JTXI 954 ,H35 4 Edited by JAMES HASTINGS, D.D. ‘THE GREAT CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES’ Dr. Hastings says : * There is, I believe, a widespread and earnest desire on the part of teachers of the Bible to do more than has lately been done for the teaching1 of Christian doctrine. The complaint that doctrine is dry is due to the way it is taught, even more than to the “spirit of the age.” Anything is dry that is disorderly or unreal. In those volumes the various Doctrines are presented in an orderly sequence, and contact with reality is maintained at every step by means of illustration or example.’ The Doctrines dealt with are Prayer, Faith, Peace. 38 George Street, T. & T. CLARK, Edinburgh THE GREAT CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES EDITED BY JAMES HASTINGS, D.D. THE DOCTRINE OF PEACE THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE EDITED BY JAMES HASTINGS, D.D. Edinburgh : T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street 1922 LONDON : MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED FOR T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS PREFACE. - ♦ - My father has left a volume on Peace. Shortly before his death he corrected the final proofs. It is fitting so, for during his life he preached peace. In his 4 Notes of Recent Exposition 5 in the Expository Times he wrote of the Copenhagen Conference, and quoted these words of Dr. Jowett : 4 I was impressed with the grave necessity of demon¬ strating our will-to-peace as men demonstrated their will-to-war. . . . Behind Governments and politicians, behind diplomatists and militarists, there is a great silent world of men and women yearning for peace. Delegates from every land spoke about it. . . . The people are not numb ; they are only dumb. They do not lack heart, they are only in want of a voice. They cannot demonstrate their desires. They cannot speak so as to make Governments hear and heed. They need an organ of expression, and where can they find an organ except in the Church of the Living God ? What is the Church for but to be a mouth for the dumb, an instrument to utter the silent yearnings of the purest and the best in every land ? ’ But Dr. Hastings believed that a further duty is laid upon the Church. The people are not all seeking an 4 organ of expression,’ for they are not all seeking peace. A fresh moral force to move them to the will-to-peace is needed. He hoped that preachers in all Churches would make Peace a message in the coming winter. 4 Long before the Genoa and the Copenhagen Conferences were held,’ he wrote, 4 the conviction came to us that Peace must be VI PREFACE preached beyond everything else, and a volume was prepared to serve as the basis of discourse. . . . The whole Biblical doctrine of Peace is discussed in it — the Peace of God and the Peace of Christ, Peace with God, with Conscience, and with Men, and, above all, the question of Peace or War.’ This is the volume. EDWARD HASTINGS. \ CONTENTS. + I. INTRODUCTION. 1. A Great Subject . 2. The Uses of the Word . PAGE 1 3 6 II. THE GOD OF PEACE . 1. The Name . 2. The Gifts . III. THE PEACE OF CHRIST 1. The Secret of Christ’ 2. The Lord of Peace IV. THE SEARCH FOR PEACE V. PEACE WITH GOD 1. Reconciliation 2. Justification 3. Peace . 13 . 15 . . . . . 18 25 Peace . . . .28 34 41 57 60 68 73 VI. PEACE OF CONSCIENCE . 81 1. The Discords of Life 2. A Quiet Conscience 3. The Hindrances . vn 83 85 90 Vlll CONTENTS VII. PEACE AND PROGRESS PAGE 95 1. Peace in Work .... 100 2. Peace in Warfare 103 VIII. PEACE WITH ALL MEN . 113 1. Strife ..... 116 2. As Much as in You Lietii 121 IX. PEACE OR WAR .... 127 1. The Teaching of Christ . 131 2. The Secret of Christ 136 X. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT . • 145 1. Its Hearers .... • 147 2. Its Method. .... • 153 3. Its Aim ..... • 156 XI. THE REALIZATION OF THE IDEAL • 163 1. The Coming of the Kingdom 167 2. The Increasing Purpose . • 173 XII. THE USE OF FORCE • 183 1. The Pacifist Theory • 185 2. The Militarist Theory . • 193 3. The Word and Example of Christ • 196 XIII. WAR . . • • 201 1. That War will always be Necessary • • 204 2. That War is never Necessary . • • 213 3. When is War a Necessity? • • 219 XIV. THE GOOD OF WAR .... • • 223 1. Civilization and Social Progress • • 227 2. National Life .... • • 230 3. Character and Heroism . • • 235 CONTENTS ix PAGE XV. THE EVIL OF WAR . . 243 1. The Cost of War . . . . . . 250 2. The Horrors of War ..... 255 3. The Moral Mischief caused by War . . . 260 4. Conclusion ....... 265 XVI. THE END OF WAR . 267 1. Civilization ...... 278 2. Christianity . . . . . .281 XVII. WHAT ARE WE TO DO ? . 287 1. Christian Influence ..... 290 2. The Influence of the Individual . . . 292 3. The Influence of the Church .... 295 I. Introduction. x Literature. Bernard, T. D., The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ (1892). Brooks, P., The Law of Growth (1902). Campbell, R. J., Problems of Life (1919). Cremer, H., Biblico-Theological Lexicon of New Testament Greek (1880). Findlay, G. G., The Epistle to the Galatians (1888). Harris, J. Rendel, The Sufferings and the Glory (1914). Hort, F. J. A., The First Epistle of St. Peter (1898). Jacob, J. T., Christ the Indweller (1902). Kennedy, H. A. A., Sources of New Testament Greek (1895). Liddon, H. P., Easter in St. Pauls (1892). Marshall, H. R., War and the Ideal of Peace (1915). Milligan, G., St. Pauls Epistles to the Thessalonians (1908). Morrow, W. E. R., Christ Magnified (1916). Nicoll, W. R., Sunday Evening (1910). Paget, H. L., Peace and Happiness (1922). Plowden-Wardlaw, J., The Test of War (1915). Punshon, W. M., Sermons (1882). Richard, E., God's Paths to Peace (1914). Salmon, G., Cathedral and University Sermons (1900). Sanday, W., and Headlam, A. C., The Epistle to the Romans (1902). Skrine, J. H., The Mountain Mother (1902). Smith, G. A., War and Peace (1915). Thompson, J. D., Peace, Perfect Peace (1915). Dictionary of the Bible, iii. (1900). „ „ „ (Single- Volume, 1909). Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, ii. (1916). Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, ii. (1908). Encyclopaedia Biblica, iv. (1903). Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ix. (1916). Introduction. I. A Great Subject. 1. “You cannot look into the Bible,” says Dr. Morley Punshon, 44 either into the Old Testament or into the New, without discover¬ ing that peace is, so to speak, the master-blessing, the grand issue both of the Law and of the Gospel to mankind. It is the climax of the Jewish benediction, as if in those rich old times of Levitical costliness and beauty there was no higher blessedness than that 4 The Lord bless thee, and keep thee : the Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee : the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.’ It is presented in glowing prophecy as the crowning result of the Messiah’s reign : 4 Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end.’ 4 In his days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth.’ Floating through the ages as the understood purpose of incarnate Deity, it reappears in the song with which Heaven announced His advent to enraptured Earth : 4 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.’ It was the Saviour’s chosen salutation : 4 Peace be unto you ’ — the salutation with which His heralds were to inaugurate their entrance into a dwelling : 4 Peace be to this house.’ The dying Saviour bequeathed it to His followers as His most precious legacy of love : 4 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.’ And the Apostle, in a prayer whose every emphatic word shows his estimate of its inestimable worth, supplicates the 4 God of peace to give peace always and by all means.’ ” The word 44 peace ” in the Bible does not merely mean that rest and tranquillity, and absence of annoyance, which we under- 4 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE stand by the word ; but it means all positive blessings, both spiritual and temporal. It is the common salutation in the East, and it was the usual benediction of our Lord, “ Peace be unto you.” And so Jerusalem, which is the type of heaven, is by interpretation the vision of peace ; and Melchizedek, its king, who was thus the king of peace, foreshadowed Him Who is the Prince of Peace ; “ Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace ” ; and the highest and fullest of all Christian well-wishing, and the amplest of all the Church’s blessings, is that the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, may be upon us and rest upon us for ever. It is, in short, that universal harmony in the relations between God and His creation which it has been the blessed work of Christ’s Incarnation to cause — the reconcile¬ ment of all things that are in heaven and in earth. It is the fruit of the passion of Christ, for “ He is our peace,” as the Apostle says ; the object of His teaching, as it is written ; “ And came and preached peace,” even the peace of the propitiated God with His erring and wayward children. 1 If What is peace ? It is the most potent and forceful thing in all the world. It is infinitely alive. It is life at its highest and its best.2 If Bishop Perowne’s comment on Psalm lxxxv. 8, “ He will speak peace to his people,” is — “ Peace : that is God’s great word, which in fact sums up and comprises all else.” 3 If Peace, which is the sovereign good.4 2. Thus Peace is great enough to be treated as one of the great Christian doctrines. And its range is wide enough. It is the usual salutation in the Old Testament, and covers all the good that one can desire for one’s friends. It is also common in the New Testament, though with a meaning that is at once restricted and deepened. Christ used the word both as greeting and as farewell. The Apostles used it in their letters. Then there is the peace of God “ which passeth understanding ” ; and there is the peace of Christ — My peace,” He called it — which He gave to His disciples before He left them. There is the peace of the Holy Spirit which is ministered to those who have been 1 Bishop A. P. Forbes, The Peace of God, 158. 2 P. C. Ainsworth, The Blessed Life, 145. 3 J. J. Stewart Perowne, The Book of Psalms, ii. 107. 4 Pascal. INTRODUCTION 5 justified by faith, and which is found as peace of conscience, peace of character, and peace of confidence. The peace of character is the peace of progress : it is won through struggle ; it is sometimes victory and sometimes defeat. In another way, peace is peace with God, peace with self, peace with other men. And peace with men includes peace with nations. Thus the doctrine of peace is the doctrine of war, and we have to consider from the Christian point of view the use of force, Christ’s teaching on non-resistance, and the whole subject of the necessity of war, its advantages and disadvantages, and the prospect of its passing away for ever. It is a great subject : will it be as interesting as it is important ? That depends on several things. It depends partly on what we mean by interest. And it depends partly on what we are. When Professor Seeley, the author of Ecce Homo , was closing his lectures at Cambridge on The Expansion of England, he said : “ I am often told by those who, like myself, study the question how history should be taught, Oh, you must before all things make it interest¬ ing ! I agree with them in a certain sense, but I give a different sense to the word interesting — a sense which after all is the original and proper one. By interesting they mean romantic, poetical, surprising ; I do not try to make history interesting in this sense, because I have found that it cannot be done without adulterating history and mixing it with falsehood. But the word interesting does not properly mean romantic. That is interesting in the proper sense which affects our interests, which closely concerns us and is deeply important to us. I have tried to show you that the history of modern England from the beginning of the eighteenth century is interesting in this sense, because it is pregnant with great results which will affect the lives of ourselves and our children and the future greatness of our country. Make history interesting indeed ! I cannot make history more interesting than it is, except by falsi¬ fying it. And therefore when I meet a person who does not find history interesting, it does not occur to me to alter history — I try to alter him.” 6 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE II. The Uses of the Word. Let us see how the word “ peace ” is used in the Bible. 1. In the Old Testament. — The Hebrew word is shdlom, with which we may be said to be familiar, for we have turned its Arabic equivalent into “ Salaam ” and use it as an English word. Only three times is any other word in the Old Testament translated “ peace ” (Dan. viii. 25, xi. 21, 24), and the Revisers have changed “ peace ” into “ security ” each time. But shdlom is a wider word than the English word “ peace.” Its fundamental sense is well-being. It sums up the ideas of inward and outward good, and may in any particular case have a more loose or more definite meaning, according to the mind of him who uses it. The common inquiry, “ Is he well ? ” (lit. “ Is there shdlom to him ? ”) was answered by the one word “ Well ” {shdlom). When David asked what progress the war was making, the Hebrew is “ David asked for the shdlom of the war.” But in countries often ravaged, and among people often ruined, by war, every blessing of life was found in peace. Thus the incidental meaning of the word has permanently displaced the original ; and we translate it by an expression which never suggests to us the idea of completeness, but only that of tranquillity or rest. In the security of our modern travel we scarcely realize how much uneasiness was caused, in days when there were too many whose hand was against every man, when a company of travellers descried the approach of another band. It would be an anxious question, Are these friends or enemies ? Does their coming mean war or peace ? And the salutation of peace was a welcome relief of well-grounded apprehensions. It is in this way that we can explain most of the Old Testament passages where this salutation is found. Thus, when Joseph’s brethren timidly accosted Joseph’s steward, with excuses for an incident of their former visit which, they feared, exposed them to suspicion, how reassuring was his answer, “ Peace be unto you.” So, again, when there came to David in the hold men from Benjamin and Judah, who, he feared, had come to betray him into the hands of his enemies, much needed INTRODUCTION 7 was their answer of peace : “ Thine are we, David, peace, peace be unto thee ; peace be to thy helpers, for God helpeth thee.” But, most of all was reassurance necessary when men felt themselves closely brought into the presence of God, who, their consciences told them, was justly displeased for their sins. Thus an angelic vision caused Gideon only alarm, and he cried : “ Alas ! 0 Lord God, because I have seen an angel of the Lord face to face ” ; but the Lord said : “ Peace be unto thee, fear not ; thou shalt not die.” And the same reassuring salutation, “ Peace be unto thee ; fear not,” was given to Daniel when he fainted at an angelic visitation. 2. In the New Testament. — Just as in the Old Testament so in the New there is one word which pre-eminently stands for peace. It is the word eirene : we see it in the English “ eirenicon.” Now we should have expected that this word would generally mean either peace as opposed to war (which is the common meaning of the word in classical Greek), or else welfare, prosperity, its chief meaning in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. But it is not so. Certainly it is used a few times for peace as against war, and oftener (though chiefly in salutations) for welfare. Its commonest meaning by far, however, is the peace which flows from reconciliation with God, “ the tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God, and content with its earthly lot, whatever that is ” — as Thayer puts it. Nothing could more strikingly illustrate the inwardness of Christi¬ anity, says Findlay.1 More than that, nothing could show more clearly that Christianity is the religion of the Cross. But we must be careful that we do not misinterpret the word. After the resurrection Christ appeared to the disciples and said, “ Peace be unto you.” Let us take these words and consider what meanings they might possibly have. (1) Let us suppose that the word “ peace ” carries with it the Old Testament idea of thriving or prospering. A man has peace, it has been well said, when things are with him as they should be ; and peace then is the absence of causes which would disturb the well-being of a society or of a man. It is that well-being conceived of as undisturbed. Such a word naturally fills a great place in the 1 Single-vol. Dictionary of the Bible, 696. 8 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE history of civil society, of nations. Peace in the political sense of the term means pre-eminently the absence of war. “ The peace,” in the language of Englishmen, still means the state of things which followed upon the close of the great struggle with the first Napoleon at Waterloo. Peace in this political or civil sense has its place and recognition in the Bible, as, to take a single instance, when we are told that there was peace between Hiram and Solomon, so that Solomon had peace all round about him. Such peace of the nation, resulting from freedom from invasion and from war, is again and again referred to in the Hebrew psalmists and prophets as one of God’s best blessings ; and it has always been prayed for by the Christian Church. Manv beautiful collects to this effect were com- posed in the dark days when the old Roman Empire was breaking up beneath the repeated and successful assaults of savage races, when it seemed as if all that was strong and stable in human society and life had well-nigh come to an end. And of a like character and spirit are the versicles adapted in the Prayer Book from the Old Testament : “ Give peace in our time, 0 Lord, because there is none other that fighteth for us, but only thou, 0 God ” ; or the comparatively modern prayers that peace and happiness, as well as truth and justice, may be established among us by the consulta¬ tions of Parliament, under the blessing of God, or that the King may study to preserve the people committed to his charge, in peace, as well as in wealth and godliness. Certainly these are prayers which cannot, especially since the Great War and in the present state of Europe and the world, be said too earnestly by any man wdio believes that God really does govern the world, and that war is among the most dreadful scourges that can afflict the human race. (2) But the peace which Christ breathed on the Apostles was that which is needed by a spiritual society. And this peace might mean, first of all, freedom from interference on the part of those who did not belong to it. No doubt as they listened to the sounds of the Jewish mob out in the street, resting as they were in their upper chamber on that Easter evening, the Apostles thought of this sense of the blessing. It was for them an insurance against rough hand¬ ling — against persecution. Certainly it was no part of the design of our Lord that Christians should be at constant war even with Pagan or J ewish society. On the contrary, the worshippers of Christ were to do what they could to live in social harmony with those who did INTRODUCTION 9 not know or love their Master. Christians were to “ follow peace with all men.” They were to submit themselves to every ordinance of man, that is, to the heathen government of the Empire, for the Lord’s sake. They were to do good unto all men, although the household of faith had a first claim on them. They were not even to shun heathen fornicators, St. Paul says (because in that case, he adds, they must, living in such a city as Corinth, go out of the world), but only Christians who, knowing better, dishonoured thus their Master’s name. And yet, if the Apostles had thought that this was the meaning of the blessing, they would soon be undeceived. Pentecost was quickly followed by imprisonments, by martyrdoms. For three centuries the Church was almost continuously persecuted. No doubt it was right to pray — and men did pray — that they might lead a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty, but it was with reference to this meaning of the word that our Lord Him¬ self had already said : “ Think ye that I am come to send peace on earth ? I tell you nay, but rather division. I am not come to send peace, but a sword.” He knew that a pure and heavenly creed such as Christianity could not but excite hostility in the human heart wherever it did not compel faith and love. He knew that this hostility in the long run meant persecution, and He would not encourage unwarrantable expectations. No ; the peace of Easter evening was not an insurance for the Church against the world’s persecution. Christians have prayed for some sixteen centuries at least, in the words of one of the most familiar and beautiful of our collects, “ that we, being delivered from the fear of our enemies, may pass our time in rest and quietness.” But the peace which Christ promised is independent of outward troubles. It certainly does not consist in their absence. (3) Does the blessing, then, refer to concord amongst Christians ? No doubt our Lord had said, “ Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another.” He had said, “ By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one towards another.” He had said of others that “ a house divided against itself cannot stand.” He had pleaded in the hearing of His disciples “ that as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, they also may be one in us.” He had hushed up disputes about pre-eminence by His own example of ready and complete self-sacrifice. No doubt, also, peace, in this IO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE sense of concord among Christians, is much insisted on by the Apostles as a great and most precious grace. The Corinthians are bidden : “ Be of one mind : live in peace.” The Thessalonians are told : “ Be at peace among yourselves.” The Ephesians are en¬ treated to keep “ the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” The Hebrews are to “ follow peace with all men, and holiness.” Timothy is desired, as a Christian bishop, to follow peace as well as righteous¬ ness, and faith, and charity. The Roman Christians are warned that the kingdom of God is not adherence to their private notions about meat and drink, but “ righteousness and peace.” They are desired to “ follow after the things which make for peace.” The Galatians are told that peace — peace with their brethren as well as with their God — is the third of the fruits of the Spirit. Certainly it was meant — we cannot doubt it — that peace should reign within the fold of Christ. He who is the author of peace and lover of concord so willed it ; but neither here nor elsewhere did He impose His will mechanically upon baptized men. Such is our human im¬ perfection that the very earnestness of faith has constantly been itself fatal to peace. Controversy, no doubt, is a bad thing, but there are worse things in the world than controversy. The peace of indifference to truth — the sort of peace which is often exhibited as a pleasing contrast to the distracting controversies of the Christian Church — is really purchased at the cost of a man’s complete degradation — the degradation of the man who voluntarily closes his eyes to the gravest and most interesting question that can interest a thinking being. Controversy with all its evils is better than that ; and controversy is as old, or all but as old, as Christen¬ dom. Corinth, Galatia, Jerusalem were full of it, each one of them, in St. Paul’s day, just as every portion and section of the Church of Christ — the Church of Rome, most certainly, being no sort of exception to the rule — is distracted by it now. It may well make us pray God to inspire continually the universal Church with the Spirit of unity and concord, as well as of truth ; but its existence does not forfeit the great gift which our Lord made to His Apostles on the evening of Easter day ; for that gift was a gift — we cannot doubt it — chiefly and first, if not exclusively, to the individual soul. (4) The words which our Lord spoke must have recalled the saying in the supper-room : “ Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you ; not as the world giveth give I unto