasting good does depend on a genuine 
 love to God and to our neighbor? 
 
 Already men are declaring that the war has shown 
 the futility of Vast armaments as a means of securing 
 
112 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 peace. Already there are those who, looking deeper, 
 are saying that modern culture is no guarantee 
 against intrigue, - duplicity, injustice, hatred, and 
 wrong. Are we not going to go still deeper, go to 
 the very root of all, and say and believe : "We must 
 be rid of our trust and pride in self, and, gladly be- 
 lieving that our Lord has the words of eternal life, 
 grow in a genuine love for Him, and for our neigh- 
 bor as ourselves'"? God grant that this may come 
 true! 
 
 "Even now the axe lieth at the root of the trees: 
 every tree, therefore, that bringeth not forth good 
 fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire." 
 
"THE WILL TO POWER" 
 
"He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and 
 what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do 
 justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
 thy God?" 
 
 Micah vi, 8. 
 
VI. "THE WILL TO POWER" 
 
 THESE words by the prophet Micah have been 
 characterized as the greatest pronouncement 
 of the Old Testament. I feel like adding: "and the 
 one the most sorely needed." Justice, mercy, de- 
 voutness — here are the three dimensions of a com- 
 plete character, such as the Lord God has a right to 
 prescribe. For, "He hath showed thee, O man, what 
 is good." He has given us proofs of His love, of His 
 wisdom, and of His readiness to help us attain to 
 the standard of righteousness which He requires. 
 
 Micah the Morasthite felt that Jehovah had sent 
 redemption imto His people. He was their great 
 Emancipator. He had brought them forth out of 
 their house of bondage. He had made a nation out 
 of them and entrusted them with a spiritual mission 
 of superlative importance. To this end He had cared 
 for them in every way. He helped them when they 
 were but few in numbers. He saved them from their 
 enemies, and from the hand of them that hated them. 
 
ii6 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 He gave them laws and ordinances. He raised up 
 leaders. He gave them a wonderful land to dwell 
 in. They were like a vine which He had planted 
 and tended with the utmost care. 
 
 But here they were, spiritually insensible, unre- 
 sponsive. A selfish spirit was spreading among them 
 like a plague. The rich were plundering the poor; 
 the strong were taking mean advantages of the weak. 
 The love of dominion and the love of possession grew 
 apace. The prophets cried out in warning against 
 the sins of the ruling classes, but in vain. The feel- 
 ing of self-confidence was too strong. God, they 
 said, would not really do anything against them. 
 "Prate not," they cried — "prate not of such things! 
 Revilings will never cease!" The prophets were 
 sneered at. They were voted a nuisance. Were they 
 not calamity-criers? They protested against things 
 which they did not understand. "What you charge 
 us with," said the leaders, "are nothing but natural 
 transactions. We are eminently respectable. The 
 Lord will not bring harm upon such as we." 
 
 This is the screen, so to say, upon which this mag- 
 nificent assertion of what a true life is has been 
 thrown full and clear so that every one can read it. 
 Let men be as proud and self-confident as they will; 
 let them hide their defects by drawing about them 
 
"THE WILL TO POWER" 117 
 
 this vaunted mantle of respectability. God requires 
 of them three things : justice, mercy, devoutness. 
 
 I believe with all my mind that this inspired 
 declaration names the three essentials of a truly hu- 
 man life and of a truly righteous nation. I urge 
 them upon you in the absolute conviction that they 
 are the revelation of the mind of God to the mind 
 of man. Man may invent all manner of philoso- 
 phies. He may be sincere in doing so. His sincerity, 
 however, will be no guarantee against mistake. 
 What he conceives to be the requirements of a true 
 life, individual or national, may be far from the 
 truth. 
 
 We are facing that very situation. This terrible, 
 this wide-spreading war has disclosed it. As this 
 war goes on, as men try more and more earnestly to 
 understand what it is that has occasioned so unparal- 
 leled an outbreak of violence and hate which nothing 
 can seem to stay or quell, we come up with increas- 
 ing certainty against a philosophy of life, impious, 
 truculent, but terrible in its earnestness, which is 
 challenging the Christian conception of life as it has 
 never been challenged before. 
 
 It is safe to say that a year ago very few people 
 had even heard the names of Nietzsche, Treitschke, 
 or Bemhardi. To-day their books are lying on li- 
 
ii8 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 brary tables in thousands of homes, and the shop- 
 keeper, the clerk behind the counter, the workman in 
 the street can talk with you understandingly about 
 the gospel of might which they preach. Hardly a 
 newspaper or a magazine that does not contain their 
 names and have something to say of their teachings. 
 Of course the knowledge gained thus suddenly is 
 superficial. It comes second-hand. But there it is, 
 and men are pondering it. They have been made 
 aware that the Christian conceptions of charity, of 
 self-sacrifice, of kindness to the weak, which seemed 
 so self-evidently true and beautiful, — even if we did 
 not always live up to them, — have been rudely as- 
 sailed by a philosophy which does not hesitate to 
 proclaim "the will to power" as the only reasonable 
 law of progress, and which has been able to back up 
 this philosophy with a tremendous show of force. 
 
 I will speak frankly of my own experience. Sev- 
 eral years ago I read Nietzsche's Antichrist, and 
 then his 'thus Spake Zarathustra. I saw in these 
 books at the time nothing but their blasphemies. 
 The contempt which they poured upon Christianity 
 and its Founder made my spirit bum hot within me. 
 But I felt that the very extravagance of their vitu- 
 perations would assure their own undoing. I did not 
 think that such books could live or have any influ- 
 
"THE WILL TO POWER" iig 
 
 ence. I was not surprised when I read that their 
 author lost his mind and died in a mad-house. 
 
 Even an end as dismal as this, however, did not 
 obliterate this man's teachings. His ravings have 
 not only been perpetuated, they have been translated 
 into various languages; they have been the vogue 
 with a little group of literati in Russia, France, Eng- 
 land, and this country. They have been honored 
 with the name of "philosophy," although they con- 
 sist for the most part of savage epigrams, railings, 
 and blasphemies. But here they are, and their asser- 
 tions and accusations are being discussed in lecture- 
 rooms, in clubs, in homes, and on the street. 
 