you ” — INTRODUCTION n an external peace, produced mechanically or by force, within the power of the world sometimes to give. Augustus had secured it a few years before for the great Roman Empire. A travesty of inward peace might for a while be given to the single soul by pleasure or by occupation, but illusions of this kind do not last, and they leave matters worse, far worse, than ever when they break up. The peace of Christ — “ my peace,” He calls it — is that heavenly tranquillity of the soul which belongs to the new regenerate life of man, to man’s eternal life, begun here in the sphere of time, and ended beyond the grave. It is the light of His countenance who is called five times deliberately in the pages of the New Testament, “ the God of peace.” It is His light falling upon the spirit of man, and conferring on it something of the calm, tranquil dignity which belongs to the highest strength and goodness — which belongs to His eternal life. In thirteen epistles St. Paul prays that his correspondents may have grace and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ ; grace first, that is, God’s active favour ; and then its fruit in the soul — that great gift of inward harmony with God and with self from which the peace of the Church, and ultimately the peace of all civil society, must really radiate. II. The God of Peace. Literature. Abbott, L., Signs of Promise (1889). Barrett, G. S., The Whole Armour of God (1905). Davidson, Randall T., The Testing of a Nation (1920). Davies, T., Sermons and Leading Thoughts (1895). Dougall, L., The Practice of Christianity (1913). Garrod, H. B., Dante , Goethe's Faust, and Other Lectures (1913). Gordon, S. D., Quiet Talks on Service. Hicks, E., Our Life Here (1912). Huntington, F. D., Christian Believing and Living (1877). Knight, G. H., These Three (1914). Leifchild, J., in Pulpit Memorials (1878). Macfarlane, W. H., Redemptive Service (1913). Maclaren, A., The God of the Amen (1891). „ ,, Expositions : Romans (1909). Maurice, F. D., Sermons Preached in Lincoln's Inn Chapel, v. (1892). Milligan, G., St. Paul's Epistles to the Thessalonians (1908). Newman, J. H., Parochial and Plain Sermons, v. (1868). Pattison, T. H., The South Wind (1905). Pope, R. M., The Poetry of the Upward Way. Purchase, E. J., The Pathway of the Tempted (1905). Robertson, F. W., Sermons, 3rd Ser. (1876). „ „ The Human Race ( 1886). Selby, T. G., The Strenuous Gospel (1906). Stopford, F., The Great Adventure (1916). Thom, J. H., Laws of Life after the Mind of Christ (1901). Thomas, W. H. Griffith, The Power of Peace. Wardlaw, J. Plowden, The Test of War (1916). Whitelaw, T., Jehovah Jesus (1913). The God of Peace. I. The Name. 1. The names of God are very beautiful — most beautiful because most true. (1) 4 4 The God of comfort ” — bence the refuge of the broken¬ hearted, of the sorrowful, of the lonely, of the suffering. How great a company seeks the consolation of His heart, driven to Him by the pressure of their woes. (2) 44 The God of hope ” — spanning the darkest sky with a bow of promise ; inspiring the desponding with the expectation of good things to come ; opening the door of morning out of the black gloom and deep silence of night, and leading the pilgrims forth with songs of joy upon their heads. (3) 44 The Father of mercies ” — originating forgiving feeling, kindly judgment, forbearing behaviour, long-suffering patience, and evermore displaying to all men these delightful qualities Himself. (4) 44 The Father of lights ” — Author of truth for the mind ; Fountain of righteousness for the conscience, and of love for the heart ; pouring into the inner world a brighter radiance than the light of the sun ; kindling the dawn of a day which shall never be quenched in night. (5) 44 The God of peace ” — abiding in the element of peace, untempted of evil, undisturbed by passion, untroubled by storm, earthquake, fall of kings, or excitement of nations ; breathing peace upon the soul of man ; extinguishing the fires of human resentment and anger ; persuading to forgiveness and gentleness ; building up through the ages by the spread of His Gospel, and 15 1 6 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE by the operations of His providence, tbe conditions of a universal and permanent peace, based upon His Fatherhood of men and their universal brotherhood in Christ Jesus, the Elder Brother. There are many special titles given to God in the New Testa¬ ment ; but this is found most frequently of all. It occurs no less than seven times, and on each occasion it is used in connection with the Christian life of sanctification in one or other of its aspects. It is a significant thought that peace is so closely connected with holiness. Holiness is soul-harmony, and therefore impossible apart from peace. Let us take a brief look at these texts. In Rom. xv. 33 we have, “ The God of peace be with you all ” ; in Rom. xvi. 20, “ The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly ” ; in 1 Cor. xiv. 33, “ For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace ” ; in 2 Cor. xiii. 11, “ Live in peace ; and the God of love and peace shall be with you ” ; in Phil. iv. 9, “ Think on these things . . . these things do, and the God of peace shall be with you ” ; in 1 Thess. v. 23, “ And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly ” ; in Heb. xiii. 20, “ The God of peace adjust you.” There is what is called “ the cushion of the sea.” Down beneath the surface that is agitated with storms, and driven about with winds, there is a part of the sea that is never stirred. When we dredge the bottom and bring up the remains of animal and vegetable life, we find that they give evidence of not having been disturbed in the least for hundreds and thousands of years. The peace of God is that eternal calm which, like the cushion of the sea, lies far too deep down to be reached by any external trouble and disturbance, and he who enters into the peace of God, and has the peace of God enter into him, becomes partaker of that undisturbed and undisturbable calm.1 2. Now if we rightly grasp the significance and sweep of the words we shall never rest content with such superficial exposition of them as supposes that by “ the God of peace ” is meant nothing more or deeper, nothing grander or higher, than the Author of concord between man and man. The phrase includes that, of course, as it includes other possible applications ; but in its essence it goes a great deal deeper than that, and lays hold upon an aspect of the Divine Nature itself. 1 A. T. Pierson, The Heart of the Gospel, 178. THE GOD OF PEACE 17 It must imply that the peace which is here ascribed to Him, as its source and fontal possessor, is that deep and changeless calm of an infinite and perfectly harmonious Being which is broken by no work, perturbed by no agitations, and yet is no more stagnant than the calm depths of the ocean, being penetrated for ever by warmth and majestic motion in which there is rest. Strange it may seem that it should be so, considering all He looks down upon in the universe, and more particularly in the world He has made, with its sin and misery. When one reflects how the hearts of good men and women are torn with anguish at the pitiable spectacles of guilt *and wretchedness they behold, it is difficult to believe that God can be indifferent to the same. Nor is He. Yet the thought is that none of these things disturb His peace, reach so far inward as to cast Him into a condition of unrest and disquietude, interfere with His blessedness, or destroy the equilibrium or even balance of His divine mind. If they did, the fact that they did would prove Him to be like His creatures. It would almost destroy the hope that He could help and save His creatures. It is, however, certain that while not indifferent to the sins and sorrows of the human race, He is Himself calm and undisturbed — possessed of a deep peace which passeth all understanding. God is rest : the infinite nature of God is infinite repose. The “ I am ” of God is contrasted with the I am become of all other things. Everything else is in a state of becoming , God is in a state of Being. The acorn has become the plant, and the plant has become the oak. The child has become the man, and the man has become good, or wise, or whatever else it may be. God ever is.1 3. This eternal rest in the Almighty Being arises out of His unity. Not because He is a unit, but because He is a unity. There is no discord between the powers and attributes of the mind of God ; there is no discord between His justice and His love ; there is no discord demanding some miserable expedient to unite them together, such as some theologians imagined when they described the sacrifice and atonement of our Redeemer by saying it is the clever expedient whereby God reconciles His justice with His love. God’s justice and love are one. Infinite justice must 1 F. W. Robertson, Sermons, iii. 139. 2 i8 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE be infinite love. Justice is but another sign of love. The infinite rest of the “ I am ” of God arises out of the harmony of His attributes. II. The Gifts. 1. “ The God of peace ” wills to give to men something not altogether unlike the tranquillity which He Himself possesses. The hope seems altogether beyond the conditions of creatural life, which is tossed to and fro amidst changes and agitations. How can the finite, whose very law of life is change, whose nature is open to the disturbances of external solicitations, and the agitations of inward emotions — how can he ever, in this respect, approximate to the repose of God ? Yet, analogous, if not similar, tranquillity may fill our hearts. Surely He who dwells in His own indisturbance and desires that His children should be partakers of His stable blessed¬ ness, is able, as well as willing, to steady the soul that is knit to Him with somewhat of His own steadiness and calm. What is it that breaks human peace ? Is it emotion, change, or any of the necessary conditions of our earthly life ? By no means. It is possible to carry an unflickering flame through the wildest tempests, if only there be a sheltering hand round it. And it is possible that my agitated and tremulous nature, blown upon by all the winds of heaven, may still burn straight upwards, undeviating from its steady aspiration, if only the hand of the Lord be about me. Precisely because God is the God of peace, it must be His desire to impart His own tranquillity to us. If In Kensington Gardens Matthew Arnold contrasts the peace of the quiet meadows, trees, and water with the impious and raving uproar of men, the sound of which he vaguely hears. Here is quietude, always new ; the sheep, the birds, the flowers, the children sleep. Calm soul of all things, he cries, give me The will to neither strive nor cry, The power to feel with others give ; Calm, calm me more ; nor let me die Before I have begun to live. THE GOD OF PEACE 19 Peace ! Like Dante, but without his power, Arnold sought for peace. Could he now have loved more, could he have more fulfilled his prayer to feel with others more than with himself, could he have not had that foolish desire to know himself — the utmost thing the Pagan reached — he wmuld soon have gained it. “ Know thyself,” said Socrates, and man, because this dictum flattered his pride, thought it the ultimate wisdom. It is rather the ultimate foolish¬ ness. The true thing to say is this — “ Know Nature, man, and God ; get outside of thyself into their glory and beauty. Only then, thou canst begin to justly know thyself ; only then, at union through love with all that is without thee, lost in joy, beyond self-disturbance, self-inquiry, canst thou, in humility, attain to peace.” x 2. But when we venture to speak of God’s peace in any con¬ nection with ourselves, we know that we are asking for what God cannot give to the selfish, to the worldly, to the effortless, the un¬ faithful, the slow of heart, or blind of spirit. We are not asking for what God could give without our co-operation — for happiness, for pleasures, for quiet days and nights, for exemption from pain and trouble, and mortal weariness and the burden of great cares. We are asking for courage, for fortitude, for self-forgetfulness, for the heart of Christ, for the fellowship of God, and to be worthy to suffer for their sakes. We are not asking to be saved from the Cross, but to have it laid upon us and to bear it well. We are asking for souls to which God can come and make His abode with them ; and we know that great hopes cannot be given to mean, unenterprising men ; nor foretastes of Heaven to the earthly, the sensual, the uncharitable, the unforgiving ; nor the strength of the Lord to those who do not strive upon His side. It lies not on the sunlit hill Nor on the sunlit plain : Nor ever on any running stream Nor on the unclouded main. But sometimes, through the Soul of Man, Slow moving o’er his pain, The moonlight of a perfect peace Floods heart and brain.2 1 Stopford A. Brooke, Four Poets, 78. 2 William Sharp, “ The White Peace.” 20 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE 3. What do we receive from the God of peace when we receive this gift which is called the peace of God ? (1) We receive mercy . This is the first element that enters into the constitution of “ the peace of God ” in man. It is mercy meet¬ ing man as a sinner, providing and revealing the ground of forgive¬ ness, presenting it to the apprehension, and urging it on the accept¬ ance of faith ; it is man believing the testimony, confiding in the object set forth ; using it in the way and for the purposes prescribed ; and experiencing as the result the promised blessedness : the “ blessedness of the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, and to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity.” “ There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” There is peace for him, when “ the wicked forsakes his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and turns unto the Lord, who can abundantly pardon.” Isaiah was disturbed and agitated by what revealed to him the glory and purity of the Divine nature, and the corruption and ofiensiveness of his own ; “ Woe is me ! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips ” ; but he was calmed and tranquillized and became the partaker of a Divine peace when a live coal from the altar of sacrifice was laid upon his mouth, and the voice of the seraphim was heard saying, “ Lo ! this has touched thy lips ; thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged.” No angelic voice in vivid dream, nor waking vision, is to be expected now, announcing to the sinner the forgiveness of his sins ; but there may be such a certainty of the truth of the Gospel, such a persuasion of the fidelity of God, such a perception of the nature and appropriateness of His mode of merciful intervention in Christ, such a consciousness of contrition and faith, and such an indescribable realization of peace, hope, love, and joy, that the penitent and believing man may be able neither to doubt the fact of His forgiveness nor to resist the feeling of deep, calm, sober blessedness which the humble persuasion of the fact brings with it. (2) Another gift we receive is harmony with God. Very beauti¬ fully does St. Paul say that He who seeks to sanctify us wholly, seeks it as “ the God of peace.” He wants to give us thereby a peace that is divinely full, a “ perfect peace ” : and He can do this in no other way than by bringing us into a complete and glad conformity to His will in everything. “ Great peace have they that love thy law ” is a saying that means “ great peace have they that joyfully THE GOD OF PEACE 2 I set God upon the throne of heart and life, and dare not attempt to put Him oh with any lower place.” And His Will is our Peace ” — “ E la sua voluntade e nostra pace.” This is, as I view it, the most pregnant line in all the “ Commedia.” It enwraps all Dante’s teaching, and from it, with patience and with reverence, we can unroll it all. It gives the key to the old Bible story of the Fall of Man and to that other story of the Fall of Lucifer. It explains in seven words the whole Christian theory of human aberration, and makes obedience “ sweet reason¬ ableness.” It is spoken by one who is in bliss, and at length knows fully the secret of bliss. The speaker, Piccarda, now realizes that there is nothing of slavery or base subordination in the absolute sub¬ mission of the lesser to the greater, of the created to the Creator — nay, more, she sees that “ it is essential to this blest existence to keep itself within the will divine,” that the fruit of disobedience, if general, must be anarchy, whence Chaos, destroying Cosmos. Piccarda’s bliss is perfect — perfect as that of the very Seraphim above her, because she sees that she is where the eternal fitness of things has placed her in the realms of bliss.1 (3) Harmony with God is the condition of harmony with self and of the whole work of sanctifying. This also is the gift of the God of peace : “ The very God of peace,” says St. Paul, “ sanctify you wholly.” Elsewhere the work is attributed to Christ Himself ; “ who is made of God unto us, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification ” ; and who, it was predicted, should “ sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.” In other places, however, the work is attributed to the Holy Spirit as His special work. We are saved, so we read, “ by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.” “ Ye are washed, ye are sanctified,” we are told again, “ in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” (4) Another gift is keeping. Sanctifying within ; keeping without. For the peace of God is a sentinel. “ The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and thoughts in Christ Jesus ” (Ph 47). The soul is no longer an arena, but a garrison ringed by battlements, posted within some high yet not impregnable castle. The sentry at the castle gates keeps watch. Who is he ? Is he some warrior spirit, grey and storm-beat, with face and form scarred with wounds ? Is he some veteran, grim 1 H. B. Garrod, Dante, Goethe's Faust, and Other Lectures, 64. 22 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE and terrible of mien, with an iron will and an iron heart ? No, be bears no warrior’s name. His name suggests no weapon and no strife. His name is — peace ! Yes, peace is the protector spirit, the alert guardian, the watchman of our souls. Clad not in dinted armour but in white robes, mystic, wonderful, is this heavenly sentinel, the peace of God. If At the close of a sermon on the words, “ The peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep ( Gr . shall keep as by soldiers in a fortress) your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus,” he came up to the preacher with his own summary of the text, clinching it with his sharp, incisive “ What ? ” — his constant mode of eliciting assent to a sentence which in his own judgment was both justly conceived and rightly worded. His beautiful paraphrase of the text was this : “ Christ Jesus is the garrison and Peace is the sentinel.” 1 We are kept above the storms of life, although we are spec¬ tators of them. In his book, Forty-One Years in India, Lord Roberts says that on one occasion he and Lady Roberts went for a march from Simla across the hills to Chakrata. “ When passing along the ridge of a very high hill one afternoon, we witnessed rather a curious sight — a violent thunderstorm was going on in the valley below us, while we ourselves remained in the mildest, most serene atmosphere, enjoying bright sunshine and a blue sky. Dense black clouds filled up the valley a thousand feet beneath us, the thunder roared, the lightning flashed, and soon we could hear the rush of waters in the streams below from the torrents of rain which the clouds were discharging.” 2 (5) The peace of God’s presence is fower. It is the manifesta¬ tion of strength. There is no peace unless there is the possibility of the opposite of peace, although now restrained and controlled. You do not speak of the peace of a grain of sand, because it cannot be otherwise than merely insignificant, and at rest. You do not speak of the peace of a mere pond ; you speak of the peace of the sea, because there is the opposite of peace implied, there is power and strength. And this is the real character of the peace in the mind and soul of man. We make a great mistake when we say there is strength in passion, in the exhibition of emotion. Passion and emotion, and all those outward manifestations, prove, not strength, but weakness. If the passions of a man are strong, it 1 A. Moody Stuart, Recollections of the Late John Duncan, LL.D., 218. 2 Lord Roberts, Forty-One Years in\India, 309. THE GOD OF PEACE 23 proves the man himself is weak, if he cannot restrain or control his passions. The real strength and majesty of the soul of man is calmness, the manifestation of strength ; “ the peace of God ” ruling ; the word of Christ saying to the inward storms “ Peace ! ” and there is a great calm. Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease ; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace. Breathe through the heats of our desire Thy coolness and Thy balm ; Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire ; Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, 0 still small voice of calm ! 1 (6) Thus God, who is the God of peace, in giving us peace does but give us Himself . His presence is peace. Hence our Lord, in the same discourse in which He promised His disciples peace, promised also that He would come and manifest Himself unto them, that He and His Father would come to them, and make Their abode with them. ^ Now he who will in love give his whole diligence and might thereto, will verily come to know that true eternal peace which is God Himself, as far as that is possible to a creature ; insomuch that what was bitter to him before shall become sweet, and his heart shall remain unmoved under all changes, at all times, and after this life he shall attain unto everlasting peace.2 *[[ What I had possessed some years before, in the period of my spiritual enjoyment, was consolation, peace — the gift of God rather than the Giver ; but now, I was brought into such harmony with the will of God that I might now be said to possess not merely consolation, but the God of consolation ; not merely peace, but the God of peace* Long days and nights upon this restless bed Of daily, nightly weariness and pain ! — Yet Thou art here, my ever-gracious Lord, Thy well-known voice speaks not to me in vain : — “ In Me ye shall have peace ! ” 1 J. G. Whittier. 2 Theologia Germanica. 3 T. C. Upham, The Life of Madame Guyon, 26. 24 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE The darkness seemeth long, and even the light No respite brings with it, no soothing rest For this worn frame ; yet in the midst of all Thy love revives. Father, Thy will is best. “ In Me ye shall have peace ! ” 1 1 Horatins .Bonar. III. The Peace of Christ. \ 25 Literature. Bernard, T. D., The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ (1892). Brooke, S. A., The Spirit of the Christian Life (1902). Burroughs, E. A., The Way of Peace (1920). Denney, J., The Epistles to the Thessalonians (1892). Dykes, J. Oswald, Sermons (1882). Forbes, A. P., Sermons on the Grace of God (1862). Fox, W. J., Collected Works , vol. ii. (1865). Garrod, G. W., The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians (1900). Greenhough, J. G., The Mind of Christ in St. Paul (1909). Harris, J. Rendel, The Sufferings and the Glory (1914). Hepher, C., The Fruits of Silence (1915). Hicks, E., Our Life Here (1912). Hoare, J. G., “ Life ” in St. John's Gospel (1901). Huntington, F. D., Christian Believing and Living (1877). Hutton, J. A., Discerning the Times (1920). Ingram, A. F. W., A Mission of the Spirit (1906). Jowett, J. H., Things that Matter Most (1913). Liddon, H. P., Advent in St. Paul's (1891). ,, ,, Easter in St. Pauls (1892). Lightfoot, J. B., Sermons in St. Pauls Cathedral (1891). Little, W. J. Knox, The Mystery of the Passion (1881). Macfarlane, W. H., Redemptive Service (1913). Maclaren, A., Pauls Prayers (1893). Meyer, F. B., The Present Tenses of the Blessed Life. Nicoll, W. R., Sunday Evening (1910). Sutherland, W. D. M., Ideals for the Christian Life (1911). Thom, J. H., Laws of Life after the Mind of Christ , 2nd Ser. (1901). Thompson, J. D., Peace , Perfect Peace , in Life and in Death (1915). Tulloch, J., Some Facts of Religion and Life (1877). Whiting, L., Lilies of Eternal Peace (1908). Woods, H. G., Christianity and War (1916). Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels (1908) (J. C. Lambert). 26 The Peace of Christ. The words which furnish the title of this chapter are not to be found in the Authorized Version. They are found, however, in the Revised Version. For the best attested reading in Col. iii. 15 is, “ Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.” And that reading is not only recommended by manuscript authority, but has the advantage of bringing the expression into connection with the great words of the Lord, “ Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” A strange legacy to leave, and a strange moment at which to speak of His peace ! It was but an hour or so since He had been “ troubled in spirit,” as He thought of the betrayer — and in an hour more He would be beneath the olives of Gethsemane ; and yet, even at such a time, He bestows on His friends some share in His own deep repose of spirit. Surely “ the peace of Christ ” must mean what “ my peace ” meant ; not only the peace which He gives, but the peace which lay, like a great calm on the sea, on His own deep heart ; and surely we cannot restrict so solemn an expression to the meaning of mutual concord among brethren. That, no doubt, is included in it, but there is much more than that. Whatever made the strange calm which leaves such unmistakable traces in the picture of Christ drawn in the Gospels may be ours. We should carefully accentuate the pronoun, “ my.” It is not so much of the peace that He purchased with His blood, nor of the peace that He has made, nor of the peace of heaven, that our Saviour here speaks : but of the very peace that filled His own glorious nature, and kept it so calm and still amid the storms that swept around His pathway through the world. 27 28 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE So, though the words are musical words, the music is not of earth alone. They touch a strain above the world. In their conscious¬ ness of spiritual power, in their farness from the strife and trouble of men, they are of that true supernatural which abides in the secret of God. But in their tenderness for those who loved Him, in the sweetness of expression which brought together in them human sadness and the Divine power which could so boldly promise peace and give it, they are of that exquisite quality which for ever moves the heart of man. Sorrow, power, and beauty meet and mingle in them. There may be, there often is, peace in the midst of sorrow. It seems a contradiction, but it is a fact. There is much that causes sorrow, as, for example, sickness and suffering, sin and death. These are things that are near. Like clouds above us, they may obscure the sun. But let us remember that clouds may be near us yet not obscure the sun. When travelling in Switzerland, I have climbed some mountain-peak and have looked down upon the storm. Standing with a cloudless sky above, and in most brilliant sunshine, I have looked down at the storm-clouds rolling at my feet. I have seen them seething as in a boiling cauldron, and then with a flash of lightning and a sudden clap of thunder the storm has begun. The rain has fallen in torrents on the valleys below, while, untouched by rain or storm, we have stood in sunshine and looked down upon the clouds ; they have been there close by, but not between us and the sun.1 I. The Secret of Christ’s Peace. What was the secret of Christ’s deep and unfailing peace ? 1. First of all, and most of all, it was the conviction that all through His earthly career Christ felt that He was at one with God, in the spirit and purpose of His life and work. Realizing His oneness with the Father, it was ever His meat and His drink to do His will ; and so, notwithstanding all the humiliation and sorrow and pain which the fulfilment of His mission entailed, there was in Him at all 1 J. G. Hoare, “ Life ” in St. John's Gospel, 60. THE PEACE OF CHRIST 29 times the absolute and blessed conviction that His words and acts were in complete accord with the mind and will of God, and were, as such, the means of manifesting His grace supremely to a sin- stricken world. He often said, “ I am come to do the will of him that sent me.” That was the firm road that His holy feet for ever trod. It led Him through dark ways, but He never flinched. No, not even when the bitter cup was held to His fainting lips and the faltering manhood shrank ; even then, “ Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done.” Temptation, trial, agony ! We have seen what He went through right up to the very Cross ; but on one moment especially we linger — after the agony of Gethsemane, as He rose from the exhausting prayer that drained His life-blood, and the traitor, and the soldiers, and the multitude came upon Him. And in that moment Jesus met them, profoundly calm, with the paleness of death already on His face, but with strength of perfect peace. Victory was His ; victory after conflict and agony of soul ; victory of absolute submission, and therefore of absolute decision. “ I come to do thy will, 0 my God.” No need, then, of the soldiers. “ Whom seek ye ? I am he.” All around Christ raged a very storm of lies — hypocrisy and blindness born of pride, confusion of the old with the new, battling opinions contradicting and denouncing each other, false ideas and false gods. Oh, do we not know it all too well ? We cannot always find our anchors in the storm of false and true, in errors that last because of their truth, in truth that fails because of its error. The very ground of our faith, the belief in God, sometimes trembles beneath our feet. A thousand opinions beset us, eager for our acceptance ; a hundred sects each claim the truth as alone in them ; the stars of our childhood’s religion are hidden, and we drift rudderless over the ocean, now to this island, now to that, hoping in each new land to find repose — and find it not. We might despair, did we not hear the wondrous tidings that one of us had peace — One, too, who lived in as great a storm as we. We know there is but one way in which He could have had it, for it is the only way in which we should be content ourselves to have it — in union with divine truth. For it is that we are bold enough — in true remembrance of our lofty origin — to ask for, to desire, to be unsatisfied until we find it. We demand to be at one with absolute Truth.1 1 Stopford A. Brooke, The Spirit of the Christian Life, 327. 30 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE 2. He was at peace in Himself. As revealed to us in the Gospels, especially in that of St. John, we perceive that a deep sea of holiest repose lay at the very centre of the personal being of the Lord Jesus. Amidst all the conflicts and sufferings and contradictions which surrounded Him, and which, as the Man of Sorrows, He felt as none of us could feel, there was in the depths of His soul a calm strength, not of indifference or impassiveness, but of “ something vital, and flowing like a calm, strong river.” What is human peace ? In the individual life it is balance, proportion, co-operation ; and consequently the doing of the things that life is made to do. Balance of what ? Proportion in what ? Co-operation as between what ? Let personality be divided ; if you will, in apostolic language, as consisting of spirit, soul, and body ; or accepting Kant’s analysis, as consisting of intelligence, volition, and emotion. Find me a man in whom these things are balanced, and I find you a man who is at peace. That man who is cultivating his physical powers at the cost of mental and spiritual is never at peace. That is a disproportion of personality that means war and ruin ultimately. That man who is cultivating his spiritual activities at the expense of his physical is not at peace. Find me a man in whom these things are perfectly poised and balanced and adjusted, and I show you a man at peace. He is not a still man, not a stagnant man, not a man at rest. He is a man at peace.1 3. He was in union with God’s Universe. Natural forces become the friendly allies of men who are right with God. “ The whole creation groaneth and waiteth for the manifestation of the children of God.” When a man is one with the Maker he has the co-operation of all the Maker has made. The winds and currents are his friends. “ The stars in their courses ” fight on his side. There is established “ a covenant between him and the stones of the field.” And so peace is the condition of the soul in its God- purposed relationship of being right with Him and one with the movements of the Divine order in the world. For a moment we may guess thee From thy creatures that confess thee When the morn and even bless thee And thy smile is on the sea. 1 G. Campbell Morgan. THE PEACE OF CHRIST 3 I Then from something seen or heard, Whether forests softly stirred, Or the speaking of a word, Or the singing of a bird, Cares and sorrows cease : For a moment on the soul Falls the rest that maketh whole, Falls the endless peace.1 If LigH is peace. In these wonderful days through which we have been passing as to the weather — glorious days of God’s own wind and shower and sunshine, intermingling, kissing, laughing at each other — we have more than once seen a rainbow. If we have looked carefully at the rainbow we have seen the units, which, merging, make light. We have observed the whole gamut of colour ; the red, the orange, the yellow, the green, the blue, the indigo, the violet ; and then, presently, the prismatic raindrops ceasing to cause the spectrum analysis, the rainbow ended. But light was there, and light is peace. The rainbow is the result of storm ; it is the dividing up of light into its essential and con¬ stituent rays. Merge the rays, and you lose the colour, but you have light, and light is peace. Into the realm of music I hardly dare venture to go, so great an ignoramus am I, and yet there, most perfectly, we discover the meaning of peace. You who know the modes of music more perfectly will follow this line of illustration for yourselves. I shall content myself with the simplest application. That is perfect harmony in which we hear soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass. If each sings alone, that is not harmony. Join them, make them agree, let them symphonize, and in the harmony we have reached the sense of peace. I am less competent to invade the realm of the engineer ; and yet I venture. Do you see the great ship that ploughs her way across the sea ? Have you been on her deck intelligently ? Have you thought of the marvel, the mystery of the ship, when that ship is not at anchor, but under full steam, ploughing the waters, and braving the elements. That is peace. It is the combination in unity and activity of the elements of power. There is static power, the power restraining and holding in place ; there is dynamic power, the power equal to accomplishing things ; there is kinetic power, the power in action. The three perfectly working together, peace ! Peace is not stagnation, not stillness, but harmonic realization of all the meaning and the mystery of being, 1 F. W. H. Myers, Poems, 139. 32 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE and the expression of that meaning and mystery in the grandeur of accomplishment.1 I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell ; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely ; and his countenance soon Brightened with joy ; for from within were heard Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea. Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of Faith ; and there are times, I doubt not, when to you it doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things ; Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power ; And central peace, subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation.2 4. Again, in His dealing with men there was perfect sympathy — keen, quick, sensitive. Whenever He came into contact with a man He entered into that man’s life and shared his feelings. He expressed His sympathy in perpetual sacrifice. We know how we have been disturbed by men, and perplexed. He was never disturbed. His peace was the peace of perfect balance and poised relationship, expressing itself in His sympathy with men, always expressing itself in service. He had throughout His entire life the consciousness that He was seeking the welfare of men. True, He was misunderstood, hated, and despised, and hence opposition and persecution arose against Him, but none of those experiences could ruffle the pure calm of His spirit. Men might say all manner of evil against Him falsely, but He knew that, in all things, He had been seeking not their hurt but their good. Never once had He departed from His Father’s great commission “ not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them,” and so no charge of man brought remorse to His soul, nor caused Him the slightest degree of inward discomfort. His peace was that of one who knew that His will blended with the will of His Father, and that His purposes were ever beneficent towards men. 1 G. Campbell Morgan. 2 Wordsworth, “ The Excursion.” THE PEACE OF CHRIST 33 Walking the New Earth, Lo, a divine One Greets all men godlike, Calls them his kindred, He, the Divine. Is it Thor’s hammer Rays in his right hand ? Weaponless walks he ; It is the White Christ, Stronger than Thor.1 5. It was peace in the view of the Cross. It is an attainment ; it is a victory ; it is tribulation overcome. It is the mightiest powers of our nature balanced, reconciled, and harmonized at last, through we know not what struggles and sufferings, till, by the perfect sway of one supreme principle of faith, there are the equipoise and serenity that pass all understanding. If When one looks at Him as represented, say, in the beautiful play at Oberammergau, one of the most beautiful things about Him is the calm with which He goes through that terrible last scene. He seems to have an atmosphere of peace folded round His soul. People say the most bitter things to Him, but this beautiful atmosphere catches all the things that are said and burns them out, as the atmosphere surrounding the earth catches the meteors that fall and turns them into thin dust. A glorious peace surrounds His soul.2 *[[ Did He not recognize the meaning of the Cross ? I re¬ member a remarkable sunset in the valley of Sarnen. It was an evening in the later summer. The sun was westering slowly, and throwing across the lake and nearer ridges streams of mellowing golden light. The long line of the mountains of Engelberg rose peak on peak against the sky. The sky ! Not sky behind those mountains, but volumes of vapour, for mass on mass, pile on pile, rose the tremendous bastions of the clouds. To call them inky black would be to speak in tame and insufficient language. They showed such depth of unimagined darkness, it seemed the very essence of the night. And against this background of elaborated gloom stood clear, as if from a sky of oxide of silver, the peaks and promontories of the mountain world. The effect on the mind was marvellous ; the gazer could not but be arrested by the deep, 1 J. R. Lowell, “ The Voyage to Vinland ” ( Poetical Works, iii. 229). 2 A. F. Winnington Ingram, A Mission of the Spirit, 105. 3 34 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE uncanny darkness revealed by the glory of the setting sun. One governing fact was on the mind, one illuminating power, one strange tone, half of physical nature, half of mental vision ; the light was the sunset, the tone was a sense of unknown possibilities of doom, the fact was the silent awfulness of the gathering storm. How clearly and constantly that fact was before the mind of Christ is evident from the sacred story. Did He speak sweet words in the quiet home of Nazareth ? did He walk in later life in the fig-shaded paths of Ephraim ? did He teach in the Temple ? did He rest at Bethany ? did He burst forth for the moment into His native glory on the Mount of Transfiguration % — behind all — like the cloud curtains behind the mountains of Sarnen — was the fact of the Passion. And yet, even when the Cross was close at hand, His words were, “ Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” 1 “ Not peace ! A sword I come to bring ! ” And with its keen edge didst Thou thrust The empty pomp of priest and king Into the empty dust. Yet was Thy sword our peace ! For spurned Wert Thou, and for Thy blood they cried ; And so on Calvary they returned The sword — into Thy side ! Nor dreamt they that it should release (While vengeance thus they were demanding) That sacramental flow of peace Which passeth understanding ! 2 II. The Lord of Peace. 1. In closing the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians St. Paul utters this prayer : “ Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in all ways.” The prayer is remarkable in more respects than one. (1) There is the place given to peace as the supreme blessing. This is rather rare in the New Testament, apart from the salutations 1 W. J. Knox-Little, The Mystery of the Passion , 161. 2 G. Thomas, The Wayside Altar, 21. THE PEACE OF CHRIST 35 and benedictions, which however are numerous. But in the Old Testament it is quite frequent, and is spoken of as if it were the fullest and final blessing of the Messiah’s time. (2) Next, the range of the gift of peace — “ at all times in all ways ”■ — is remarkable. That means that just as Christ’s own peace is perpetual and multiform, unbroken, and presenting itself in all the aspects in which tranquillity is possible for a human spirit, so there may be in our hearts a deep tranquillity, over which disasters, calamities, sorrows, losses, need have no power. There is no necessity why, when my outward life is troubled, my inward life should be perturbed. There may be light in the dwellings of Goshen, while darkness lies over all the land of Egypt. (3) Then there is the striking title applied to Christ, “ the Lord of peace.” It is a title which is clearly intended to recognize the divine power of Christ. In order to see that, we have but to bring it into proximity with the title “ God of peace ” which St. Paul alone uses. The word “ peace ” was not, indeed, a new one ; but it had been baptized into Christ, like many another, and become a new creation. Newman said that when he passed out of the Church of England into the Church of Rome all the Christian ideas were, so to speak, magnified ; everything appeared on a vaster scale. This is a very good description, at all events, of what one sees on passing from natural morality to the New Testament, from writers so great even as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius to the Apostles. All the moral and spiritual ideas are magnified — sin, holiness, peace, repentance, love, hope, God, man, attain to new dimensions. Peace, in particular, was freighted to a Christian with a weight of meaning which no pagan could conceive. It brought to mind what Christ had done for man, He who had made peace by the blood of His Cross ; it gave that assurance of God’s love, that consciousness of reconciliation, which alone goes to the bottom of the soul’s unrest. It brought to mind also what Christ had been. It recalled that life which had faced all man’s experience, and had borne through all a heart untroubled by doubts of God’s goodness. It recalled that solemn bequest : “ Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” In every sense and in every way it was connected with Christ ; it could neither be conceived nor possessed apart from Him ; He was Himself the Lord of the Christian peace. 36 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE 2. Christ is the Lord of peace because of that peace which possessed and possesses His own soul, but the title, “ the Lord of Peace,” is used in order to express His power and readiness to grant peace to others. He is the giver of that of which He alone is in perfection the possessor. “ My peace I give unto you.” What then is this peace of which Christ is the giver ? It will not differ from the peace which we receive from the God of peace. It will be that peace of God which passeth understanding. But it will have its own special characteristics, being won for us in a special and wonderful way. (1) It is knowledge of God. — A more true and full knowledge of God is the cure for every phase of human unrest. Spiritual disquiet lies outside of God. He who does not know God as He is at all, lies open to every incursion of religious disquietude ; whether through superstitious fear, or through conscience, or through doubt, or through passion, or through discontent, or through any other of the numberless and sometimes nameless alleys by which disturb¬ ance is for ever assailing the souls of men. On the other hand, the more truly and the more fully any one knows by acquaintance the personal God, the more is he rid of sources of inward dispeace ; and the nearer, as such acquaintance with God grows, will he come to that envied state in which nothing can any longer ruffle or cloud the deep serenity of a soul at rest, which, being pure, sees God’s pure face, and, being calm, reflects His calmness. “ Acquaint now thy¬ self with him, and be at peace ” (Job xxii. 21). Now the knowledge of God which gives us peace is the know¬ ledge of God as He is revealed in the Gospel. And that is the knowledge of the unity of God, the recognition of Him as our Father, and the sense of reconciliation with Him in Christ. (a) It is the knowledge of the Unity of God. The consciousness of one all-powerful, all-comprehensive, presiding will is the first stage. Without unity there can be no harmony, and therefore no peace. The polytheist’s religion was necessarily distraction. With one god of the hills, and another of the plains, with one god of strength, and another of beauty, and another of wisdom, and another of vengeance, and another of so-called love, with the necessity of appeasing this and not offending that, peace was impossible. His religion was but the reflex of his worldly life, his conflicting passions, his changing moods, his distracting cares. THE PEACE OF CHRIST 37 (b) It is the knowledge of God as our Father. We have earthly parents, to whom we are bound by the closest ties. We obey, reverence, love them. When they are taken away, we realize (some of us for the first time) how much they have been to us. We feel a vacuity, a sense of loss, an overpowering loneliness, which no time can repair. And yet even the relation between father and son, or between mother and daughter, does not satisfy all our yearnings after parental love and parental guidance. The feelings and interests of one generation are not the feelings and interests of the next. There is always some interposing barrier, some reserve, some drawback to unrestrained mutual confidence, to entire com¬ munion of heart and spirit. Only when we have learnt to throw ourselves unconditionally on the all-embracing love of our Father in Heaven shall we find that complete satisfaction, that perfect peace which passeth all understanding. (c) It is the knowledge of God through the Incarnation of the Son. Christ is not so much the realization, as the manifestation, of the Father’s love, for that love was perfect even from the beginning. God taught us His love in the life and teaching of Christ ; God sealed for us His love in the Cross and Passion and Resurrection of Christ. Henceforth it is written in large letters, written right across the scroll of this world’s history, so that men cannot choose but read. Christ has drawn us to the Father ; has reconciled us to Him ; has folded us in the arms of His infinite love. Here alone our deepest yearnings are satisfied ; here alone we find repose for our weary spirits ; repose from distraction and anxiety and temptation ; repose “ in all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment.” Lo, to the soul that looked for peace on earth, And lost her yearning with the barren years, There dawns the Star that lit the Saviour’s Birth — Broadens, until four-square, Gem-built and jewelled fair, As once to John, the Peace of God appears. Nay, but the veriest sinner in his sin Seeks but to clasp the life he knows is there, Driv’n reckless by the power of God within : — Yet he may rise and gain Some harvest of his pain, As Peter rose to pardon through despair. 38 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE Ah, God is good, Who writes His glory plain Above thee, and about thee at thy side, — Bids thee look upward from that blinding pain, And, ere thy longing tires, Kindles His sudden fires. Look, and let all thy soul be satisfied ! 