 I speak of this man's teachings as "ravings." Here 
 is a sample of them : 
 
 "I condemn Christianity. I bring against the 
 Christian Church the most terrible accusation that a 
 man has ever had in his mouth. To my mind, it is 
 the greatest of all conceivable corruptions. ... It has 
 left nothing uncontaminated by its depravity; it has 
 made every valuable thing worthless, every truth a 
 lie, every honest impulse a baseness of soul. ... I 
 call Christianity the one great curse, the one enor- 
 mous and innermost perversion. I call it the one 
 immortal blemish of mankind." ^ 
 
 1 Der Antichrist, 62. 
 
120 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 Why this blasphemy'? The man honestly hated 
 weakness. His slogan v/as "Be hard!" 
 
 "I do not advise you to compromise and make 
 peace," he cried, "but to conquer. Let your labor be 
 fighting, and your peace victory. 
 
 "What is good? All that increases the feeling of 
 power — the will to power — power itself — in man. 
 
 "What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. 
 
 "What is happiness? The feeling that power in- 
 creases — that resistance is being overcome ! 
 
 "Let us have, not contentedness, but more power 
 — not peace at any price, but war — not virtue, but 
 efRciency ! 
 
 "The weak and the botched must perish ! That is 
 the first principle of our charity. And we must help 
 them to do so. 
 
 "What is more dangerous to the human race than 
 any crime ? Active sympathy for the weak ! Chris- 
 tianity." ^ 
 
 And then this man brazenly says : 
 
 "I am writing this for the lords of the earth. . . . 
 You say that a good cause hallows war? I tell you 
 that a good war hallows every cause." 
 
 You will say : "This is monstrous. No one could 
 
 ^ Der Antichrist, 2. 
 
"THE WILL TO POWER" 121 
 
 believe such teachings." But this apostle of might 
 had more to say. 
 
 "War and courage," he declared, "have done more 
 great things than charity. Not your pity but your 
 bravery lifts up those about you. Let the little 
 girlies tell you that 'good' means 'sweet' and 'touch- 
 ing.' I tell you that 'good' means 'brave.' ... I do 
 not spare you. . . . Die at the right time. . . . Be 
 hard.'" 
 
 Why did the man despise Christianity? If only 
 he had repudiated it utterly ! But he did not. He 
 did what was many times worse: he patronized it. 
 He declared that the philosophy of might which he 
 expounded was only for men of high caste, whereas 
 Christianity, with its exaltation of the gentler vir- 
 tues, was for the sickly and the inefficient. The true 
 enlightenment, he declared, this awakening to the 
 real glory in life, was not for the castes lower 
 down. It was even to be guarded jealously, lest 
 they steal and pollute it. For those castes the old 
 platitudes were good enough. Did they cling senti- 
 mentally to Christianity, unable to rid themselves of 
 their yearnings for a rock and a refuge? Then let 
 them have it ! It was a good anodyne. Their yearn- 
 ing for it was a proof of their need for it. To at- 
 
122 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 tempt to take it away from them was an offence 
 against their sense of well-being, and against human 
 progress as well/ Christianity and brotherhood, he 
 declared, were for "workingmen, servants, and yo- 
 kels, for shopkeepers, cows, women, and English- 
 men, for the submerged chandala, for the whole 
 race of subordinates, dependents, followers," but not 
 for the higher man, not for the superman of to- 
 morrow. "Nothing," cries this wild prophet, "has 
 grown more alien to us than that 'peace of the soul' 
 which is the aim of Christianity." 
 
 It seems to be assumed that the so-called "war- 
 spirit" in Germany is largely due to the teachings 
 of this prophet of the superman, this "intellectual 
 pervert." Men seem to think that his doctrine of 
 "the will to power" was the firebrand which set Ger- 
 many aflame. I believe this to be utterly mistaken. 
 The significance and influence of Nietzsche lie in 
 this, that he, with a boldness and extravagance which 
 have made him a marked figure in spite of his insane 
 blasphemies, has voiced a state of mind which has 
 been growing up, not in Germany alone, nor yet in 
 Prussia alone, but in other nations as well, our own 
 included. In his madness he has proclaimed from his 
 housetop sentiments which have been growing up in 
 
 1 H. L. Mencken, The Mailed Fist and its Prophet. 
 
"THE WILL TO POWER" 123 
 
 the secrecy of men's hearts. He has blurted out with 
 a kind of fanatical joy that which men have been 
 coming to accept as true and desirable: the will to 
 power, the exaltation of efficiency and virility, with 
 a corresponding contempt for the gentler graces and 
 virtues of religion. 
 
 This is of the utmost seriousness, if true; for then 
 we find ourselves face to face with a condition of 
 human nature, and not merely with the ravings of a 
 madman. That it is true is in part shown by the fact 
 that this man protested that for him the one unfor- 
 givable insult was to call him a German ! He poured 
 out the vials of his wrath and of his contempt upon 
 that people. He accused them of almost every intel- 
 lectual and moral weakness, and summed up his in- 
 dictment by accusing them of a slavish devotion to 
 "the two great European narcotics: alcohol and 
 Christianity." True, he held the chair of classical 
 philology at Basel. But, as has been pointed out by 
 one of his best interpreters, his first writings were 
 frowned upon as the effusions of a "conceited yoimg 
 professor, with the ink scarcely dry upon his degree. 
 All this heaping of scorn upon everything German 
 won him but few adherents. His charges were too 
 strident, too extravagant, too offensive to win serious 
 attention. . . . The orthodox philosophers, put- 
 
124 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 ting on their black caps, formally read him out of 
 their society." ^ 
 
 This is said of the way in which the first volume 
 of Human, All too Human, published in 1878, was 
 received. We are told that when the second volume 
 appeared in the following year it fell flat. The 
 third, published a year later, "followed the others 
 into the shadows." 
 