1 (2) The gift of peace is the gift of Christ Himself. — It is in Christ that all the fulness of the Godhead dwells. It is through Him that the reconciliation is made. It is in Him that acceptance and new life are realized. The knowledge of God is “in the face of Jesus Christ.” You cannot separate Christ’s gifts from Christ. The only way to get anything that He gives is to get Him. It is His presence that does everything. If He is with me, the world’s annoyances will seem very small. If I hold His hand I shall not be much troubled. If I can only nestle close to His side, and come under His cloak, He will shield me from the cold blast, from whatever part it blows. If my heart is twined around Him it will partake of the stability and calm of the great heart on which it rests. When our risen Lord said, in the upper chamber, “ Peace be unto you,” He made His great and precious blessing an actual gift. He presented Himself, risen from the tomb, inaccessible to the assaults of death, in His human as in His Divine nature, as an object of exhaustless affection to the human heart. What every human heart longs for at bottom is beauty, whether it be beauty of this order or of that — whether it be merely physical or moral. And Jesus is the highest beauty. “ Thou art fairer than the children of men. Full of grace are thy lips, because God hath blest thee for ever.” All that commands awe, all that provokes tenderness, all that bids us reverence, and all that obliges us to love, meets in Him ; and thus for eighteen centuries He has commanded the affection — the pure, yet strong, affection — of millions upon millions of human hearts. And along with this affection which He has so wonderfully inspired, He has bestowed as its accompaniment, His great and blessed gift of peace. He has stayed the wasting fever of the heart by presenting Himself to the human heart as its one really legitimate object. But this has only been when He has been sought, as Scripture expresses it, with the whole heart. A second 1 R. H. Benson, Poems, 48. THE PEACE OF CHRIST 39 object of all but supreme affection creates a scbism within the soul, and is fatal to peace. “ A double-minded man,” says St. James — a man with two souls (to render him quite literally) — “ is unstable in all bis ways.” Peace can only be insured when the heart is given, in the first place and supremely, to a single object, and sits easily to all besides. ^ Your letter to-day was especially comforting and delightful to me. “ Peace I leave with you ” has always seemed to me nearly the most lovely and blessed sentence in the New Testament, our Lord’s own word in the highest and fullest sense. That it should be peace itself — not peace if our state of mind is fit to receive it, but the gift of the state of mind — is very divine. It seems Christ giving Himself (indeed it must be this) is our Peace.1 ^f The end came peacefully on the 29th of April and, kneeling by her, Marie saw steal over her face “ a look of peace beyond any that I have known or imagined, so that in a passion of love and awe I clasped my hands, crying, ‘ Oh, how lovely ! This is His Peace.’ ” Later, looking on the dead face, she was startled by its charm. “ It was that of a woman of twenty-eight or thirty, with an absolutely radiant and triumphant happiness mingled with its ineffable repose.” 2 Oh, incommunicably sweet ! No longer aching and apart, As rain upon the tender wheat, You pour upon my thirsty heart ; As scent is bound up in the rose, Your love within my bosom glows. Unseen, untouched, unheard, unknown, You take possession of your bride ; I lose myself to live alone In you, who once were crucified For me, that now would die in you, As in the sun a drop of dew.3 1 Life of Frederick Denison Maurice , i. 497. 2 Lanoe Falconer, 249. 3 Mathilde Blind, Poems, 2. IV. The Search for Peace. 41 Literature. Abbott, L., Signs of Promise (1889). Aitchison, J., The Cross of Christ (1896). Aitken, W. H. M. H., The Revealer Revealed. Avebury, Lord, Peace and Happiness (1909). Benson, A. C., Along the Road (1913). Brooks, P., The Law of Growth (1902). Campbell, L., The Christian Ideal (1877). Creighton, M., University and Other Sermons (1903). Dresser, H. W., The Religion of the Spirit in Modern Life (1914). Hepher, C., The Fruits of Silence (1915). Jones, W. B., The Peace of God (1869). Macfarlane, W. H., Redemptive Service (1913). Maclaren, A., Expositions : Philippians, etc. (1910). ,, ,, Last Sheaves (1903). Meyer, F. B., The Present Tenses of the Blessed Life. Montefiore, C. G., Truth in Religion (1906). Murray, W. H. H., in The American Pulpit of the Day , iii. (1876). Newbolt, W. C. E., Penitence and Peace (1892). Newman, J. H., Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1873). Nicoll, W. R., Sunday Evening (1910). Paget, H. L ., Peace and Happiness (1922). Pattison, M., Sermons (1885). Pierson, A. T., The Heart of the Gospel (1892). Punshon, W. M., Sermons (1882). Robertson, F. W., The Human Race (1886). Salmon, G., Cathedral and University Sermons (1900). 42 The Search for Peace. I. 1. What word in universal language is there that wakes a surer response within human hearts than that word Peace ? How necessary an element does it seem in our experience, if life is really to be worth living ! We may perhaps resign the tempting thought of joy ; we may with stoical determination lay aside the pursuit of pleasure ; but what thoughtful man can face with any degree of equanimity the idea of abandoning all hope of peace ? If we could only make sure of this we might face the most adverse circumstances without any very serious misgivings, whereas bereft of this the greatest external prosperity is little better than a pretentious mockery. No matter what struggle men are involved in, and no matter how much men enjoy their struggle, there always is below their labour a wish for peace, a sense that peace is the final and ideal condition of all things. No man who has crossed the border of barbarism, or who has any idea of life above that of a bandit and a robber, will ever dare openly to proclaim that tumult and confusion and war are the true and permanent conditions for humanity to live in. The soldier delights in war, and chafes at the very thought of stagnant, peaceful days, but still he dares propound no theory except that war is a temporary thing, the purifier of corruption, the settler of old quarrels, and so the true builder of a higher peace. The reformer shakes the foundations of old institutions, but his plea must always be that he seeks to dig deeper and lay stronger the great stones on which he may construct the new. The sceptic touches with his withering finger the fairness of a soul’s belief, and brings confusion where there used to be the placidness of an accepted 43 44 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE creed, but hardly any thinker has ventured to praise scepticism as the true resting-place (or floating-place) of a human spirit. The disturbance of faith always claims to be in order to a readjustment of faith. So everywhere peace and not war is the desire — nay, peace is the under-desire out of which war springs. War is the means, peace is the end. There may be always tumult about us here ; but, whether men’s dispositions make them look back or forward, they always discern peace in the distance-^-a Golden Age behind or a Millennium before. What a maze is a man’s heart, wherein he must lose himself every minute ! What involved and intricate turnings and turnings on itself ; what fugitive replacement of emotion by emotion ; what strife between pities and passions ; what longings for peace ! 1 2. This universal desire of peace is the reason why men have pictured it so differently to themselves. What all men wish, and no man completely has, each man will image to himself after his own character. It is the universal ideals of the race — Freedom, Strength, Peace — which have been most variously conceived, and so most often misconceived. This is the reason why the sources and the character of peace are so differently pictured by different men, and by different men at different stages of their lives. Paul, the young student, was trying to understand the world, so that he might harmoniously adjust himself to it, compel its powers to answer his demands, force it to satisfy his ambitions — it was the mastery of his mind making the world his servant ; Paul the Apostle was trying to get nearer to Christ by more perfect obedience and love — it was the heart fastening itself upon a perfect¬ ness which it loved and whom it trusted. Here are two different conceptions of peace — one of mastery, the other of dependence. One is conquered by the mind ; the other is bestowed upon the heart. One is within the range of the understanding which analyzes and investigates its grounds ; the other goes beyond or passes the understanding, and relies upon a Being who, in unknown ways and out of infinite resources, provides and supports the entirely reliant life.2 If I remember being greatly impressed by a sentence or two in Nansen’s Farthest North. He is describing the maddening mono- 1 J. Galsworthy, Some Slings and Arrows, 16. 2 Phillips Brooks, The Law of Growth, 222. THE SEARCH FOR PEACE 45 tony of tlie interminable Arctic night. “ Ah ! 55 he exclaims suddenly, “ life’s peace is said to be found by holy men in the desert. Here, indeed, is desert enough ; but 'peace ! — of that I know nothing. I suppose it is the holiness that is lacking.” The explorer was simply discovering that there is nothing in Nothing but what you yourself take into it.1 3. It is an eloquent testimony to the unrest which tortures every heart that the promise of peace should to all seem so fair. It may be presented and aimed at in very ignoble and selfish ways. It may be sought for in cowardly shirking of duty, in sluggish avoid¬ ance of effort, in selfish absorption, apart from all the miseries of mankind. It may be sought for in the ignoble paths of mere pleasure, amidst the sanctities of human love, amidst the nobilities of intellectual effort and pursuit. But all men in their workings are aiming at rest of spirit, and only in such rest does blessedness lie. “ There is no joy but calm.” It is better than all the excite¬ ments of conflict, and better than the flush of victory. Rest which is not apathy, rest which is not indolence, rest which is contem¬ poraneous with, and the consequence of, the full wholesome activity of the whole nature in its legitimate directions, that is the good that we are all longing for. The sea is not stagnant, though it be calm. There will be the slow heave of the calm billow, and the wavelets may sparkle in the sunlight, though they be still from all the winds that rave. Deep in every human heart is this cry for rest and peace. We pray for rest and beauty, that we know we cannot earn, And ever are we asking for a honey-sweet return ; But God will make it bitter, make it bitter, till we learn That with tears the race is run.2 4. This peace is offered in the Gospel. For the Gospel of Christ is most emphatically a Gospel of peace ; and peace is amongst the chief est of its promises. “ The Prince of Peace ” was one of the dearest titles of that Saviour whose birth was so longingly expected by His people : “ Peace on earth, goodwill toward men ” was the glad song by which the holy birth was announced to the world : “ Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will 1 F. W. Boreham, Faces in the Fire, 83. * C. H. Sorley, “ Marlborough and Other Poems.” 46 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE give you rest ” was the dearest promise that thrilled through the ears of weary men : “ Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you ; not as the world giveth give I unto you ” was the cheering assurance left to His sad disciples in His last talk with them before His crucifixion : and “ Peace be unto you ” is His first solemn greeting when He appears to His Apostles as their risen Lord. In these solemn words their doubts were solved, their difficulties were past, all smaller things that had perplexed them were gone : in the presence of their risen Lord they could only have peace. And so, too, is it through the whole course of the Apostolic history : we are told of the first congregation at Jerusalem that they “ did eat their meat in gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favour with all the people.” And throughout all the Apostolic writings there is no wish more common or more strongly dwelt on than that for the peace of the little Christian communities. “ The very God of peace sanctify you wholly.” “ The Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means.” “ The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ.” II. If peace is so desirable, and if it is also so obtainable, why is it that men miss it ? There are many reasons. 1. Some men miss it because they do not see that they must come to Christ for it. They say that they do not need to come. Like Thoreau, they reply that they do not need to be reconciled to God, because they have not fallen out with Him. Well, there was a time when religion was the healthy and the natural state of man’s soul. Whatever may be the literal meaning of those strange passages which tell of a garden in Eden, and God walking in that garden, this, at least, is plain, that man’s pulse once beat with love to God as naturally as the current of blood ran which carried health and vigour through his frame. And this, besides, is plain, that over all that there has passed a change. Man’s religion then was the religion of spontaneous innocence ; the only religion left open to man now, the only religion possible, is the religion of penitence. It is this which makes the Gospel from first to last to bear the THE SEARCH FOR PEACE 47 character of a system of cure. It is not a work of improvement for a nature which is already good, it is a work of remedy for a nature which has become diseased. There is one word which marks out the peculiar character of the Gospel of Christ : “I will heal him.” It is a healing process. And it is this which so peculiarly endears the Gospel to every man who is conscious of frailty and inward pollution. For if it be asked in one word what the Gospel is, we answer, it is all that apparatus of remedy by which a weak, erring, and guilty spirit may get back again the strength and the purity which it has lost. The first thing, therefore, that is necessary in order that we may enjoy the blessing of peace is conscious reconciliation with God . “ Being justified by faith, we have peace with God.” Here is the scriptural assertion of the believer’s privilege — “ peace with God,” freedom from the sense of wrath, and from the apprehension of doom, and this freedom to be enjoyed already — not merely to light up the death-bed, not merely to play around the destiny with a sort of tremulous lustre, but to brighten with its radiance the sky of the present, as well as to redeem the future from its otherwise hopeless gloom. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews in that emphatic expression 44 first King of righteousness, and after that also King of peace,” penetrated very deeply into the heart of Christ’s reign and work, and echoed a sentiment that runs all through Scripture. Hearken to one psalmist : “ The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness.” Hearken to another : “ Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Hearken to a prophet : 44 The work of righteousness shall be peace ; and the effect of righteousness, quietness, and assurance for ever.” Hearken to the most Hebraistic of New Testament writers : “ The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace.” Hearken to the central teaching of the most Evangelical, if I may so say, of New Testament writers : 44 Being justified ” — made righteous — 44 by faith, we have peace with God.” So the 4 4 first ” and the 44 after that ” reveal to us the very depth of Christ’s work, and carry in them not only important teaching as to that, but equally important directions and guides for Christian conduct.1 If Like Richard Baxter and John Wesley in this, Dr. Townsend always made it easy for the solitary seeker to find him. And he went after the one lost sheep until he found it. The following 1 A. Maclaren, Last Sheaves, 104. 48 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE incident he told of his early ministry. He was then labouring in Leicester : One Sunday evening a young woman of remarkable intelligence and prepossessing appearance came out to the communion rail as a seeker after Christ. I had a long interview with her, and no one that I ever dealt with was more intensely sincere, but no peace came. At last I closed the meeting, and she left the church. The next night at the prayer-meeting she was again present, and the experience of the previous night was repeated. She came to my class on the Wednesday evening, and again she struggled in agony of mind without avail. At last I said to her, “ There is some special cause for this ; what have you been doing ? What sin have you committed that you are hiding in your heart ? ” Then she confessed that for a long time, in order to supply her lover with money, she had been robbing her employers, and that a large sum of money had been thieved from them. I insisted on her pledging herself to make a full confession to her employers the next morning, with the promise that I would see them and intercede on her behalf if there should be need for it. This she joyfully agreed to, and then she grasped Christ as a Saviour and her joy was extreme. She did make full confession, her masters forgave her, but exacted that for some time her salary should be lessened that she might thus make some amends.1 2. But even after reconciliation there is not always peace. Why not ? Because we are conscious still of sin. When the day is done, with its rush of business and care, its multitudinous demands on heart, and head, and hands, what a relief it is to shut the doors, to exclude all intruders, and to meet with beloved and familiar faces ! And yet, even at such times, there are thoughts which we cannot exclude. The disciples might shut the doors of the upper chamber, for fear of the Jews ; but those doors could not exclude the memory of their late unfaithfulness and cowardice, their treachery and desertion. And these bitter thoughts were more terrible to endure than their fear of hostile intruders. Such is often our own experience. The day that opened so bright and fair has become marred by many sad and painful incidents, which we have been able to disregard amid the impetuous rush of life, but which refuse to be longer ignored, and return to oppress and sadden our hearts, like a recurring nightmare, as we sit down to rest in the quiet of our own chambers, beneath the fall of night. 1 G. Eayrs, W illiam J ohn Townsend, 49. THE SEARCH FOR PEACE 49 Some impatience or outburst of irritability ; an unkind word ; a look of annoyance ; a selfish preference of ourselves to others whom we really love ; some indulgence, however momentary, of evil imagination and unholy desire ; some act of meanness or over¬ reaching in our business. Ah, it all comes back to us afresh ! What would we not give not to have yielded so weakly ; or to be able to live the time over again ! But, alas ! it is beyond recall. And our only comfort is in the presence of the Peace-giver, who, standing beside us, says gently, “ My peace I give unto you ” ; and shows us His hands and His side, marked still by the wound- prints of Calvary, the pledge and guarantee of forgiveness through His blood. At such times let us gratefully accept what He brings ; and wrap ourselves about in the mantle of His tender, forgiving grace, as the dark brown earth of winter wraps itself in the mantle of soft white snow. I couldn’t live in peace if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself and God.1 0 Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, Give me peace, give me peace ! The mists are round me, rolled and curled, The dark and dangers of the way increase. I cannot pray, Pray as of old. My thoughts are like a flock astray, Wilt Thou not call them back, Back to the heavenly track, Unto the trodden pathway of Thy fold ? Bid these strange tumults cease ! Thyself upon my heart enthrone ! Make me Thine own, Thine own ! Give me peace, give me peace ! 2 3. It has been said that “ the higher mind of to-day is not worrying about his sins at all.” The statement may be questioned. But if it is true, what then ? Has “ the higher mind ” peace ? If he does not worry about his sins he worries. Is anything more characteristic of our time than that restless activity which is the very opposite of peace ? William James, the psychologist, in his book, Talks to Teachers, describes the visit of a number of 1 George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss. 2 Alfred Austin. 4 50 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE accomplished Hindus to his American University. 4 4 More than one of them,” he writes, 44 has confided to me that the sight of our faces, contracted as they are with American over-intensity of expression, made a painful impression upon him. 4 1 do not see,5 said one of them, 4 how it is possible for you to live as you do without a single minute in your day given to tranquillity and meditation. It is an invariable part of our Hindu life to retire for at least half an hour daily into silence, to relax our muscles, to govern our breathing, to meditate on eternal things. Every Hindu child is trained to this from a very early age. 5 5 5 James’s own comment is that the good fruits of such a discipline were obvious in the physical repose and the lack of tension, and in the wonderful calmness of facial expression of his Oriental visitors, and that his own countrymen in America were depriving themselves of an essential grace of character ; he proceeds to recommend that 44 American children should be taught to moderate their piercing voices, and to relax their unused muscles, and when sitting, to sit quite still.” If you will stand on Broadway, and look at the faces of the people that are going up and down, you will see care written there, eagerness written there, energy written there, force written there ; but how often will you see peace ? Even in our recreations we are loath to take peace. It is the drama which stirs men and excites them that placards at its door, 44 Standing room only.” It is the romance that is intense and creates tempestuous emotions in the reader’s heart that sells by tens of thousands. I wonder, as I look on your faces this morning, how many there are of you that enjoy quietness and repose ; how many there are of you that are glad to get an hour to be absolutely by yourselves ; how many there are of you that find yourselves good company for yourselves.1 f We have to remember that strife for strife’s sake, discontent for discontent’s sake, restlessness for restlessness’ sake, can never be good. We must not run away from ourselves, or even want to run away. It is a most unfortunate thing when rest means boredom. There must be attainment in the midst of endeavour, and not merely external attainment, but what I may call internal attainment also. So far as our own selves are concerned, we must not always feel that what we want is just beyond our grasp. There must be peace at the very heart of our struggle. It is difficult, no doubt, to obtain the right kind of peace, or to obtain it in the right way. We do 1 Lyman Abbott, Signs of Promise , 247. THE SEARCH FOR PEACE 5i not want the peace of sloth, the peace of self-satisfaction, the peace of obtuseness. But we want the peace which is higher than all these, and yet truer. It is the peace to which Wordsworth alludes in his character of the Happy Warrior. He is the man who in himself possesses his own desire, who through the heat of the conflict keeps the law in calmness made, and sees what he foresaw. 