 Apparently Nietzsche was done for. Not so. In 
 1892 (twenty-four years later) came the four parts 
 of 'ihus Spake Zarathustra. And now there was a 
 quick and vigorous response. Why? Literary crit- 
 ics are for the most part agreed that here was "a 
 glowing and magnificent work of art" ; one of them 
 going so far to assert that not since the days of the 
 Hebrew prophets had a system of morals been 
 thrown into "sentences so sonorous, beautiful, elo- 
 quent, and thrilling." 
 
 Were scholars, then, being stampeded by a bit of 
 rhetoric merely? Far from it! The real truth is 
 that not in Germany alone, but in her sister nations 
 in almost like degree, there had sprung up a spirit 
 of self-confidence, pride, and worldly ambition, due 
 to the unprecedented expansion of commerce and 
 science, with its vast and bewildering enrichment of 
 
 1 H. L. Mencken, The Mailed Fist and its Prophet. 
 
"THE WILL TO POWER" 125 
 
 our earthly life; and this new spirit, manifested 
 chiefly among the leaders, and fretting under the 
 restraints of a religion many of whose theological 
 dogmas were no longer acceptable, was glad enough 
 to give acclaim to the bold avowals of a man who 
 lauded "the will to power" as the one thing essential 
 to true manhood. Men were growing "sceptical, 
 self-sufficient, brusque, impatient of opposition." 
 They were throwing back their heads, filled with a 
 new-born pride in their efficiency. They were ting- 
 ling with the feeling of a new-found strength. As 
 fast as they could, they were slipping out of the 
 controlling influence of a religion which had this as 
 one of its fundamental principles : "He that exalteth 
 himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth him- 
 self shall be exalted." The spirit of self-denial, of 
 charity, which Christianity, through its Founder, 
 urged upon all men, was looked upon with increasing 
 distrust and disfavor. All that was needed was some 
 one bold and brilliant enough to voice the discontent 
 against an ecclesiasticism that was felt to be narrow, 
 formal, and but half sincere, and to give voice to the 
 natural feelings that were seething in men's hearts. 
 
 That is what Nietzsche did. Treitschke and Bem- 
 hardi did the same, although in a different way. The 
 point is, they voiced and they approved unhallowed 
 
126 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 desires that are in men's souls. They have told us 
 that we need not deny ourselves. They have assured 
 us that the one requisite, the one sure mark of a true 
 man is for him to complete his own development at 
 any cost. They have said in effect: "All sacrificial 
 attention to the rights of others, especially any halt- 
 ing by life's wayside to help the weak, impairs 
 strength and therefore is to be abjured by him who 
 would live greatly." 
 
 That phrase, "who would live greatly," is such a 
 telling one! There is something in us that would 
 be so glad to believe that our self-assertiveness is the 
 mark of true strength; and that all self-denial, the 
 taking up of our cross, the laying down of life for 
 others, is to be abjured by him "who would live 
 greatly" I Many a man, who would scout at Nietz- 
 sche as a blasphemer, is feeling the grip of the very 
 thing which he extols. "The will to power" is driving 
 him on in his business, in his politics, in his profes- 
 sion. That kind of "push" fires his blood. It kindles 
 his enthusiasm. He does not kindle so readily at the 
 thought of self-sacrifice. He is much more ready 
 to put up a good fight for what he considers his 
 rights, than he is to abate his efforts out of considera- 
 tion to the rights of others. He is quick to grasp at 
 the thought that to yield one's own purpose for 
 
"THE WILL TO POWER" 127 
 
 the sake of another is weakness, and that weakness 
 is a crime. As I mingle with men, as I look into my 
 own heart, I realize how much there is in our un- 
 regenerate nature that is more than ready to warm up 
 to this doctrine of "the will to power." We are 
 shocked by the statement of it; but how is it in real- 
 ity? Do you find that the majority of those whom 
 you know, regard with enthusiasm the life of charity 
 and of self-sacrifice? If they profess such an enthu- 
 siasm, are they manifesting it in their lives in any 
 marked degree ? 
 
 Come back to this declaration of the prophet 
 Micah: 
 
 "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do 
 justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy 
 God?" 
 
 Here is no frenzied utterance of a man bent on 
 decrying weakness as crime, and glorifying might. 
 Here is a calm, here is an inspired assertion of what 
 a truly human life should be. It must be just, it 
 must be merciful, it must be devout. These require- 
 ments gain in force when we realize that they are 
 not simply a cluster of virtues. They mark three 
 planes or levels of our nature: the civil, the moral, 
 and the spiritual. Justice is the element which must 
 
128 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 prevail on the civil plane; mercy must infill the 
 moral plane; devoutness must actuate the spiritual 
 plane. No one of these three planes is sufBcient unto 
 itself. They form, or ought to form, a triple alliance 
 that should prove invincible. 
 
 Here is something that may well be dignified with 
 the term "philosophy." In a sentence it uncovers 
 these three planes of life, which, taken together and 
 acting concordantly, constitute human life at its 
 best. 
 
 The same is true on the larger scale. A true na- 
 tion must have its civil plane of life founded in 
 justice, its moral plane marked by a spirit of true 
 charity, and it must have its spiritual plane. This 
 accords exactly with this canon of our Church's 
 teaching, that the common good consists of these 
 three things : 
 
 1. There must be what is divine among the people; 
 
 2. There must be morality ; 
 
 3. There must be justice among men. 
 
 The three things go together. In combination there 
 is perfect strength, joy, peace. Tear them apart, 
 there is weakness, confusion. Your nature, thus dis- 
 membered, bleeds. 
 
"THE WILL TO POWER" 129 
 
 "The will to power" is a thought, a claim that has 
 promised much, and which by the very positiveness 
 and blatancy of its self-announcement has caused a 
 commotion— as though another Goliath had ap- 
 peared among us, all panoplied in brass and shouting 
 his defiance. But this will to power is sure to meet 
 its doom. It always has. God bids us know the way 
 to true and lasting strength : 
 
 There must be justice among men, a faithful ob- 
 servance of the commandments of the Decalogue ; 
 
 There must be a spirit of charity, with its willing- 
 ness to regard the welfare of others, its desire to be 
 of service, and its practical sympathy for the weak, 
 the unfortunate, and all who suffer. " Here the 
 Golden Rule must have its sway] and 
 
 There must be what is Divine among' men : faith in 
 a righteous God, who has revealed Himself to us in 
 many ways, but chiefly in His Word, and, more won- 
 derful and appealing than all, as the Word made 
 flesh. And here the controlling force must be that 
 wonderful power of attachment which is formed 
 when the best in a man hears and responds to the 
 call: "Come unto Me! Follow Me!" It is deep 
 calling unto deep. It is life kindling life. It is in- 
 finite Love, Wisdom, and Power making themselves 
 over to a man, imparting to him the element of eter- 
 
130 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 nal life, and bidding him look up into the face of his 
 Lord and Saviour and know himself as the child of 
 God. 
 
 ' . Justice on the civil plane makes the true, the up- 
 right, the dependable citizen, the man of honor and 
 efficiency. Mercy or charity on the moral plane 
 makes the helpful, the sympathetic, the devoted and 
 self-sacrificing friend, the man of chivalry and kind- 
 ness. The soul's faith in and love for Jesus Christ 
 makes the true, the devoted disciple, the man of God. 
 These three things, these three elements, these three 
 characters, if brought into a harmonious oneness, 
 must issue in a power for good which no one can 
 measure, and in a happiness and peace such as all 
 the world cannot give. 
 
 "He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and 
 what doth the Lord require of thee, hut 
 STo do justly, 
 'to love mercy, and 
 to walk humbly with thy God?" 
 
"LOVE YOUR ENEMIES!" 
 
*h 
 
 "Ye have heard that it hath been said, 'Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.' But I 
 say unto you. Love your enemies; bless them that 
 curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray 
 for them which despitefully use you and persecute 
 you." 
 
 S. Matt. V, 43, 44. 
 
 4* 
 
VII. "LOVE YOUR ENEMIES!" 
 
 IT is well that we should be brought face to face 
 with some of the radical truths of the ^Gospel. 
 A tremendous struggle for power is going on. One 
 needs but to read the official papers and the books put 
 forth by statesmen and representative men of the 
 nations at war, each with the avowed purpose of stat- 
 ing accurately how war came to be declared, to real- 
 ize that the causes of the present conflict lie hidden 
 within the clashing of political councils and the rup- 
 ture of national agreements. Within this war an- 
 other conflict is waging. It is being pushed with 
 great determination. The combatants are lively and 
 they are strong. They are resourceful. They are 
 contending for the right to rule the world. 
 
 "It is almost absurd," says a writer in the 7ort- 
 nightly Review, "to speak of the events of the past 
 months as though they were merely incidents in a 
 great and important campaign. There is nothing in 
 history like liiem, so far as we are aware. ... Is it 
 not obvious that every nation engaged is not fighting 
 
 133 
 
134 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 for mere victory in battle, nor yet for extension of 
 territory, but for something more important than 
 these 1 They fight for the triumph of their respective 
 ideas." 
 
 What some of these "ideas" are we are fast learn- 
 ing to understand. A new literature on the subject 
 has sprung into existence. When war was first de- 
 clared we heard the question at almost every hand: 
 "What is it all about?' Others asked: "Is there 
 anything that could not and should not be settled by 
 arbitration?" W^e do not ask these questions to-day. 
 We have to bow to the fact that Peace Conferences 
 and Hague tribunals cannot control national rival- 
 ries, dispel national jealousies, or dissipate dreams 
 of world supremacy. In the words of John Bigelow, 
 written when this coimtry offered its good ofRces to 
 mediate between Russia and Japan : 
 
 "It is not the roar of the guns nor the clatter of the 
 swords that constitute war; and when these are silent 
 war may go on even more fiercely than before. Hate, 
 vengeance, jealousy, covetousness, ambition, treach- 
 ery, cowardice survive in unimpaired vigor, with 
 their inexhaustible arsenal of calumny, misrepresen- 
 tation, intrigue, corruption, . . . and conspiracies 
 at home and abroad." ^ 
 1 Peace Given as the World Giveth. 
 
"LOVE YOUR ENEMIES!" 135 
 
 How true this is! But there is something still 
 more momentous about this titanic struggle that has 
 turned the greater part of Europe into a veritable 
 inferno. No one planned that it should be so, but 
 the real clash that has come is between the doctrine 
 of life as taught and exemplified by Jesus Christ, and 
 the new teaching which makes Might not only the 
 arbiter but the creator of Right. From this invis- 
 ible, but none the less real field of battle, one hears 
 the shouts of leaders giving such orders as these : 
 
 "Even an organization whose individuals forbear 
 in their dealings with one another must, if it would 
 live and not die, act hostilely toward all other or- 
 ganizations." ^ 
 
 "The greatest modern event — that God is dead — 
 that the Christian God has become unworthy of be- 
 lief — has now begun to cast its shadows over Eu- 
 rope."* 
 
 "It is a persistent struggle for possessions, power, 
 and sovereignty which primarily governs the rela- 
 tions of one nation to another; and right is respected 
 so far only as it is compatible with advantage."* 
 
 ^ Nietzsche's Jenseits von Gut und Base. 
 
 2 Hid. 
 
 ^ Bernhardi's Germany and the Next War. 
 
136 THE HEART OF THE WAI_ 
 
 Yet, rising above these hoarse shouts of defiance, 
 I hear the ringing words of an apostle : 
 
 "Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His 
 might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye 
 may withstand the wiles of the devil. For our wres- 
 tling is not against flesh and blood, but against the 
 principalities, against the powers, against the spir- 
 itual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. 
 Wherefore take up the whole armor of God, that ye 
 may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having 
 done all, to stand." 
 