1 4. One obvious cause of dispeace is intellectual doubt. St. Paul says to the Ephesian Christians, “ That ye henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” The Apostle uses here two figures to express the condition of a mind that has not anchored itself to any religious certainties. (1) When the wind blows strongly, all little objects that have not much weight in themselves are taken up and tossed to and fro. A feather or a piece of paper will be borne on the wings of the wind, and even if it settles for a moment on a twig or stone it is borne away again wherever the wind will. So it is with people who have no certain convictions. They come into the presence of believers and, for the moment, the atmosphere of faith in which they find themselves inclines them to believe ; but the moment after they may come into the company of unbelievers, and the atmosphere of unbelief inclines them again to deny the truth that they were on the point of accepting, and so they vacillate. They reflect whatever individual sentiments they happen to meet. One day they believe that there is a God, and the next day they doubt it. One day they believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and the next day they deny it. One day they are inclined to think that Christ is God’s Son and man’s Saviour, and the other they are inclined to think that He is a mere myth, or an impostor, or a misguided man. How can there be any heavenly rest in the soul where there is not heavenly belief in the soul ? St. Paul could say, “ For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens ” ; he could say, “ I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day ” ; he could say, “ I know that all things work to¬ gether for good to them that love God ” ; and the power to say “ I 1 C. G. Monte fio re, Truth in Religion, 154. 52 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE know ” on great religious questions is the power that brings the peace of God to the human mind, and no mind ever knew peace unless there was this rest of conviction in God. (2) St. Paul uses another figure to express the unrest of the mind that has no settled conviction. He says, “ By the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” This language refers to the tricks of a magician — legerdemain, skill, or sleight of hand. The trickster holds up his silk handkerchief, and makes you believe, for the moment, that behind that handker¬ chief he accomplishes a certain thing which he does not accomplish. He makes your eyes the fools of your other senses, and you are almost persuaded that a thing is true which is a trick, an imposition. And so, by the sophistries of false argument, men, through sleight of mind, as other men through sleight of hand, make you believe that they prove what they do not prove and cannot prove — that there is no God, that the Bible is a fraud, there was no such person as Jesus Christ, or that His resurrection was a myth and an imposture, and that all belief in Jesus Christ is misguided fanaticism. They pretend to prove what cannot be proved, and their forms of logic are the silk handkerchief behind which they perform these tricks of intellectual legerdemain. Now it is as possible to get to certainty on religious things as it is to certainty on other things. You can experiment on the unseen world just as truly as you can experiment on the world that is material and sensible. God says, “ 0 taste and see that the Lord is good.” Now the taste is one of our senses. It is the simplest, and the earliest to be brought into exercise ; and yet we never think of distrusting our sense of taste, and to that sense God appeals as a figure to express experimenting on Him. You may send up your prayers to the throne of grace, and get the answers down. You may look into the Bible and find the testimonies of Jesus Christ within the pages of the very scriptures themselves. You may open your heart to the incoming of the Holy Spirit, and in that have the highest demonstration of the reality of the unseen spirit and the unseen world. If you will have your senses exercised to discern both good and evil, you will, by the power of a holy experiment, demonstrate to yourself the reality and verity of spiritual things. If Robert Buchanan tells us of a certain professor who had long thrown over religion as a piece of intolerable superstition. THE SEARCH FOR PEACE 53 Like the elder Mill lie resolved to bring np bis only son in the same belief. At a preternaturally early age, accordingly, the lad was steeped to tbe lips in science and learning, and at seventeen he wrote slashing articles to the Reviews. Under such an exacting strain his health gave way ; and his father, becoming alarmed, removed him to the sunny shores of an Italian lake where every scene was bathed in beauty. But the change brought no betterness ; and the young man, feeling that he was dying, is represented as soliloquising thus : “ A little while And I shall be a part of that soft sleep Upon the lake and on the purple hills, And in the quiet grave where no shape stirs. But now it does not seem so hard to go, Since all life seems a dream within a dream, And I myself the strangest dream of all. To those fair elements whence first I came — Water and earth and air — I shall return : And see ! how tranquil and how beautiful They wait for me, the immortal ministers Of man, and all that shares mortality.” The old man, who had heard, cries out involuntarily : “ God, God, God ” ; and the son, becoming yet weaker, continues : “ Tell me, dear father, now before we part — And tell me plainly with no thought of fear, Is it for ever ? Have I read indeed My lesson truly ? Tell me : am I right ? For you have taught me truth is best of all. Is this the utter end of all our love ? And shall we never meet and know each other Again as we have known each other here ? ” Smitten to the heart, the father breaks into passionate sobs, and seems as one whose house has fallen about him. His dying boy, who knew no better, asks him to read Lucretius to him. He reads : “ From nothing, nothing is formed, All things are wrought without help of God ” : and in this cheerless creed the young man dies.1 5. But it is useless to seek peace in compromise. “ I sat listen¬ ing the other day,” says Mr. A. C. Benson, “to a beautiful sermon on the peace of God, on the text, “ My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you : not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” 1 W. H. Macfarlane, Redemptive Service, 171. 54 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE It was a beautiful sermon, as I say, the sentences clear and strong, tbe thoughts delicate and refined, and the whole of it transfused with a fine emotion. The Christian, said the preacher, was to seek peace and make peace by every means in his power, but he was never to sacrifice principle, or to abandon what he held to be true. He instanced the case of the Congo atrocities, and he said that this afforded a good illustration of the point. The Christian must protest against tyranny and wrong-doing, even if his protest were to endanger the peace of Europe. And then he went on to speak of the doctrines of the faith, and he said that a man must never conceal or dissemble his belief in those doctrines in order to con¬ ciliate an opponent, even though he knew that the result must be strife and hostility. Mr. Benson questions this. He tells the old story about the two hermits in Egypt who began to be afraid that they were living too peaceful and harmonious a life together. One of them said, “ Let us have a quarrel, like people in the world, so that we can learn how to defend our faith courageously. I will take one of these stones, and set it up and say it is mine ; and you shall say it is yours, and then we will have a fine dispute over it.” “ Excellent ! ” said the other. “ That will be good for us both. We are growing lazy and indifferent.” So the first put up a stone and said, “ That stone is mine ! ” And the other said, “ I am sure you are very welcome to it.” And then after a pause the first said, “ Well, I give it to you, and it is yours.” And the second said, “ I thank you with all my heart.” Then the first said, “ But, though it is yours, I take it from you and use it as my own.” And the second said, “ It is the greatest pleasure I can have to yield it to you.” Then they both laughed, and gave up trying to quarrel any more. But what is meant by compromise is not quarrelling for the sake of quarrelling. It is the surrender of truth from fear or cowardice or a weak desire to be pleasant all round. St. Paul gives the advice to the Roman Christians, “ If it be possible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace with all men.” But no one was less inclined to find peace of mind in compromise. “ To whom we gave place in the way of subjection, no, not for an hour ; that the truth of the Gospel might continue with you ” (Gal. ii. 5). Many are afraid to act up to what they know : they see that THE SEARCH FOR PEACE 55 genuinely to act up to their highest duties, really to do all that might be done, would set them in opposition to prevailing prejudices or habits, would require a strength of character towards which they feel indisposed to make the first efforts : these are they which put their hand to the plough and look back : these have for various reasons, some wearing a very specious aspect, deliberately built up their lives on a lower level than the highest which they know : we cannot wonder that to them the world looks gloomy, and the year has lost its spring. Peace is not a compromise with circumstances. It does not come out of an interlocution which runs after this fashion : “ Let me alone, and I will let you alone ; if you will be quiet, I will be quiet ; let us proclaim a truce.” Rest is not a compromise. It is a Divine reality in the heart. Righteousness is rest, — holiness is peace, — rectitude with God, coming through trust in the atonement of God the Son, means tranquillity deep and unchanging as the peace of God which passeth understanding ! 1 6. There are many other things that take away our peace. Among the rest there is a morbid feeling, very frequently met with, which disguises from itself that it is selfishness, by trying to lay claim to extra sensitiveness and demanding special consideration from all who come in contact with it. This is one of the commonest forms of discontent and unhappiness. It is one of the most ordinary complaints of the moral invalid that he is misunderstood, that he is not appreciated as he ought to be, that he does not receive the affection he requires, — you know the long string of excuses that we all of us are tempted to give when we do not wish to be judged by the rules which we apply to all others. We must be content to be misunderstood in the sense that we all know our own virtues better than any one else, that we often speak unadvisedly and carelessly with our tongue, and have not the strength to take the consequences. It may be we are not appreciated, or loved as we would wish, or as we think we ought to be ; but if we were to become of more value we should certainly be more appreciated, and if we were more amiable we should be more loved. In moral questions, as in political ques¬ tions, the whole issue turns on whether we commence from our rights or our duties : to take up an easy attitude towards life and demand that every one should do their duty towards us, while we 1 Joseph Parker. 56 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE gracefully waive tlie question of how far we are doing our duty towards them, is one of the most ordinary forms of selfishness nourished by a distorted sense of justice. Let us begin from our¬ selves in the first instance, and the result will be quite different : let us consider whether we do all we can for others, and let us not try to wring out of them the uttermost farthing, nay, let us keep no creditor account at all against them. Every time we forgive our brother a trespass, our opinion of him increases ; we are less hurt by his clumsiness or whatever it may be that excites our anger : life in general wears brighter colours for us : God’s peace sinks more deeply into our hearts. K We torment ourselves more than others can torment us. The worst misfortunes are those that never happen after all, and panics are terrors for which there is no foundation. The more we think for others, and the less we think of ourselves, the happier we shall be. “ On ne se repose,” says Cherbuliez, “ qu’en s’oubliant.” Moreover, we often torment ourselves in vain. “ With him (Epi¬ curus),” says Cicero, “ it is folly to ruminate on evils to come, or such as, perhaps, never may come. Every evil is disagreeable enough when it does come ; but he who is constantly considering that some evil may befall him, is loading himself with a perpetual evil, and even should such evil never light on him, he voluntarily takes upon himself unnecessary misery, so that he is under constant uneasiness, whether he actually suffers any evil, or only thinks of it.” And those which do happen we make worse by brooding over them. “ La mort est plus aisee a supporter sans y penser, que la pensee de la mort sans peril.” 1 1 Lord Avebury, Peace and Happiness, 340. Peace with God. Literature. Brooks, Phillips, Essays and Addresses (1894). „ „ Sermons for the Principal Festivals and, Fasts (1895). Burroughs, E. A., The Way of Peace (1920). Burrows, W. 0., The Mystery of the Cross (1896). Carter, T. T., The Spirit of Watchfulness (1899). Connell, J. M., A Book of Devotional Readings (1913). Deissmann, A., St. Paul (1912). Gibbon, J. M., The Veil and the Vision (1914). Gordon, A. J., The Twofold Life (1886). Greenwell, Dora, The Covenant of Life and Peace (1898). Hackett, W. S., The Land of Your Sojournings (1911). Harris, J. R., The Sufferings and the Glory (1914). Hicks, E., Our Life Here (1912). Hutton, R. S., The Crown of Christ, ii. (1900). Ingram, A. E. W., Under the Dome (1902). Jowett, J. H., Things that Matter Most (1913). Little, J., The Cross in Human Life (1912). Macgregor, W. M., Jesus Christ the Son of God (1907). Maclaren, A., Last Sheaves (1903). Macpherson, W. M., The Path of Life (1908). Nicoll, W. R., The Garden of Nuts (1905). Orchard, W. E., The Safest Mind Cure (1920). Paget, H. L., Peace and Happiness (1922). Parker, J., The City Temple Pulpit, ii. (1900). Pattison, T. H., The South Wind (1905). Salmon, G., Cathedral and University Sermons (1900). Selbie, W. B., The Servant of God (1911). Thomas, W. H. G., The Power of Peace. Thompson, J. D., Peace, Perfect Peace (1915). Townsend, W. J., As a King Ready to the Battle (1904). Watson, F., The Christian Life Here and Hereafter (1908). Wilson, J. M., The Gospel of the Atonement (1899). Woods, H. G., At the Temple Church (1911). 53 Peace with God. Peace is one of the regal words of the Bible. Its splendour is burlesqued when it is used to describe merely the absence of fighting. Peace is not a negation, a cleared space from which combatants are warned off. Peace is the New Testament word for the realiza¬ tion of God’s purposes of salvation. To make “ peace on earth ” is much more than patching up quarrels and persuading men to shake hands and be friends. It implies the establishment of right relations universally, the reign of righteousness over every con¬ tinent, the enthronement of love in all men’s hearts. This is the goal of the vast evolutionary process by which God is leading the race upward and onward. It is very significant that the radical meaning of the original word is suggestive of union ; two sundered things are brought together again. And the gift of peace means a recovery of healthy fellowship between the soul and the eternal God. Now let it be understood at once that the gift of peace does not imply perfection. There may be a general “ rightness ” in the relationship between man and wife, and yet there may be an occasional misunderstanding, even a temporary outburst of temper, while nothing fundamental becomes crooked or perverse. A general “ rightness ” or healthiness of the body is consistent with an occasional chill or superficial scratch or pain. There may be a temporary derangement while the heart is as sound as a bell. Our Lord acknowledged this possibility in His own gracious teachings. Men may be essentially right with God who are not yet by any means perfect. Even a man who has been bathed “ needeth to wash his feet.” And so peace consists essentially in this innermost “ rightness ” with God. The general life tends towards the highest. Its primary ambitions are fixed upon the good pleasure of God. There is 6o CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE intimacy of fellowship. There is an open road. There is a ladder of communion on which the angels ascend and descend continually. The peace that the Lord gives enables the soul to say with glad humility, “ I and my Father are one.” I. Reconciliation. 1. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Then the world needed to be reconciled. It was estranged, alienated from God. It is so still, though the fact is not always acknow¬ ledged. And if it is so, why ? Why the need for reconciliation ? How did it come about, it is often objected, that God so mis¬ managed affairs that men did not know Him and serve Him instinctively, and needed to be reconciled ? It is of the essence of His Fatherhood and the fixed purpose of His love to leave His children free. The necessary result of their freedom is a certain false independence and alienation from God. There is that in the natural man that sets him at variance with God. He is afar off and needs to be made nigh, estranged and must become reconciled. Thus the reconciliation in question is chiefly on the side of man, not of God. It becomes necessary through misunderstanding, the dulling of man’s conscience and the hardening of his heart, not through God’s anger or resentment. It is, in other words, we who are alienated from God, and not God who is alienated from us. What need is there to dwell at length on the fact of the aliena¬ tion of man from God ? We cannot, we dare not, look up straight into the face of our Father, We know that we are God’s children ; but we shrink from approaching Him, unless through some mediator and reconciler. It is a world-wide instinct, universal in all the human race, that we men, unclean and impure, cannot look on God with impunity. Greek myth and savage rites of sacrifice, the religion, the poetry, and the philosophy of well-nigh all mankind, have all borne their witness to this truth. It is typified in nature, in the dazzling glare of the sun, which with our weak eyes we cannot bear : it is taught in the Bible, at its PEACE WITH GOD 61 very outset, when Adam and Eve shrink into the bushes, because they have sinned and know that they are naked. When our Lord proclaimed, “ Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” He was uttering no new truth, so far as His words implied that the impure cannot see God ; as the prophet and mouthpiece of all mankind, He was but declaring what all men have felt. “Woe is me ! for I am undone ; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips : for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” “ Thou canst not see my face : for man shall not see me, and live.” As he is, apart from Christ, in his unregenerate state, man moves about the world not as a son in his Father’s house, but full of terror and dismay and shame, like a stranger in a strange land. He has but a dim sense of the Unseen Power upholding and guiding him : only a half consciousness of his right to live, and to rule the earth. Sin and shame wait on his steps. Pain is all round to appal him. The fear of death haunts him, for it means a passage into a cold unknown — from a world that with all its terrors and problems is half understood and at least familiar. Death (if it had existed at all for man) should have been a promotion from a lower world to a higher, like a boy’s leaving school to go on to college. But to man, unenlightened by the Gospel, in his inherited estrangement from God, death is no friend, but the king of terrors. 2. How is this estrangement to be cured ? Can man reconcile himself to God ? Bible language does not encourage the hope. He may make it all up with his brother, but he cannot in his own right come to terms with God. Are the records of human experience more encouraging ? Let us consider the efforts man makes to approach God. (1) Will prayer help him ? But he does not know how to pray aright. And will God hear him while he is yet in his sin ? “Now we know that God heareth not sinners : but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth.” If a sinner turns from his sin God will hear him, but not if he continues in it. (2) Will sacrifice enable him to approach God ? Man is every¬ where sacrificial, but he knows he cannot wash out sin, even in rivers of ‘blood, not even if it be human blood. While he searches 62 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE out the costliest gift to bring, while he inflicts on himself self¬ mortification and torture, cutting himself with knives and lancets, passing his own children through the fire to Moloch — in the midst of it all there dawns upon him the sense that this cannot avail to bring him back to God. There is, indeed, a true effort even in heathen sacrifice : but the effort is abortive ; it is baulked and fails. Even out of the midst of the purer Jewish religion, with rites and sacrifices sanctioned by God Himself, there rises clearer and ever clearer the cry, “ Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it thee : thou delightest not in burnt offerings.” “ Thinkest thou that I will eat bulls’ flesh, or drink the blood of goats ? ” God delights not in death and bloodshed : they bring the sinner no nearer to God. (3) If sacrifices then cannot break down the barrier, will right¬ eousness and virtue ? “ To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” Can we take up the words of the 40th Psalm, and say, “ Sacrifice and offering thou hast no delight in ; . . . burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I am come : in the roll of the book it is prescribed to me : I delight to do thy will, 0 my God ; yea, thy law is within my heart ” ? To obey, yes, that would avail ; but how is it possible for us ? How shall we, with our weakened wills — we in whom sin begins before we are clearly conscious of right and wrong, in whom evil thoughts spring up so much faster and find the soil so much more congenial than good aspirations — how shall we break off the entail of evil and begin anew a life of righteousness ? Even as we strive to live soberly and uprightly, we fall victims to the subtler sins of pride and avarice and hypocrisy. If we are not publicans and harlots, we become like the scribes and Pharisees. And so once more the human conscience rises in revolt against all false self-righteousness, and cries, “ There is none that doeth good, no, not one.” 3. There must be a new thing in the world, a new birth, a new start for the human race, a Second Adam. The gates of sin must be broken down from outside, that man, the prisoner, may be set free : he cannot beat them down from within. His life is tainted ; a new power of life must come into the world. The whole race is involved in sin : there must be a miracle, a Virgin-birth, something PEACE WITH GOD 63 that cuts off the entail of sin, if there is to be a Perfect Man, a Redeemer of His brethren. God was in Christ that He might draw near to our humanity and so carry out His long-cherished purposes concerning us. This was no afterthought of revelation. It was the fulfilment of an age¬ long plan that had waited till its time was prepared. God in Christ reveals man to Himself, and this was the beginning of reconciliation. To bring together two estranged friends it is necessary to abolish all misunderstanding. And man’s chief misunderstanding is of himself. This is what our fathers used to call pride. We think we are better than we really are ; we shirk the true facts of the case ; we will not believe in the sinfulness of sin ; we love to be independent, and to work out our own salvation. There is a wonderful dignity in God’s revelation of man. It is true that “ the Word became human that we might become divine.” But there is no room for misunderstanding here. It is a possible rather than an actual state which God reveals. In Christ every true man of us sees first how far short he falls and receives the gift of a contrite spirit and a broken heart ; and this, and this alone, opens the way to a new life in Christ and to living union with Him. Immortal love, for ever full, for ever flowing free, For ever shared, for ever whole, a never-ebbing sea ; Blow, winds of God, awake and blow the mists of earth away, Shine out, 0 light divine, and show how wide and far we stray. Now consider how the Atonement has justified all those efforts after union with God which man is always making, but cannot carry through unless he be in Christ. Man, we said, seeks to approach God by prayer, by sacrifice, by righteousness. (1) Prayer , then, first. Are not all our prayers as Christians presented for us by our Representative in Heaven ? We could not address God in our own right ; but, taught by Christ, we pray to “ Our Father ” ; helped by His Spirit, whom He has sent upon us, we struggle to express the yearnings