 Statesmen have declared that the present war was 
 inevitable. National jealousies, racial antipathies, 
 conflicting ideas and ambitions have long been gath- 
 ering for an outbreak. Of the deeper conflict within 
 the war of which I speak — the Religion of Jesus 
 Christ assailed by the so-called new Religion of 
 Valor — this is even more certainly true. Two such 
 systems cannot live at peace with each other; ssad 
 there can be no compromise between them. One or 
 the other must rule. I quote the summary of one of 
 the ablest reviewers of the books which have been 
 proclaiming the gospel of Might— the late Professor 
 J. A. Cramb— delivered a few months before the 
 war, and having, therefore, a degree of prophetic 
 quality: 
 
"LOVE YOUR ENEMIES!" 137 
 
 "In Europe as a whole, in the twentieth century, 
 two great spirit forces contend for men's allegiance, 
 — Napoleon and Christ. The one, the representative 
 of life-renunciation, places the reconciliation of life's 
 discords and the solution of its problems in a tranquil 
 but nebulous region beyond the grave ; the other, the 
 asserter of earth and of earth's glories, disregardful 
 of any life beyond the grave, finds life's supreme end 
 in heroism and the doing of great things, and seeks 
 no immortality except the immortality of renown, 
 and even of that he is slightly contemptuous. To 
 Napoleon the end of life is power. . . . The law, 
 on the other hand, which Christ laid upon men ap- 
 pears to be the law of self-effacement. The true 
 Christist toils but for others; he prays but for others. 
 He suffers for them; he dies for them; Serous servo- 
 rum Dei — slave of the slaves of God — was the 
 p>roud subscription which the haughtiest of the me- 
 diaeval Pontiffs placed at the end of their letters. In 
 Europe this conflict between Christ and Napoleon 
 for the mastery over the minds of men is the rnost 
 significant spiritual phenomenon of the twentieth 
 century." 
 
 If I had made or been capable of making these 
 generalizations I would have been afraid that this 
 was because of a certain professional habit of mind. 
 I think I would have said to myself something like 
 this: "Your profession, your training make it natural 
 
138 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 for you to bring, or try to bring, everything to a re- 
 ligious test. You may be mistaken in this. You may 
 be exaggerating the spiritual significance of the 
 present conflict; and men, looking at the matter in a 
 purely academic or in a thoroughly practical way, 
 may interpret the situation very differently. Re- 
 ligion may have but little to do with it. The issues 
 may be essentially political." It is to me, then, a 
 matter of real significance that a man as thoroughly 
 equipped for making a searching analysis of the Eu- 
 ropean situation as was Professor Cramb should have 
 come to the conclusion, even before the cloud of war 
 appeared to be anything more than the size of a 
 man's hand, that the forces which really are arrayed 
 against each other are spiritual forces. This is the 
 more significant because in this spiritual contest 
 Professor Cramb gives no clear intimation as to the 
 side on which he himself is enlisted. His charac- 
 terization of what the Christian religion really is 
 seems to me to be most unsatisfactory. It is nerve- 
 less. It is spiritless. It represents the blessings 
 promised by that religion as reserved for an unknown 
 future; overlooking the fact, apparently, that it 
 proclaims a present immortality and claims for every 
 true follower of the Lord an amplification and not a 
 
"LOVE YOUR ENEMIES!" 139 
 
 contraction of his nature. One of the great descrip- 
 tive utterances of the Christ was this : 
 
 "I am come that they might have life; and that 
 they might have it more abundantly." 
 
 And these words are of equal significance : 
 
 "He that heareth My word and believeth on Him 
 that sent Me, hath" — hath, not shall have — "ever- 
 lasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, 
 but is passed from death unto life," 
 
 Throughout his book Professor Cramb analyzes 
 and writes as a historical critic, never as a churchman. 
 This is so true that after tracing the influence which 
 the Napoleonic spirit has exercised in England and 
 in America, in Austria and Spain, in Italy and Rus- 
 sia, and in Germany, where, perhaps, it has had its 
 most forcible expression, he concludes with these 
 words : 
 
 "Corsica . . . has conquered Galilee!" 
 
 Is the present war a sign that this verdict is not 
 true; or, if true, that then the most gigantic and ter- 
 rible of all wars is necessary to reverse that verdict*? 
 The "Man of Destiny" cannot really prevail over 
 the Son of Man. Rather has the divine warning 
 been addressed to all rulers : 
 
140 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 "Be wise, now, O ye kings; 
 Be instructed, ye judges of the earth: 
 Serve the Lord with fear 
 And rejoice with trembling. 
 Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and ye perish in the 
 
 way; 
 For His wrath will soon be kindled. 
 Blessed are all they that take refuge in Him." 
 
 I do not hesitate to express my belief that it is this 
 clashing of spiritual forces which really lies at the 
 heart of the war. If it is, then this is the time to face 
 it. This is the time for an enlistment of all our active 
 spiritual forces and to call out our reserves. Would 
 that the power divine might reach and rouse the 
 better nature of the youth of our day, and save many 
 of them from the disgrace of being spiritually numb 
 when their minds should be tingling with spiritual 
 excitement, and they should be roused out of their 
 absorption in the mere fripperies of the world, and 
 be stimg out of their self-satisfaction and dilettante 
 way of viewing the deep problems of life! Hear 
 what some of the spiritual taunts and boasts are : 
 
 "Religion is no more the dominant force in man's 
 life."^ 
 
 ^Prof. Cramb. 
 
"LOVE YOUR ENEMIES!" 141 
 
 "Christianity is a religion of decadence." ^ 
 
 "We are not Christians. We have outgrown 
 Christianity, not because our lives have been too far 
 from it, but because they have been too near."^ 
 
 "Would that he (Jesus) had remained in the des- 
 ert, far from the good and righteous ! ... He died 
 too soon. Had he lived to my age (38), he would 
 have renounced his teaching."^ 
 
 Are our youth going to stand mutely by and let 
 the religion of their fathers and of their childhood be 
 thus set at nought? Must they not spring to their 
 feet when they hear Bernard Shaw, "the most au- 
 dacious of Nietzsche's disciples," declare that the 
 superman "will snap his superfingers at all Man's 
 present trumpery ideals of right, duty, honor, jus- 
 tice, religion, even decency" ? 
 