of our souls, and trust the Para¬ clete, the Advocate within, to harmonize them with the inter¬ cessions of our other Advocate in Heaven. We end each prayer with the words “ through Jesus Christ our Lord,” and the meaning of it is that only because we are reconciled to God by Him have we access and the right to pray. 64 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE (2) And then Sacrifice. We have no need to struggle any more to make-believe with sacrifices of bulls and goats. For us there is one real and eternal sacrifice, which unites for ever God and man. The precious Blood has been shed, poured out, because we men have sinned. But more than this ; the Blood is offered and sprinkled, that we men may enjoy the strength of the new, the quickened Life. His is the one perfect Sacrifice for all mankind : He is the perfect Victim, and the perfect Priest. He has borne Human Nature up into the very Presence of God, like the High Priest entering the Holy of Holies ; He has fulfilled the very purpose of all sacrifice — Union with God ; and God raises us up together with Him, and makes us to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (3) And Righteousness. We can approach God now in that way also. For ever since Jesus Christ has departed, and the other Para¬ clete has come, the work of sanctification has been going on in the Church : and the men who “ were enemies, but now are reconciled,” are being made holy, being cleansed and strengthened and conformed to the likeness of Christ. “ Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean ? Not one.” So it is written in the Book of Job. But a new power can come down, as at the Incarnation, and, beginning as a germ of a new life, can work out holiness even amidst unclean surroundings. “ That which is born of the flesh is flesh ” — yes, but also 4 4 that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” One of the chief difficulties is not indifference but the desire of so many (like that of the “ foolish Galatians ”) to do instead of just “ receiving ” : to have at least a hand in saving themselves. They are like Naaman the Syrian, who was ready and eager to do “ some great thing ” in order to be healed, but refused indignantly to wash in Jordan and so, without paying a shilling, be clean. The Moravian missionary, Peter Bohler, whose ministry to John Wesley was the immediate prelude to his conversion and so to the great Revival which his ministry began, thought this was peculiarly true of Englishmen. “ Our way of believing,” he wrote to Count Zinzendorf, the Moravian leader, “is so easy to Englishmen that they cannot reconcile themselves to it : if it were a little more artful, they would much sooner find their way into it.” 1 “ Accustom yourself,” says Fenelon, “ gradually to let your mental prayer spread over all your daily external occupations. Speak, act, work quietly, as though you were praying, as indeed you 1 E. A. Burroughs, The Way of Peace, 76. PEACE WITH GOD 65 ought to be. Do everything without excitement, simply in the spirit of grace. So soon as you perceive natural activity gliding in, recall yourself quietly into the Presence of God. ... You will find your¬ self infinitely more quiet, your words will be fewer and more effectual, and, while doing less, what you do will be more profitable. It is not a question of a hopeless mental activity, but a question of acquiring a quietude and peace in which you readily advise with your Beloved as to all you have to do.” 1 Thou, 0 Elder Brother, Who In Thy flesh our trials knew : Thou, Who hast been touched by these Our most sad infirmities ; Thou alone the gulf canst span In the dual heart of man, And between the soul and sense Reconcile all difference. Change the dream of “ me ” and “ mine,” For the truth of “ Thee ” and “ Thine,” And through chaos, doubt, and strife, Intersperse Thy calm of Life.2 4. The fountain of our peace is the Cross of Jesus Christ. “He made peace through the blood of the Cross.” “We are reconciled to God through the death of the Son.” In ascribing, indeed, peace to the Cross we do so in no exclusive sense. We base our recon¬ ciliation with God on no single act of our Lord’s human life. Christ Himself is the rock on which we build. Christ Himself being perfect God and perfect Man is the bridge which spans the gulf between God and man ; or rather, in His person that gulf has ceased to exist. But the Cross is the crowning act of the life of humiliation and suffer¬ ing — the life of a man amongst men. Whilst His whole life was a sacrifice and oblation of Himself for the sins of the whole world, the death on the Cross was the completion of His redemptive and atoning work. His blood was the ransom which He paid ; it was at His death He “ blotted out the handwriting of ordinances which was against us, and which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His Cross.” Upon the altar of the Cross He suffered to redeem our loss. It is for these reasons that our salvation is so commonly and particularly ascribed to Christ’s death. 1 E. A. Burroughs, The Way of Peace , 91. 2 Whittier. 5 66 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE The Peace promised before the Cross and announced in the Resurrection, has its central point of realization in the Cross itself. So St. Paul says, in writing to the Colossians, that He was 4 4 to reconcile all things to himself, having made peace by the blood of his Cross,” from which we see that the Cross has become oracular, it is a talking Cross, and the blood of the Cross — 44 the blood of sprinkling speaks better things than that of Abel ” ; for one reason, because sacrifice is more oracular than murder. In the same way St. Paul says in the Epistle to the Ephesians that 44 we who were once afar off are made nigh by the blood of Christ ; for he is our peace, who makes both one.” Here, again, it is Christ crucified that is oracular and vocal, so that we may, if we please, imagine that the words 44 Peace I leave with you,” spoken under the shadow of the Cross, were spoken from the Cross itself, and that He had re-opened the lips that were closed in death to give them at once the resurrection greeting, and say, 44 Peace be unto you.” The fifth chapter of Romans also is written from the view¬ point of the Cross ; it opens with, 44 We are justified by faith, and we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” When we examine to see how this justifying faith, which is also the peace- producing faith, is itself produced, we see from the last verse of the previous chapter that 44 He was delivered up for our transgressions, and raised again for our justification. Therefore ... we have peace.” The objectivity of peace is the testator on his death-bed, with the signed document in his hand, the subjectivity of peace is that we are united to him by faith and share his conditions. My Soul, there is a countrie Afar beyond the stars, Where stands a winged Sentrie All skilful in the wars. There, above noise and danger, Sweet peace sits, crown’d with smiles, And One born in a manger Commands the beauteous files. He is thy gracious friend And (0 my Soul awake !) Did in pure love descend, To die here for thy sake. If thou canst get but thither, There growes the flowre of peace, PEACE WITH GOD 67 The rose that cannot wither, Thy fortresse, and thy ease. Leave then thy foolish ranges ; For none can thee secure, But One, who never changes, Thy God, thy Life, thy Cure.1 5. But, we must remember, it was no private act of the second Person of the Trinity as opposed to the other two. Such a thing is inconceivable in the Blessed Trinity ; whatever the Son does, He does in union with the Father, and with the co-operation of the Holy Ghost. There can be no division between the Persons, no conflict of Wills, for of necessity the Three are One, and will the same thing always. This is the gospel of reconciliation. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have met in their divine omnipotence to rescue man. It does not float in the mere atmosphere of theory. It is brought close to the heart that will receive it by all those languages which the heart knows best. The love of the Father is interpreted by all the tokens of His love which appeal to the lower lives. All nature, with her voices of beneficence, claims the Son for His Father. All the capacities of thought and feeling which are in Him assert the Father whom they echo and from whom they came. And the redeeming Son is full of pitiful and powerful appeal by the tragedy of His cross. While He is conquering man out of his rebellion, He is at the same time winning his heart by suffering for him. And the Spirit who has brought Christ to us has shed His influence out of every most familiar and appealing thing. As the sun that lightens us makes all the objects round us the reflectors and distributors of his radiance, and so brings his light to us clothed with the clearness that belongs to them, so to the Christian the Spirit of his Saviour seems to have subsidized everything to make some new and more perfect revelation of Him. The home relations and the things in nature, our books, our friends, our thoughts, have all been made interpreters of Christ. Oh, there are times when, as one sits in meditation or moves quietly about in work for Jesus — when all this seems so rich and plain. A beautiful, serene simplicity seems to come forth out of this complicated snarl. We catch the music of one great pervading purpose in all this tumult and clatter. It is all redemption working out its plans. 1 Vaughan. 68 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE God made that hillside so perfect in order that He might show me His fatherly love. Christ gave me this task to do that I might understand His self-sacrifice for me. The Spirit brought me into my friend’s friendship that it might so interpret to me the friendship of my God. At such times all seems plain. The world is for the sons of God, and all that goes on in the world is reclaiming and training their sonship. The whole creation is waiting for the mani¬ festation of the sons of God. Those are the times when the world is ideal and beautiful and sacred.1 II. Justification. 1. Peace with God is ours by our simple acceptance of it through faith. Christ Jesus “ having made peace through the blood of His cross,” our reconciliation with the Father is already accomplished. Faith has only to accept it and rest in it as a part of the Redeemer’s finished work. Here is a matter of fact, not a matter of feeling. Faith does not create anything or change anything ; it simply apprehends what is and counts it true. The lightning’s flash did not create The lovely prospect it revealed ; It only showed the real state Of what the darkness had concealed. “ 0 Lord, open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” The wondrous things are there already — atonement, redemption, peace — all these are accomplished realities, standing for their support alone in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. We only need sight to behold them, and a believing trust to rest in them. When after a foreign war our nation had sent ambassadors abroad to treat with the foe, and they had re¬ turned, only the one word “ Peace,” was shouted out from the ship that brought them into harbour, and in a few hours all the city was thrilling with joyful congratulations. It was the truth that a reconciliation had been effected that brought this happy 1 Phillips Brooks, Sermons for the Principal Festivals and Feasts for the Church Year, 105. PEACE WITH GOD 6 9 peace of mind to the people ; it was not their peace of mind that brought the reconciliation. In other words, fact supplied the ground for feeling, and not feeling for fact. Faith does not bring to us more than unfaith so far as things visible and tangible are put into reckoning. But it gives us peace, the peace that comes when the whole nature rests on Christ, the peace which in very truth passes all understanding, and which is not an affair of reasoning, and computation, and survey, and measure, but a simple trusting in the name of the Lord, a simple resting upon God. “ I am with you alway,” He said, and He keeps His word whoever may come or go. He does not abolish the old foes, but He transfigures them. The old world despised weakness, and feared labour, and shrank from pain. With Christ out of weakness we are made strong, labour we find the pathway to the blessed and everlasting rest, and we are made perfect by the things which we suffer. Cast down, persecuted, bereaved, we shall often be, but never wholly overthrown, never altogether broken, never quite failing. For having Him with us we have His comfort in the midst of tribulation, His peace in the midst of war. He said, “ I will forget the dying faces ; The empty places — They shall be filled again ; 0 voices moaning deep within me, cease.” Vain, vain the word ; vain, vain : Not in forgetting lieth peace. He said, “ I will crowd action upon action, The strife of faction Shall stir my spirit to flame ; 0 tears that drown the fire of manhood, cease.” Vain, vain the word ; vain, vain : Not in endeavour lieth peace. He said, “ I will withdraw me and be quiet, Why meddle in life’s riot ? Shut be my door to pain. Desire, thou dost befool me, thou shalt cease.” Vain, vain the word ; vain, vain : Not in aloofness lieth peace.1 1 Amy W. Carmichael, Made in the Pans , 99. 70 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE 2. This simple acceptance by faith of the reconciliation wrought by Christ is on the part of God our justification. We think perhaps of “ justification ” as a theological term involving some mysterious significance. That is a mistake. Theological terms, as a rule, have grown out of the ordinary use of words, and in that use their original explanation is to be sought. When we say in the language of everyday life that we are justified in some course of action, we mean that we can appeal with confidence to a verdict in our favour on the question whether we have acted rightly. There is a verse in the Book of Deuteronomy which illustrates this familiar sense : “If there be a controversy between men, and they come into judgment that the judges may judge them, then they shall justify the righteous and condemn the wicked.” The judges are to vindicate the position of the righteous man as satisfactory in the eye of the law : they are to pronounce him just : in their judgment he is justified. Pass now from the earthly tribunal to the judgment-seat of God. How shall man be accounted righteous before God ? We think of the frailty and sinfulness of human nature, of the depths of degradation into which it is capable of falling, and we often feel inclined to say with the Psalmist, “ In thy sight shall no man living be justified.” It seems as if there must be an impassable gulf between the God who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity and the human soul. Yet we also feel that man has the consciousness of an intense long¬ ing for a loving and a gracious God. It is just here that the doctrine of justification comes in. It is not merely the need of forgiveness that we feel : forgiveness might still involve banish¬ ment from His presence. We want something closer and more tender : we want reconciliation, acceptance, welcome. That is the spirit in which the love of God has bridged the gulf between Himself and man. The doctrine of justification tells us that we are not merely pardoned but accounted righteous. We are received by God whom we have grieved as though we had not grieved Him. The moment the prodigal son draws near, his father runs to meet him and greet him. “ Being justified,” says St. Paul, “ we have peace in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 3. Many people regard faith as a mysterious spiritual sense, a subtle power of realizing the unseen and the eternal, almost (it has been said) a second-sight in the soul. But we need not suppose PEACE WITH GOD 7i that religious faith means anything very different from what we mean when we talk of having faith in a policy, or in a remedy, or in a general, or in a lawyer. In such cases we simply mean that we have trust, reliance, practical confidence in the person or thing. When St. Paul says that Abraham’s faith was imputed to him for righteousness, is not this just what he means ? Abraham was assured that what God had promised He was able to perform. In other words, he felt reliance upon God’s promise. The real differ¬ ence between religious faith and the other simpler kinds of reliance lies, not so much in the power of faith itself, as in the nature of the object to which the power is directed. What makes religious faith so great a thing is the stupendous nature of the Object upon which the reliance is reposed. When it is reposed on God in Christ, the situation is charged with a mystery which we cannot fathom. It is the contact between finite and infinite ; it is the creature laying hold upon the Creator ; it is the steadying influence of Divine Omni¬ potence on human infirmity. The simplest reliance, so that it be sincere, puts at man’s disposal the boundless resources of the Person¬ ality of Jesus Christ. “ When the dam of the Nile was completed (says the Bishop of Durham) with all its giant sluices, it needed but the touch of a finger on an electric button to let through the river in all its mass and might. So faith, the reliance of the soul — the soul perhaps of the child, perhaps of the peasant, perhaps of the outcast — is only a reliant look, a reliant touch. But it sets up contact with Jesus Christ in all His greatness, in His grace, merit, saving power, eternal love.” 4. Does justification by faith mean, then, that I shall be treated as righteous, not being so ? That I shall be forgiven and acquitted ? Yes, thank God ! But is that all that it means, or is it the main thing that it means ? No, thank God ! for the very heart of the Christian doctrine of righteousness is this, that if, and as soon as, a man puts his trembling trust in Jesus Christ as his Saviour, then he receives not merely pardon, which is the uninterrupted flow of the Divine love in spite of his sin, nor a crediting him with a righteous¬ ness which does not belong to him, but an imparting to him of that new life, a spark from the central fire of Christ’s life, “ the new man which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness.” Do not suppose that the great message of the Gospel is merely 72 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE forgiveness. Do not suppose that its blessed gift is only that a man is acquitted because Christ has died. All that is true. But there is something more than that which is the basis of that other, and that is that by my faith in Jesus Christ I am so knit to Him — “ He that is joined to the Lord ” being “ one spirit ” — as that there passes into me, by His gift, a life which is created after His life, and is in fact cognate and kindred with it. No doubt it is a mere germ, no doubt it needs cultivating, development, carefully guarding against gnawing insects and blight¬ ing frosts. But the seed which is implanted, though it be less than the least of all seeds, has in itself the promise and the potency of triumphant growth, when it will tower above all the poisonous shrubs and undergrowth of the forest, and have the light of heaven resting on its aspiring top. Here is the great blessing and dis¬ tinctive characteristic of Christian morality, that it does not say to a man : “ First aim after good deeds, and so grow into good¬ ness,” but it starts with a gift, and says, “ Work from that, and by the power of that. 4 1 make the tree good,’ says Jesus to us, do you see to it that the fruit is good.” No doubt the vegetable metaphor is inadequate, because the leaf is “ wooed from out the bud,” and “ grows green and broad, and takes no care.” But that effortless growth is not how righteousness increases in men. The germ is given them, and they have to cultivate it. First, there must be the impartation of righteousness, and then there comes to the man’s heart the sweet assurance of peace with God, and he has within him “ a conscience like a sea at rest, imaginations calm and fair.” “ First, king of righteousness ; after that, king of peace.” If Being justified in Christ, the believer possesses a “ righteous¬ ness of God ” in Christ. This frequent technical expression, once replaced by the phrase “ righteousness from God,” is used by St. Paul to describe the normal condition vouchsafed to us of grace by God in Christ. That it is nothing of the nature of a magical transformation is shown by a passage in Galatians which speaks of “ waiting for ” the desired righteousness : before all men lies the last judgment, which will at length bring definite justification. The justified man is therefore not a completely righteous man : he has still a goal of righteousness before him. In the apostle’s thoughts on justification as elsewhere we see the peculiar dynamic PEACE WITH GOD 73 tension between the consciousness of present possession and the expectation of future full possession.1 III. Peace. 1. God having thus reconciled the world unto Himself through the death of His Son, peace is proclaimed in the terms of the Gospel. It is the glad tidings of pardon, the message of peace, the good news of reconciliation. The “ peace on earth,” which the angels heralded at the birth of Jesus and which was accom¬ plished by His death, was proclaimed by the Lord Himself on the eve of the first Easter Day. When the disciples were assembled, He said, “ Peace be unto you. And when he had said this, he showed unto them his hands and his side.” Then followed the great commission, “ As my Father sent me, even so send I you.” “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation.” From that day forward the Church has been entrusted with the Gospel of peace for all nations of men. In the days of the Apostles they came “ preaching good tidings of peace by Jesus Christ ” — peace to them that were “ far off,” and to them that were “ nigh ” : while as to them so to us is “ committed the word of reconciliation. We are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ as though God were intreating you by us ; we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God.” As men receive that same Gospel and believe that one message, they enter into the state of reconciliation, and the peace which passeth all under¬ standing is theirs. “ If God spares me, I shall accept it as a special mission to preach love and peace to the end of my life.” 2 2. Peace is the very essence of the Gospel. And the great Apostle of the Gentiles works out this message in the fulness of its power and blessing, as he shows first of all the peace brought to us, sinful men and women, of reconciliation with God through 1 A. Deissmann, St. Paul, 147. 