 You cannot always evade the issue that presents 
 itself here, O young men and young women ! You 
 cannot go gaily promenading through the lines of 
 these spiritual combatants, drawn up in hostile ar- 
 ray, and think to keep your soul always at ease. To 
 be neutral here will proclaim your weakness and 
 
 ^ Nietzsche. 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
 3 Ibid. 
 
142 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 prove to be your disgrace. Christ the Lord must be 
 obeyed or men must crucify Him for good and all. 
 Believing as I do in the absolute difference in kind 
 and degree between Him and His Kingdom and any 
 ruler and his kingdom that can be named, something 
 in me protests against this contrast between Christ 
 and Napoleon as being most obnoxious. I had sup- 
 posed that all comparisons between the Lord's sover- 
 eignty and that of any earthly ruler would never 
 again be attempted after that memorable interview 
 between the Son of Man and Pontius Pilate, when 
 the former answered the latter's sneering question, 
 "Art thou a King, then?" with the memorable 
 words : "Thou sayest that I am a King. To this end 
 was I bom, and for this cause came I into the world, 
 that I should bear witness unto the truth:"— to 
 which the other could only feebly reply: "What is 
 truth?" I had not supposed that after that day on 
 Golgotha the diadem of any earthly monarch would 
 ever be put in comparison, much less in competition, 
 with the crown of thorns. But since this must be, let 
 us face it. Let the issue be made sharp and clear. 
 Let us take our places and not come under the con- 
 demnation of being afraid to cast our lot with one side 
 or the other. In this deeper conflict all differences of 
 nationality disappear. Germans and Austrians will 
 
"LOVE YOUR ENEMIES!" 143 
 
 be found standing shoulder to shoulder with some 
 of the men whom they are now fighting; and may we 
 not continue to be mere lookers-on! The spirit of 
 Napoleon or the spirit of the risen and glorified 
 Lord! The law of natural Might or the law of 
 Love! The right to rule or the right to serve! 
 Which? And since a historical parallel is insisted on, 
 then let history speak. 
 
 Do you remember the famous incident of Na- 
 poleon and the Lombard crown? The Lombard 
 crown is "the most celebrated diadem in the world, 
 and has been more revered than all others combined." 
 It has been thus described : 
 
 "It is a circle of broad gold plates so joined as to 
 form a ribbon-like band, adorned with blue enamel, 
 embossed with flowers, and set with a few large sap- 
 phires, rubies, and emeralds. Neither the gold nor 
 the gems nor the workmanship have given it the 
 unique reverence which it still retains. Within the 
 golden circle runs a thin rim of iron. ^ Hence its 
 name of the 'iron crown.' Millions since the days of 
 Queen Theodelinde have believed that it was made 
 from one of the nails that pierced the feet of Him 
 who was crucified at Golgotha. (The actual truth 
 of this is in no wise essential to the present illustra- 
 tion. It is the belief in it that is significant.) Be- 
 cause of this belief, some of the most powerful 
 
144 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 monarchs in the world have sought to increase their 
 glory by having this crown placed upon their 
 heads." ^ 
 
 Stand with me, then, in imagination in the great 
 cathedral of Milan on the 26th of May, 1805. Na- 
 poleon, the great War-lord, is there. An apparently 
 invincible army which adores him is at hand. He is 
 watched by a world that fears him. Grasping his 
 sword, he takes the iron crown, and places it on his 
 head with the words: "God has given it to me; let 
 him touch it who dares !"^ 
 
 Why has "the Man of Destiny" crowned himself 
 with one of the nails believed to have pierced the 
 feet of the Man of Galilee? Was it mockery? was 
 it bravado? was it thoughtlessness? Or did this ge- 
 nius of war know that there was a power superior to 
 him or to his legions, whose favor he would gladly 
 have secured? That proud head, drunk with the 
 lust of power, claiming as the most sacred mark of 
 honor and of might the coronation with that strip of 
 iron believed to have nailed the Redeemer to the 
 cross ! Did he feel that Corsica had conquered Gali- 
 lee that day? Or did this man of war know some- 
 thing which his champions and would-be successors 
 
 ^William Burnet Wright's Ancient Cities, p. 279. 
 2 Ibid. 
 
"LOVE YOUR ENEMIES!" 145 
 
 have not insight enough to know? Listen to him 
 after his famous legions had been shattered and his 
 dreams of world-conquest had dissolved to defeat 
 and exile. 
 
 "There is not a &od in heaven if a mere man was 
 able to conceive and execute successfully the gigantic 
 design of making himself the object of supreme wor- 
 ship by usurping the name of God." 
 
 And of the Gospel with its Law of Love what did 
 he say? "The Gospel is more than a book; it is a 
 living thing, active, powerful, overcoming every 
 obstacle in its way." 
 
 Its truths, he declared, "follow one another like 
 ranks of a celestial army." Does this sound as if 
 Corsica had conquered Galilee? No man, he re- 
 minds Bertrand, has ever lived for whom, a century 
 after his death, any individual would be willing to 
 die. And yet, after eighteen centuries, millions are in 
 numberless ways laying down their lives for Jesus 
 Christ ! "I know men," he said simply, "and Jesus 
 Christ is not a man."^ 
 
 "Cast your cannon of a hundred tons," exclaims 
 Victor Hugo. (It was before the days of enormous 
 siege-guns.) "Load it to the muzzle. Tip your shot 
 
 ^ Quoted by William Burnet Wright. 
 
146 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 with pointed steel. Apply the spark and you can 
 send your bolt 1200 feet a second. In that second, 
 light flashes 200,000 miles. That is the difference 
 between Napoleon Bonaparte and Jesus Christ." 
 