2 T. M. Kettle, The Ways of War. 74 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE the suffering of the incarnate Son. “ Therefore, being justified by faith,” he cries, “ let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” who “ is our Peace,” “ having reconciled both Jew and Gentile to God in one body by the cross.” This is, as we say, peace objective — the peace of confiding faith in the reconciling Love. And then he shows us again and again the joyful peace of conscious fellowship — the peace subjective ; “ the peace of God which passeth all understanding ” ; that which St. John speaks of when he tells us of “ our fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. . . .” and adds, “ These things write we unto you that your joy may be full.” And how should it not be full when, as St. Paul tells us again, “ the spirit of bondage and fear ” is gone, and the “ Spirit of adoption ” is given instead, “ whereby we cry, Abba, Father ” ? Having peace with God, the peace of God fills our hearts, and is a power that “ keeps our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” And it is this glad peace of sonship and trust that the Apostle thinks of as he writes, “ The Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means.” (1) Let us ask, then, What has this gospel of reconciliation to say to trouble , to those keen hours of suffering when the light seems to have gone wholly out of life under some cloud of sorrow ? What had it to say to you when the light of your house was darkened and the life that had made your life worth living was snatched away from you ? Whether it said anything to you depended upon whether you believed it, whether you had really caught sight of this as the purpose of all things — this plan of God to bring His children back to Himself. If you did see that, then the gospel of reconciliation had surely very much to say to you in your great grief. Death could not seem inexplicable or desperate to one who had caught sight of a design of life which issued from and which must return into the spiritual world, which did not begin and which could not be completed here. And for yourself, if that same plan included you, if for you too there was one supreme wish in your Father’s heart that you should come perfectly to Him, then it was not strange — certainly it was not incredible — that He should have tried to draw you by taking to Himself that which was like your other life, your second self ; and you could not have asked Him to spare you the pain if it was by the pain only that He could take hold of you. As well might the child complain of PEACE WITH GOD 75 the tight, painful grasp with which his father seized him to drag him out of the river* If “ I have nothing to fear,” says one French soldier to his mother. “ The worst that can happen to me is to be killed, and to die for a noble cause when one is young is a great blessing.” Writes another to his parents, “ One must live the present without think¬ ing of the future. To be nearer danger and death is to be nearer God, and therefore why pity us ? Put your trust in God ! Every¬ thing happens according to His will, and it is ever for the best.” The published letters from the front contain many similar experi¬ ences of peace in the midst of peril. The remedy for the doubts, the perplexities, the disbeliefs of a troubled mind is a whole-hearted consecration to a great cause and a great Captain. This is very different from the faith that by and by this troubled life will end, and we shall enter into our rest in Heaven. It is very different from the belief that “ God’s in His Heaven, all ’s right with the world.” It is the faith that God is on the earth making all right with the world. It is the faith that the end which we have helped to achieve will at last be achieved and will be worth all that it costs us and all that it costs Him. It is a faith which gives us rest here in the midst of the trouble. It is the faith of the Psalmist : “I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” “ To see it,” says John Henry Jowett, “ in the very land which seems to be crowded only with convulsion, and sorrow, and disaster.” It is the faith of the author of the 46th Psalm — I quote from the Prayer Book version, which I believe to be the true interpretation of the Psalmist’s faith : God is our hope and strength, A very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear though the earth be moved, And though the hills be carried into the midst of the sea. Though the waters thereof rage and swell, And though the mountains shake at the tempest of the same. The rivers of the flood thereof shall make glad the city of God ; The holy place of the tabernacle of the Most Highest. Mr. Ruskin has given an eloquent description of the mountain storms which strikingly illustrates this faith in the Psalmist : “ But, as we pass beneath the hills which have been shaken by earthquake and torn by convulsion, we find that periods of perfect repose succeeded those of destruction.” . . . “It is just where ‘ the mountain falling cometh to naught, and the rock is removed 76 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE out of his place,’ that, in process of years, the fairest meadows bloom between the fragments, the clearest rivulets murmur from their crevices among the flowers, and the clustered cottages, each sheltered beneath some strength of mossy stone, now to be removed no more, and with their pastured flocks around them, safe from the eagle’s stoop and the wolfs ravin, have written upon their fronts, in simple words, the mountaineer’s faith in the ancient promise I Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh ; For thou shalt be in league with the Stones of the Field ; And the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.”1 (2) It is not only the suffering in life that needs to be spoken to and helped. There is something else that is almost more exhaust¬ ing than our suffering in its constant wearing pressure upon the hearts of men. It is that feeling of the insignificance of life that often grows so hard to bear. Many of us know it only too well. Not merely on some moody day, but have we not felt it as the constant temper of long stretches of our life — the wonder whether it meant anything, the utter loss of any insight into what it meant, this work of living ? That is what rubs deep into our strength with its dull and heavy friction. It rises up like a self-begotten mist out of ourselves. It is reflected and shed on us from other men around us. It haunts the home of poverty, and, even more bitter and disheartening, it sits down at the rich man’s feast. Who can speak to and dispel this spectre ? Who can tell us with author¬ ity that life has a meaning, and make us see it and rejoice to live for it ? Who but the gospel of reconciliation ? If that is true, if all these heavenly forces are at work upon our life, if all this watchful interest hovers over what we are doing, if we may really go on and be the children of God, where is there any insignificant detail ? Who can help feeling purpose run like life-blood through the half- dried veins of his discouragement ? How life lifts itself up with interest and dignity when it really becomes the culture of God’s redeemed children for their Father’s house ! (3) But there is something else. Deeper than suffering and insignificance lies sin. That is at the root of all. These are but 1 Lyman Abbott, The Twentieth Century Crusade, 83. PEACE WITH GOD 77 the symptoms ; this is the disease. And what has the gospel to say to sin ? Fancy Him who was the gospel, meeting, as He walked in old Jerusalem, these woes and hindrances of human life which we have spoken of. He walks along, and first He meets a sufferer, some soul wrung with pain and bereavement. He stops and lays His hand upon the wretched head, and says, “ Be comforted : thy brother shall rise again. I am the resurrection, and the life.” Then He goes on and meets a poor man (poor or rich) fretted and wearied with the insignificance of life. To him He says, “ Arise ; be strong. He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also.” But then He comes to another who is a sinner bowed down with sin, sorrowing and sighing because he is so wicked. Ah, how the Saviour’s face lightens anew ! This is the soul He wants. He came to seek and to save the lost. He was called Jesus, because He should save His people from their sins. And as He says to the poor soul, “ Thy sins are forgiven thee,” you are sure that the Saviour is speaking the words that He most loves to speak, and that the gospel of reconciliation is doing its deepest work. ^ I remember when I was a child a picture that hung in the house of a relative, where some of my holidays were spent, a picture which fascinated me, and remains after fifty years as distinct as if I saw it with my eyes. It was called, I think, “ The heart of man,” but it represented a human being first in one phase and then in another. A man showed his heart. It was the principal thing in the picture ; but his face and form were also quite distinct. That heart at first was filled with a number of creatures that represented the different vices and faults. Could I remember them ? Yes, this I remember : that there was a noble-looking tiger which stood for human cruelty ; a peacock with outspread tail that stood for pride ; a bristling hog that stood for uncleanness ; and a portentous snail that stood for sloth. The other creatures I do not distinctly remember, but there were many of them, so that the heart was filled with the ill-assorted collection. And above all was the man’s face, proud, handsome, and yet bad ; and in his hand was some weapon which apparently he was prepared to use on himself or on others. And as I looked upon this heart of a man I supposed that my heart was a similar scene of savage and unclean creatures that crouched or roamed undisturbed in it. I think in the actual picture they were all comfortably settled as if they feared no intrusion and never dreamt of expulsion. There also remains in my mind the face of the man, possibly in 78 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE a second picture, with tangled hair and frenzied eyes, as if he had reached the extremity of degradation and despair. Then came the other picture, which showed the light of heaven penetrating this den of unclean beasts. I hardly remember how the transformation took place, but the heart was illuminated, and the creatures were stirred so that they began to escape from the intolerable light : the tiger had got out, the hog was getting out, the peacock’s tail had fallen and it slunk away. This picture showed the entrance of the Word giving light ; and it remains before me still as a marvellous presentation of the soul’s awakening. Then at last, I suppose in another picture, there was the heart emptied of all that foul rout. The luminous eye was at the centre, the single eye, and the whole body was full of light. The face above was transfigured, peace and joy and love had changed the desperate man into the image of an angel. And I remember what a strong desire possessed my childish heart to be rid of those corrupt creatures and to be filled with that divine light. I am sure that the picture stirred the desire which seemed for so many years impossible of fulfilment, and I am ashamed to think how slow and uncertain the process is by which the light of God really penetrates the heart and transforms it.1 U A friend of mine who belongs to the most advanced school of theological thought said the other day that he was called to see a sick man who lived in one of the mean streets of a great town. He found him very ill and very poor. The room was bare of all comfort, and lacked even most of the necessaries of human existence. After a little while my friend said, “ What can I do for you ? Tell me fully and frankly what you want, and I will do my best to help you.” “ I only want one thing,” was the startling reply, “ the forgiveness of my sins.” The minister’s eyes had roamed the room, and he had already made a mental note of several things which were sorely wanted. But the dying man ignored these trifles. He was beyond the reach of man’s harm or help. He was independent of wealth and comfort, and all the things men strive for. One great deep-sea need had come to the surface and scared all lesser wants away. “ I only want one thing, the for¬ giveness of my sins.” 2 There was a Prince of old At Salem dwelt, Who liv’d with good increase Of flock and fold. 1 R. F. Horton, Free Church Year Book, 1916, p. 25. 2 J. M. Gibbon, The Veil and the Vision, 89. PEACE WITH GOD 79 He sweetly liv’d ; yet sweetnesse did not save His life from foes. But after death out of His grave There sprang twelve stalks of wheat ; Which many wond’ring at, got some of those To plant and set. It prosper’d strangely, and did soon disperse Through all the earth ; For they that taste it do rehearse That vertue lies therein ; A secret vertue, bringing peace and mirth By flight of sinne. Take of this grain, which in my garden grows, And grows for you ; Make bread of it ; and that repose And peace, which ev’ry where With so much earnestnesse you do pursue, Is onely there.1 1 Herbert's Poetical Worts (ed. Grosart), 161. VI. Peace of Conscience. Literature. Bernard, T. D., The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ (1892). Brooke, Stopford A., The Spirit of the Christian Life (1902). Brooks, Phillips, Christ the Life and Light (1905). Caird, J., University Sermons (1898). Church, R. W., Cathedral and University Sermons (1892). Collins, W., Hours of Insight (1912). Drummond, J., Pauline Meditations (1919). Dykes, J. 0., Sermons (1882). Hicks, E., Our Life Here (1912). Howard, H., The Conning-Tower of the Soul (1912). Hughes, H. P., Ethical Christianity (1892). Ingram, A. F. W., A Mission of the Spirit (1906). Knight, G. H., Full Allegiance (1909). Liddon, H. P., Easter in St. Pauls (1892). Maclaren, A., Expositions : John xv.-xxi. (1907). Moule, H. C. G., Thoughts for the Sundays of the Year (1901). Ritchie, D. L,, Peace the Umpire. Robertson, F. W., The Human Race (1886). Rutherford, W. G., The Key of Knowledge (1901). Thomas, W. H. G., The Power of Peace. Thompson, J. D., Peace , Perfect Peace (1915). Watkinson, W. L., Mistaken Signs. Webb-Peploe, H. W., The Life of Privilege (1896). 82 Peace of Conscience. Great has been the effect of Christ’s promise, “ Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” It has established the word “ Peace ” in the heart of the Church as expressing the ideal character of Christian happiness and the rightful condition of believers. “ Grace and peace” become keynotes of the Apostolic teaching, and are for ever united in all prayer and benediction. Peace represents a restful, satisfying state, an essential condition for more exalted experiences, being itself of more solid value than them all. I. The Discords of Life. 1. First there is the fundamental, fatal discord, between the flesh and the spirit. St. Paul describes this feud in language which brings the sad fact home irresistibly. “ For I delight in the law of God after the inward man : but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” Our nature is not one, but two — the law of the mind, the law of the members. Here we get to “ the law of storms ” — the very source and secret of life’s unrest. Wilder hurricanes than ever sweep the Atlantic ; hotter siroccos than ever blaze over the Sahara ; deadlier whirlwinds than ever wreck Oriental city, rage in the breast of man ; and the law in our members which wars against the law of the mind is the source of all this conflict, passion and pain. There can be no true peace until this internecine war ends in the utter breaking down and final extinction of the law 84 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE in onr members. 44 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God : for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” “ First pure, then peaceable ” ; this is the order of Christ. The peace Christ gives is both noble and profound, and here we have an illustration of this. The soul is not soothed by some anodyne, or lulled by some lullaby, as the world gives peace ; but our breast is cleansed of the mystic poison which works so disastrously. Christ pours into us the light, energy, joy of His own glorious nature, breaking the tyranny of the law in the members, giving ascendency to the law of the mind, and thus brings back the paradisiacal calm. Perfect peace goes with perfect purity, always goes with it, and is not found elsewhere. 2. The other great antagonism is between Christ within us and the world without. And again the only way of peace is by the submission of the one element to the other — the world to Christ. “ The world ! ” — what do we mean by that vague term ? Fairly enough for our present purpose, may we not say that “ the world ” represents the great accepted tendencies of things ? The “ world of politics ” represents the tendency to corruption and selfishness which seems to be the drift of life where men engage in government affairs ; the “ world of business ” means the tendency to selfishness and materialism and sharp dealing ; the “ world of fashion ” means the absorption in frivolity and thoughtlessness and rivalry in silly show ; the 4 4 world of religion ” describes the disposition to cant and unreality and superficial sentiment which haunts the outskirts of all sacred thought and high emotion. This is what 4 4 the world ” means when we speak of it in a bad sense. Now, He who came to deliver us from the bondage of a world of strife did not work in the superficial ways of that world. Peace He left with us, His peace He gave unto us ; but 44 not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” His method of 44 Peace at any price ” had other emphasis than this world gives. Cost what it might, true peace must be won ; be the price never so terrible, He would pay it to the uttermost. If He has brought peace, it is not because He acquiesced in the world, but because He overcame the world. He overcame it, not by palliating things at the surface and glossing over all that was ugly and base, but by going down to the very bottom of things ; not by acquiescing in the existence of PEACE OF CONSCIENCE 85 evil or making a truce with it, but by facing it in the power of life in which it had no part, and accepting in Himself the very worst that it could do. And so, he who rests in Christ with an absolute faith proves perfect peace even in the midst of loss, persecution, tumult and death. Not a surge of worry, Not a shade of care, Not a blast of hurry Touch the spirit there. If We must live a life of constant faith, ever looking into the heavens. A distinguished physician who recently died reminds us that there is no place where the grandeur, ambition and care of life are so thoroughly rebuked as in an Astronomical Observatory. “As a practical illustration of this remark,” he continues, “ I would add that my own knowledge of astronomers — those who have themselves worked with the telescope — has shown them to be generally men of tranquil temperament, and less disturbed than others by worldly affairs, or by the quarrels incident even to scientific research.” How likely this seems ! Constantly dwelling on the magnitudes and magnificences of the firmament, the “ ex¬ pressive silence ” and splendour of the starry depths, their soul shared the grandeur and peace amid which they wrought, and became insensible to the petty ambitions and anxieties of the earth. Thus will it be with us — only in a far grander sense and measure — if we keep heaven opened to us, and dwell constantly on the sublime facts and hopes of that celestial realm where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. The successes of life shall not exalt us, its ambitions dazzle, its cares agitate, its sorrows crush us. Our peace will flow like a river into the stormless ocean of eternity. 1 A Quiet Conscience. The peace which Christ purchased by His precious blood is the peace of a quiet conscience. Sin as disobedience always leads to enmity between God and man. The essence of sin is self-assertion, and this always places a barrier between the soul and God. Towards wilful 1 W. L. Watkinson, Mistaken* JSigns , 60. 86 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE sin God must ever manifest the attitude of perfect holiness and therefore of perfect antipathy. It is thus not difficult to understand the deep and fundamental need of peace, the peace of a conscience from which the condemnation of sin has been removed by forgive¬ ness, the quiet conscience from which guilt has been removed by justification. There are many people who know forgiveness, who are perfectly certain about their deliverance from condemnation, but who are not by any means so sure that they have been delivered from guilt. And yet, while there is a close connection, there is also a very clear distinction between forgiveness and justification. For¬ giveness is an act and a succession of acts : justification is an act which issues in a permanent attitude. Forgiveness is negative, removing condemnation ; justification is also positive, removing guilt and bestowing a perfect position of righteousness before God. Forgiveness is like being stripped ; justification is like being clothed. So that the Christian is not merely a pardoned criminal, he is a per¬ fectly righteous man in the eyes of God’s law. The King of England can pardon a man, and the man can come out of prison with con¬ demnation removed ; but the King cannot remove his guilt ; he has broken the law. Our God not only removes the condemnation, but reinstates us as though we had never broken the law. That is justification. And the peace of a quiet conscience includes this as well as forgiveness. 1. In order to have peace of conscience we must be at one with our own past. We recall all we have been and done, and of how little in past years can an instructed conscience approve. Life’s golden dawn dimmed by folly, stained by excess, gifts of under¬ standing, health, position, culture, influence, run to waste ; the fruits of primal years only things of which “ we are now ashamed ” ; the pure delights of the mind bartered for indulgences whose re¬ membrance is a sigh ; the great meaning of existence utterly missed ; the eloquence of reason and conscience drowned in sensual excite¬ ments and vain pursuits ; the grace of God resisted and extinguished ; so much that was flagrantly, shamefully wrong ; so much that was fair in seeming false in essence : such is the heart-breaking retrospect. 0 ! the dark days of vanity ! while here, How tasteless ! and how terrible, when gone ! PEACE OF CONSCIENCE 87 There can be no rational peace until we are freed from this dead, accusing past ; until the antagonism of conscience and history ends in some worthy pacification. Here Christ becomes most precious to all who believe. We cannot live the past over again ; we cannot undo its misdoings ; we cannot restore the wasted wealth of life and grace, we cannot atone for our foolishness and wickedness ; and therefore when we are crushed under the burden of our sin and sorrow, He who of His own free grace bore our curse and shame speaks forgiveness and peace into the contrite soul. This peace in Christ is of the noblest. The law of heaven is not relaxed one jot or tittle. Neither is the tone of conscience lowered to ensure us peace, but, on the contrary, He who gives us a new heart gives us a new conscience ; conscience in evangelical penitence becomes more acute and authoritative than ever, and yet in its utmost majesty and tenderness is satisfied with God’s reconciling work and word in Jesus Christ. Dr. Biichsel tells of an old man under strong conviction of sin who could not find peace. “ I met him once weeping in the fields ; and when I asked him whether he could not believe that the blood of the Lord Jesus had power enough to save him, he replied : ‘ Yes, I do believe it ; but the lost years cry out behind me, the lost years, the lost years ! ’ ” 2. We must be at peace with our present. This harmony is disturbed, to a certain extent, by the plain facts of every human life — to an immense extent by the facts of most human lives. If conscience, the inward observer and recorder, is at all alive, it registers, day by day, almost hour by hour, thoughts, words, acts, which are in contradiction to what we know about the will of our Maker, about the ideal of life which He has placed before us. Of course, people can drug their consciences. Man may create a false conscience which may make him comfortable so long as it lasts, just as we can play tricks with a watch so as to make it tell us, not the real time, but something that will fall in with our inclination or convenience. But a false conscience, considered as administering a cordial to a diseased soul, cannot in any case be depended on for long. It is an illusion, and it is liable to dissolve at any moment, and to leave us face to face with the reality which it has only helped to make worse than before. Conscience, then, by its very activity, 88 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE like the law in the Epistle to the Romans — conscience, when it is honest and energetic — destroys peace, because it discovers a want of harmony between life and our highest knowledge. “ I delight in the law of God,” was an Apostle’s confession, “ after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” And here, too, our risen Lord is the Giver of peace. What we cannot achieve, left to ourselves, we do achieve in and through Him. We hold out to Him the hand of faith : He reaches forward to us His inexhaustible merits, His word of life, the sacraments of His Gospel : we become one with Him. Our personality is, by that act, in the sight of heaven, merged in His. We, in all our sinfulness and weak¬ ness, are incorporated with the moral being of the Holy One. We are, in the sight of the Father, covered with His robe of righteousness : and the inner discord is silenced as our life blends with the Divine life of the Redeemer thus graciously communicated to us, as we become members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. What¬ ever remains of the old sin is more and more in us, like a foreign element, relegated to the surface of the regenerated constitution, but not breaking up the unity of its life ; and thus we are accepted, not on our own merits (God forbid), but, as the Apostle says, “ in the Beloved.” We live, yet not we, but Christ liveth in us, and “ He is our peace.” And thus “ the work of His righteousness is peace,” and its effect on us is “ quietness and assurance for ever.” Having been “ justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 3. We must be at peace with the future. And that is ours assuredly. As for the present our duty is at war with pleasure that is wrong, and our will is divided against itself. That which, in an hour of high resolve, we sacrifice to God, an hour of wild passion brings back again. Love of place, or love of gold, makes us do the very guilt we most hate or fear. The love we give to man for Christ’s sake we give back to ourselves for our own sake. We are pitiably beaten to and fro. Nor can we keep one single aim running straight to its goal. This impulse leads us to one desire, another to an opposite desire. Our energies are dissipated over a hundred aims, and warring wills and scattered powers permit not PEACE OF CONSCIENCE 89 the peace of Christ. We can but wait and trust His promise, and, trusting it, never relax our effort towards that peace which shall be ours when we shall have but one aim — to do the will of God. We must never cease to strive, so that when death draws near we may have the peace which can say, looking back on a life which, through much failure, has never been quite faithless, 44 My Father, fulfil in Thyself what was wanting in my life. Let me say — in Thee, and Thee alone — I have finished the work Thou gavest me to do.” It sounds paradoxical, and yet it is the truth, that there is no peace like that which is to be found in suffering, in moral suffering, when it has reached its climax, when the whole being, mind, heart and soul, through strength of will, or, more truly, through the absolute submission to the will of God, accepts the past, loves the present, and does not fear the future.1 ^ It is the heart that looks out towards the future and hopes without fear. In the roll-call of faith in Hebrews 11 faith is associ¬ ated with two things — 44 things hoped for,” that is, things future ; and 44 things unseen,” that is, things present. And the illustrations of faith throughout the chapter are connected either with 44 things hoped for ” in the future, or with 44 things unseen ” in the present. Every illustration, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, right to the end, comes under one or other of those elements — things hoped for, or things unseen. The peace of God in the heart enables us to front the future fearlessly, and to feel assured that whilst 44 we do not know what is in the future, yet that the Lord is in the future and we are in the Lord.” It is an old story, but worth repeating by way of illustration, of a man in great depression, as we all sometimes are, who, with a sad face, was saying to a friend, 44 Things are awfully hard with me, very dark and forbidding.” 