 To which a wise student has added these signifi- 
 cant words : 
 
 "We think it only a part of the difference. The 
 whole appears to us to be that Christ was Napoleon's 
 Creator." 
 
 Does not the same incalculable distance mark the 
 difference between the two laws of life for which they 
 stand? One is the law of natural might, of great 
 daring, of extraordinary determination, of ambition 
 unashamed until crushed by defeat. For this there 
 are many advocates, who proclaim it with confidence 
 and determination. Might, they exclaim, not only 
 makes right; might is right ! It is the sure mark of a 
 man. All weakness is to be despised and put out of 
 the way. 
 
 "Among all political sins, the sin of feebleness is 
 the most contemptible : it is the political sin against 
 the Holy Ghost."* 
 
 * Treitschke. 
 
"LOVE YOUR ENEMIES!" 147 
 
 The other law of life against which this has ar- 
 rayed itself with such fierceness and scorn, is the Law 
 of Love. 
 
 "This is My commandment, that ye love one an- 
 other; as I have loved you, that ye also love one an- 
 other. By this shall all men know that ye are My 
 disciples, if ye have love one to another." 
 
 "Greater love hath no one than this: that one 
 lay down his life for his friends." 
 
 "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, 
 do ye even so to them : for this is the Law and the 
 Prophets." 
 
 The issue between these two forces is clear. I have 
 put the Christian form of it, through the text I have 
 chosen, in the strongest possible terms : 
 
 "Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do 
 good to them that hate you; and pray for them 
 which despitefully use you and persecute you." 
 
 The new order, trying to fight its way to leader- 
 ship, does more than claim that this is impossible, or 
 that it is more than should be asked of any man. It 
 affefcts a righteous indignation, and declares that it 
 
148 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 betokens weakness: and weakness, in its eyes, is the 
 one unforgivable sin. 
 
 "One must learn to love himself ... so that one 
 is sufficient unto himself, and does not run about in 
 ways which are described as love of one's neigh- 
 bors."^ 
 
 And yet the Christian law does not stop with 
 love to one's neighbor. Your neighbor is your 
 supposed friend, who feels kindly to you as you do to 
 him. "And if ye love them which love you, what 
 reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the 
 same ?" But your enemy ! the man who has put some 
 slight upon you, taken some mean advantage of you, 
 done you some injury ! "Love your enemies !" Do 
 we cry : "Ah, but this is impossible ! I cannot love a 
 man who hates me or who is trying to do me harm." 
 But the Lord says, "You must, if you would really 
 be a Christian." 
 
 This law of love seems well-nigh impossible of 
 fulfilment. But this is not really so. Let us have it 
 clearly in mind what love actually is. It is not simply 
 nor even chiefly an emotion. Love is a life. It is a 
 state of the will. When you will to do good to an- 
 other you love him in the truest and best sense. How 
 
 ^ Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. 
 
"LOVE YOUR ENEMIES!" 149 
 
 many people think they love one another, because 
 they are aware of a certain emotional affection which 
 prompts them to say kind and flattering things and 
 to lavish favors upon each other. And yet some un- 
 fortunate word, some slight, some unkindness may 
 change all this in a moment; and where we thought 
 there was love before, now there is coldness, a sense 
 of injury, and bitterness. It is then that we say: "I 
 cannot love that man any more. He is my enemy." 
 In that case, we never did really love him. For 
 the essence of love, as I said before, is to do good. It 
 is to act towards a person in a way that will be most 
 helpful to him. The dear intimacies — that answer- 
 ing of affection with affection — may no longer be 
 possible. But love must remain : the desire to help, 
 and not to harm; to save, and not to destroy. Chris- 
 tian love is the life of good-will: the desire to do 
 what will be for the best good of any one and every 
 one, be he friend or foe. This very love may some- 
 times require a course of treatment that will seem 
 harsh. It may require the administration of severe 
 punishment. If such should be the situation, every- 
 thing will depend upon whether what is done is done 
 with contempt, with vindictiveness, with that natural 
 desire to "get even" and to be avenged, or whether it 
 is done wisely and justly and from the simple but 
 
150 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 holy desire to do what shall be for the highest good 
 of the person concerned. 
 
 Christian love, in other words, is that state of life 
 in which one is trying to serve the best interests of 
 another. Reduced to its simplest terms, it is the law 
 of use, rendering the truest service. You love a man 
 not simply by pitying him, not always by saying en- 
 dearing things to him, or giving him money; but by 
 conscientiously and without malice doing the very 
 best you can for him. Our Lord said we should and 
 we can treat even those who prove to be our enemies 
 so. He did it: He did it absolutely. If our souls 
 are open to His spirit, we can do it in our degree. 
 The Lord says this is the true way in which to live. 
 According to Him, it is the one sure way to Christian 
 manhood. 
 
 The leaders of the religion of Might are pouring 
 their contempt upon this Christian Law of Love. 
 They are telling men that it is a sign of weakness. 
 Weakness! That would seem to be the last charge 
 to bring against such a way of life. Serving an- 
 other; suppressing one's feeling of anger and revenge 
 for the sake of another's good; sacrificing one's own 
 interests or pleasure that another may be benefited, — 
 to charge this to weakness! Is this new philosophy 
 as blind as it is heartless? 
 
"LOVE YOUR ENEMIES!" 151 
 
 When Jesus our Lord girded Himself as a ser- 
 vant, knelt before His disciples one after another, 
 washed their feet— not excepting the heel that was 
 lifted up against Him — and accompanied this act 
 with those simple but august words, "I am among 
 you as one that serveth," He exemplified in His own 
 person the most powerful and the most far-reaching 
 law of life: the law of service. He was not weak. 
 He has not proved Himself to be weak. How piti- 
 ful, by contrast, do these words of one of these self- 
 appointed apostles of might sound : 
 
 "Do I counsel you to love your neighbor? 
 "I counsel you, rather, to shun your neighbor, and 
 to love those farthest away!"^ 
 
 I borrow the account of an actual incident. In the 
 London Spectator a. few years ago there appeared the 
 following paragraph : 
 
 "The medical world has reason to be proud of one 
 of its members who died this week, as the conse- 
 quence of a really heroic act performed in the course 
 of his professional duty. Dr. Samuel Rabbeth, a 
 young man of only twenty-seven years, senior resi- 
 dential medical officer of the Royal Free Hospital, 
 Gray's Inn Road, found, on Friday fortnight, that a 
 
 ^ Nietzsche. 
 
152 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 child of four years of age, on whom tracheotomy had 
 been performed to relieve the breathing, must die 
 of diphtheria unless the suffocating membrane was 
 sucked away through a tube; and he risked and lost 
 his life through diphtheria in the attempt to save the 
 child's — which he did not succeed in saving at all. 
 The risk was not one which professional etiquette in 
 any way required him to run; but he ran it in the 
 enthusiasm of his love for service, and he ought to be 
 remembered as one of the noblest martyrs of duty." 
 
 This comment of the editor was followed the next 
 week by these verses : 
 
 "It was an oflFering rare that thou didst yield 
 
 To this poor world and Him who died for thee. 
 Few nobler deeds of service have been wrought 
 Since the great sacrifice upon the tree. 
 
 "No cry of battle rousing thy young blood, 
 
 Urged thee to valorous deeds and hope of fame; 
 Lowly to abjectness, thy loving task. 
 
 Humble thy path, unknown till now thy name. 
 
 "Had the child lived, for whom thy life was spent. 
 We think we had not grudged the bitter cost. 
 But both have died : and some will say, in vain 
 Thy calm, heroic spirit has been lost. 
 
"LOVE YOUR ENEMIES!" 153 
 
 "And yet, perchance, beyond the veil of sense, 
 At our poor folly angels may have smiled, 
 Seeing a young man enter into perfect life, 
 And in his arms a little living child." 
 
 Call it a misadventure, call it a rashness, call it 
 tragic, but do not call it weakness; for it took cour- 
 age, the courage of a devoted nature bent on service. 
 
 Facts are better than words. Do you remember 
 how the Salvation Army came into existence? This 
 is the artless but thrilling account which the late 
 General Booth has left of it : 
 
 "I hungered for Hell. I pushed into the midst of 
 it in the East End of London. For days I stood in 
 these seething streets, muddy with men and women, 
 drinking it all in and loving it all. Yes, I loved it 
 because of the souls I saw. One night I went home 
 and said to my wife : 'Darling, I have given myself, 
 I have given you and our children to the service of 
 these sick souls.' She smiled and took my hand, and 
 we knelt down together. That was the first meeting 
 of the Salvation Army." 
 
 Was this weakness? Does this laying down of 
 one's life for the good of others who are throwing 
 their lives away betoken a small nature? Does it 
 take any more real courage to go and level a rifle at 
 
154 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 a foe than, with every natural ambition for worldly 
 position or comfort set aside, to labor "to seek and to 
 save that which was lost" ? 
 
 The conscience of every man must prompt the an- 
 swer; and if the conscience has been formed from 
 the truths of God's Word there can be no doubt as to 
 what that answer will be. And as a final word let 
 me urge this fact: the truth of Christian love, pro- 
 claimed and made a living, redeeming force through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord, has the support of the divine 
 promises. Its ultimate triumph is asserted in immis- 
 takable terms. Falsity and evil may spring up, 
 causing strife and misery; but in the end the life of 
 Christian love will prevail, the song of the angels 
 will yet sway the world : 
 
 "Peace on earth : good-will to men." 
 
 My faith is that we are standing in the dawn of a 
 new and glorious day; a day promised by the Lord, 
 when, not in person but in a fresh outpouring of His 
 spirit of truth and love, there will be a new and won- 
 derful development of man's true life upon the earth. 
 I believe that a great spiritual warfare is now being 
 waged; that the forces of falsity and evil are gath- 
 ered together for one tremendous effort to overcome 
 
"LOVE YOUR ENEMIES!" 155 
 
 the Prince of Peace and this truth of unselfish love 
 which He has set before us. As a result of this con- 
 flict, I believe that His religion will become estab- 
 lished as never before; that men will learn to inter- 
 pret its truths with new wisdom and live them with 
 greater faithfulness and with increasing joy. Every- 
 thing in the Word of God encourages such a belief. 
 Its prophecies glow with the splendor of the divine 
 expectations which they proclaim. It ought to mean 
 much to us to realize this and to know that the ulti- 
 mate good is sure. It ought to rouse us. For this 
 ultimate good caimot come of itself. The Lord is 
 our leader, and His is the power that must prevail. 
 Yet He must have those through whom His will can 
 be done on earth as it is done in heaven. The Lord 
 is our leader: who follows in His train? 
 
 Behold, then, this vision of the Son of Man going 
 forth in the plenitude of His peaceful might con- 
 quering and to conquer : — 
 
 "And I saw heaven opened; and behold, a white 
 horse, and He that sat thereon was called Faith- 
 ful and 'true; and in righteousness doth He judge 
 and make war. And His eyes are a -flame of fire, 
 and upon His head are many crowns; and He hath 
 a name written which no one knoweth but He Him- 
 self. He is arrayed in a garment sprinkled with 
 
1^6 THE HEART OF THE WAR 
 
 blood; and His name is called like Word of God. 
 And the armies which are in heaven followed Him 
 upon white horses clothed in fine linen, white and 
 pure. And out of His mouth proceedeth a sharp 
 sword, that with it He should smite the nations. . . . 
 And He hath on His garment and on His thigh a 
 name written: 
 
 KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS!" 
 
* 
 
 PRAYER 
 
 OLORD, from whom all holy desires, all good 
 counsels, and all just works do proceed: Give 
 unto Thy servants that peace which the world can- 
 not give: that our hearts may be set to obey Thy 
 commandments, and that we, being defended from 
 the fear of our enemies, may pass our time in rest 
 and quietness, through Thy great mercy, O Jesus 
 Christ our Lord! Amen. 
 
 *