44 My dear fellow,” said the other man, 44 you should look on the bright side.” 44 But,” was the answer, 44 1 have no bright side.” 44 Well, then,” rejoined the friend, 44 polish up the dark side.” Those are fine words of the prophet in Isaiah 60 : 44 The Lord God will help me ; therefore shall I not be confounded.” We can almost realise the man steeling himself, as he adds, 44 Therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.” That is peace.2 44 Peace, perfect peace, our future all unknown ? Jesus we know, and He is on the throne.” 1 Count de Mauny, The Peace of Suffering, 59. 2 W. H. Griffith Thomas, The Power of Peace, 20. 9o CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE There is a glory in the setting sun, That far surpasses morning’s paler hues ; It speaks of rest, when day’s toil is done, And in our wearied hearts it hope renews. Long since, in childhood’s happier days, methought, Our Father, pleased with tasks accomplish’d right, Had drawn the fleecy curtains back, that naught Might hide the Better Country from our sight. Ah ! oft in fancy did those eyes behold The pearly gates, with angel-figures nigh ; Anon the crystal sea, or streets of gold, All clearly outlin’d in the evening sky. Fancy’s bright edges lose their golden sheen, They tarnish, bare the sombre tint below, Till naught remains of beauty, all is seen Just as it is, but seem’d not, long ago. Though life is sadder now than in the past, God grants His lov’d ones peace at eventide, Till He Himself the veil aside shall cast, Shall bid us pass beyond, and there abide.1 III. The Hindeances. What hinders us from enjoying peace of conscience ? 1. There is a want of simplicity and cordiality in our reception of the Gospel, the good news Jesus Christ brings to us concerning God. When we read the Gospels and see how Jesus moved among men, with so much gentleness and grace, we think that it would be really easy to accept Him as our Master and Lord could we but look in His face and feel the pressure of His hand. We are often impatient with those who misunderstood Him, and angry with those who resisted Him. Had we been there we would have treated Him differently. We would have gone, not like Nicodemus, by night to unburden our hearts before Him, but would have run to 1 Una, In Life’s Garden, 5-1 PEACE OF CONSCIENCE 91 Him any day, to cast tlie care of our souls upon Him, with the absolute assurance that He would speedily and effectively give us rest. His kind face would be an encouragement, His sweet voice would be a benediction, His loving touch would be an inspira¬ tion. Were Jesus here in person it would be so easy to trust and not be afraid. Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities , describes how two went on the tumbril to the guillotine, one of them a young sempstress whom the rage of that awful reign of terror was sacrificing to glut its thirst for blood, and the other a man who by stratagem had succeeded in putting himself vicariously in the place of another. “ If I ride with you, Citizen Evremond,” said the girl, “ will you let me take your hand ? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me courage.” She passed to that dreadful death, holding the stranger’s hand, with no sign of fear. Could we but feel the pressure of Jesus’ hand, sorrow or sin or death would have no dominion over us. But He is dead. There is no Christ in the world to-day. There are Christians, but no Christ. There are churches, but no Jesus. Why not trust the word of Jesus and make the venture of faith — Lord, I believe Thee. Lean hard upon His unspeakable mercy and goodness, whatever our guilt and whatever our weak¬ ness, and refuse to give any entertainment to the doubt which would unsettle our faith or the temptations which would turn us away from the conduct which naturally follows this belief. 2. We often fail to possess the peace of conscience for lack of a definite surrender to Christ. In the title of Christ as Lord or Master we are reminded of our consecration. Notice, it is not merely the “ God of Peace,” but the “ Lord of Peace,” the One who gives peace because He is Lord. It is in submission to Him as our Lord that we find and enjoy this peace. The religious soldier and the religious sailor are generally happy Christians for this reason, it may be, among others, that they have transferred to God’s service the habit of unquestioning, prompt, ready obedience, which was taught them in their pro¬ fessions. For them there is no speculating about difficulties ; there is none of that discursing into the whole world of motives which so often, in men trained to think rather than to act, dis¬ concerts and saddens the whole life. Theirs is a life of action, 92 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE and what is peace but this : “ If a man love me he will keep my commandments,” and, “ I will manifest myself to him ? ” 1 “ He is thy Lord.” Oh, I am glad of this, So glad that Thou art Master, Sovereign, King, Only I want Thy rule to be supreme And absolute ; no lurking rebel thought, No traitor in disguise to pass its bounds. So glad, because it is such rest to know That Thou hast ordered and appointed all, And will yet order and appoint my lot ; For though so much I cannot understand, And would not choose, has been and yet may be, Thou choosest and Thou rulest, Thou my Lord. And this is peace, such peace — I hardly pause To look beyond to all the coming joy And glory of Thy full and visible reign. Thou reignest now — “ He is thy Lord ” to-day.2 3. We are too anxious to keep ourselves instead of trusting to Christ to keep us. Some men, by insisting upon the inward evidences of adoption as the title of our inheritance, succeed un¬ intentionally in making the heart of the righteous sad, whom God hath not made sad. Others are continually probing and prying into their own hearts, and looking into themselves, when they had far better be looking out of themselves, and to Christ. For it is Christ who saves us and not we ourselves. No pious feelings or emotions, no sense of peace and reconciliation, can give us a title to acceptance with God, who pardons and justifies us for the merits of Christ, simply embraced and relied upon by a faithful, trusting and loving heart. Let our minds dwell on the power of Christ to keep His own. This power is and must be absolute and unconditioned, infinite and unlimited. “ All authority,” He said, “ hath been given unto me in heaven and in earth.” Nothing less than universal sove¬ reignty is expressed in this solemn claim. He is Lord of all. Every kind and form of force is subject to His rule, as is also every sphere in which such force can act. Moreover, we recall that the claim was made after His resurrection, in which He was “ declared 1 F. W. Robertson, The Human Race, 315. 2 Frances Ridley Havergal. PEACE OF CONSCIENCE 93 to be tbe Son of God with power,” and in connection there¬ fore with the death He died for all men. Tremendous and all- embracing as are the words, they cannot be considered apart from what He said on other occasions concerning Himself, nor, further, from what He proved Himself to be during and since His life on earth. There is indeed no reason why we should doubt their veracity, excepting — which is no reason — that we find it hard at times to reconcile their claims with the facts of experience. There has been no man in modern times who enjoyed more of the peace of God than that man who was martyred at Khartoum — General Gordon. He never knew fear ; he never hesitated in presence of the most terrible dangers. He was like one wrapped round and bathed in the mighty protecting love of God ; yet all his fife was spent in warfare. Wherever he saw wrong done, iniquity, oppression, cruelty, misgovernment, there he hurried to find his battle-field, to strike for God and the right. Someone has told the story of his life in the words, “ One man against fearful odds, but with God always on his side.” That was the secret of his wonderful peace. It came to him because the sword of the Spirit was in his hands, and around him the armour of truth and light.1 We ask for Peace, 0 Lord ! Thy children ask Thy Peace ; Not what the world calls rest, That toil and care should cease, That through bright sunny hours Calm Life should fleet away,| And tranquil night should fade In smiling day ; — It is not for such Peace that we would pray. We ask for Peace, 0 Lord ! Yet not to stand secure, Girt round with iron Pride, Contented to endure : Crushing the gentle strings That human hearts should know, Untouched by others’ joy Or others’ woe ; — Thou, 0 dear Lord, wilt never teach us so. 1 J. G. Greenhough, The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, 236. 94 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE We ask Thy Peace, 0 Lord ! Through storm, and fear, and strife, To light and guide us on, Through a long, struggling life : While no success or gain Shall cheer the desperate fight, Or nerve, what the world calls Our wasted night : — Yet pressing through the darkness to the light. It is Thine own, 0 Lord, Who toil while others sleep ; Who sow with loving care What other hands shall reap. They lean on Thee entranced, In calm and perfect rest : Give us that Peace, 0 Lord, Divine and blest, Thou keepest for those hearts who love Thee best. VII. Peace and Progress. 95 Literature. Andrews, G. A., Efficient Religion (1912). Brown, C., The War and the Faith (1915). Campbell, R. J., City Temple Sermons (1903). Clifford, J., The Secret of Jesus (1904). Collins, W., Hours of Insight (1912). Figgis, J. N., The Gospel and Human Needs (1909). Gow, H., in Ethical and Religious Problems of the War (1916). Greenhough, J. G., The Mind of Christ in St. Paul (1909). Hunter, J., God and Life (1910). Jones, H., in Ethical and Religious Problems of the War (1916). Jowett, B., Sermons Biographical and Miscellaneous (1899). Liddon, H. P., Easter in St. Paul's (1892). Lightfoot, J. B., Sermons in St. Paul's (1891). Maclaren, A., The Unchanging Christ (1889). „ „ Expositions: Romans (1909) ; Hebrews and James (1910). Martineau, Endeavours after the Christian Life (1876). Maurice, F. D., Lincoln's Inn Sermons , vol. vi. (1892). Meyer, F. B., The Present Tenses of the Blessed Life. Moule, H. C. G., Thoughts on the Spiritual Life (1887). Miigge, M. A., Heinrich von Treitschke (1915). Newbolt, W. C. E., Counsels of Faith and Practice (1894). Nicoll, W. R., Sunday Evening (1910). Osborne, C. E., Religion in Europe and the World Crisis (1916). Rutherford, W. G., The Key of Knowledge (1901). Simcox, W. H., The Cessation of Prophecy (1891). Snowden, J. H., Is the World Growing Better? (1919). Thomas, W. H. G., The Power of Peace. Unwin, E. E., As a Man Thinketh (1919). Wood, J., in Ethical and Religious Problems of the War (1916). 96 Peace and Progress. 1. Peace is sometimes misunderstood. It is sought for as if it were the end of toil, the absence of struggle, and removal of tempta¬ tion. But such peace as that is wholly foreign to the teaching and to the life of Jesus. When one turns to Jesus for relief from any of the developing experiences of life, one will always be disappointed. What He offers is not a substitute for human development ; it is a means to that development. If we keep firm hold of this fact, a great many of the popular objections to the gospel, as if it were merely a means of forgiveness and escape, and a system of recon¬ ciliation by some kind of forensic expedient, fall away of them¬ selves, and a great many of the popular blunders that Christian people make fall away too. It is ignoble to say, “ Anything for a quiet life,” and “ What does it all matter ? ” To say this is to yield the inner citadel. There is the war within — the law of sin in the members conflicting with the law of the mind. It is a stern combat, ever renewing itself, and even for the best and bravest darkened by frequent defeats. Ideals are far away ; aspirations remain unsatisfied. Shall we abandon the quest, shall we sink into the lower life and climb no more ? Shall we cease to lift up our eyes and our hearts to the hills and rivet our gaze on earth ? Shall we pay the price of forfeiting a fellowship with the saints and a place on God’s holy mountain, so that the jarring and fretting of the spirit may cease ? That is a price we can never pay. Even if it is paid it brings no true peace, no rest for the spirit that must be restless till it rests in God. Spiritual peace and security rest upon spiritual convictions of eternal truths ; and convictions are assured knowledge, or what 7 98 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE passes as such, whether it comes by the way of the head or the heart, as a result of feeling or of reason. Moreover it is an error to speak of spiritual security as if it were a confidence that has ceased to reassure itself, or a peace beyond strife ; as in a region where questions are no longer raised, and there are no more duties to be done. Such a peace is not the peace of spirit, nor is it even happiness. There is an amplitude of activity in happiness, and spirit rests only on the wing. The soul of man, like everything that lives, lives by constant reaffirmation of itself, both against and by means of its environment : and in a very real sense it constantly recreates both itself and its world, carrying its past into its present, making every achievement a new starting-point, and in this way always going on into a new country. The soul that does not achieve is dying.1 Progress is The law of life ; man is not man as yet, Nor shall I deem his object served, his end Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth, While only here and there a star dispels The darkness, here and there a towering mind O’erlooks its prostrate fellows ; when the host Is out at once to the despair of night, When all mankind alike is perfected, Equal in full-blown powers — then, not till then, I say, begins man’s general infancy. 2. Instead of the rest of absence from toil and conflict we must expect the personal experience of peace to give us something of more worth, namely, an equanimity in toil and a repose in conflict. The peace of Jesus is the equanimity and the repose which enables one to do efficiently the work of life and to meet victoriously the temptations of life. If The gospel announced by Jesus Christ has furnished a new measure for things. It has made possible for anybody and every¬ body an entire revolution in his natural ideas and common esti¬ mates. It glorifies human weakness and poverty and humbleness, because it explains how such things may be transmuted more easily than their opposites into power with God. It demonstrates that from a spiritual standpoint the poet’s guess is true, that death may be life, and life death. In a word, it turns men’s notions upside down, and reverses men’s verdicts ; and among other like 1 Sir H. Jones, in Ethical and Religious Problems of the War, 26. PEACE AND PROGRESS 99 things it declares a state of spiritual battle to be not only com¬ patible with perfect spiritual peace but even to be essential to its existence. Take up any one of the gospels and read it through at a sitting ; it will leave upon the mind in a strong and vivid impression the consistency of a life of hardship and suffering with the most serene spiritual tranquillity. It will prove indeed that life is a field of battle, but it will furnish at the same time an armament so strong and reliable that there can be no cause for doubting the issue of the combat.1 3. Certainly this peace will make the toil apparently less arduous, and the temptations seemingly less strenuous. The man of mental equipoise can always accomplish a given task with much less effort than that needed by the irritable, impatient man ; and he who meets temptation with an inner repose, in the assurance of God-empowered victory, must ever, by this sure armour of defence, diminish the force of the temptation. It is a terrible thing for any man to have no work to do in the world ; and no enemy could wish a man any greater harm than the removal from his life of all temptation. But it is a splendid thing for any man to be able to do his work easily ; and the best friend of that man can wish him no greater blessing than the power to resist. Peace creates the ability to perform with comparative ease the hardest tasks. It creates the power to resist the severest temptation. Surely no single equipment for efficient life can be worth more to its possessor than Christian peace in the heart. 4. The peace, then, which is promised to us is a “ peace in Christ ” ; that is, a peace to be realized by growing through com¬ munion with Him to be like Him in His whole manifestation on earth — alike in the cross and in the crown, in the long passion which ended on Calvary and the eternal exaltation of which the Ascension was the entrance. Accordingly it is the peace, first of continual work for God and man, next of advance, even through tribulation, to sure and certain victory. Its strength is in the declaration, “ I have overcome the world,” a declaration belonging primarily to our Lord, but secondarily to us ; its blessing, as the messages to the Seven Churches show again and again, is to “ him that over cometh.” 1 W. G. Rutherford, The Key of Knowledge, 153. ioo CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE The wall breaks asunder, light, like divine laughter, bursts in. Victory, 0 Light ! The heart of the night is pierced ! With your flashing sword cut in twain the tangle of doubt and feeble desires ! Victory ! Come, Implacable ! Come, you who are terrible in your whiteness. 0 Light, your drum sounds in the march of fire, and the red torch is held on high ; death dies in a burst of splendour ! 1 I. Peace in Work. 1. Look first at the call to work for God and man. To over¬ come the world, in the original and largest sense of the name “ world,” as the Cosmos of the whole creation of God, is, after all, the one true mission of man as man, given him when at his first creation God made him in His own image, to have dominion over all creatures, to replenish the earth and subdue it. We are sent into a world fraught with a wealth of both physical and spiritual force, teeming with germs innumerable of lower and higher life. Each of us, according to his capacity and place in that great order of life, has a command to work on and through these forces to an appointed end, subduing them to his will, in order to minister thereby to the glory of God and the blessing of man. Each epoch in that pro¬ gress of humanity which we call civilization is an advance one step farther in the consummation of that conquest. There is a material aspect of this work in the gathering and manufacture of all the treasures of the earth, whether of usefulness or of beauty, and in making the physical forces of the universe servants to our thought, our imagination, and our will. There is a higher aspect in the calling out of those powers, intellectual, moral, spiritual, which sway the great world of humanity, and through these pro¬ moting that increase of light and beauty, of truth and love, which is for man a fuller participation in the highest attributes of God. In both, just in proportion as each man is a true man, he takes his 1 Rabindranath Tagore, “ Fruitgathering.” PEACE AND PROGRESS IOI part in the overcoming of the world, and exercises the marvellous privilege of being “ a fellow- worker with God.” If Many during the war found a wonderful “ peace ” at the Front in spite of all the discomfort and the danger, and this was because for the first time in their lives they had a clearly-defined object, and had wholly given themselves to this one thing. To them this “ way of service ” was a “ way of peace.” 1 2. No men know less of inward peace than the unoccupied. A leading secret of peace is work. When, then, our Lord appeared, with the words “ Peace be unto you,” He uttered them because He restored to the disciples that sort of peace which comes with occupa¬ tion pursued under a sense of duty. They had been a prey to all the miseries of hopeless inaction ; in seeing Him they saw a career again open itself before them. They knew now that He was alive ; that His Kingdom was still a reality, or rather, more a reality than ever before ; and that in it they had each an assigned task, in the performance of which their peace of soul would be insured. If There are hundreds of persons in London who do not know what peace is, mainly because they have not enough, or rather anything, to do. They do not know how to get through the day, much less the week. They may have at command money, friends, amusements. But these things do not really secure peace of soul. And many a working man, who does not know how to get into the day what he has to do, supposes that the condition of these idle people is a thing to be envied. No mistake can well be greater. Depend on it, work guarantees the peace of the soul ; because the soul must be active in some way, and work secures healthy action. The man who has no regular occupation has his mind and heart full of restless, impracticable, morbid thoughts and feelings, which are fatal to peace. “ The happiest days of my life ” — they were the words of one of the wisest of men — “ have been those in which I have had the most work to do, with fair health and strength to do it.” 2 ^f One of the most successful teachers of our time was Hannah M. Pipe, whose life has been written by Miss Stoddart. To an old pupil she wrote : Do thy worlc, and leave sorrow and joy to come of themselves. Do not limit the work to the outward activities of life. By work I mean not these only, though these certainly, but also the regulation of our moral feelings — strive against pride, 1 Bishop A. F. W. Ingram. 2 PI. P. Liddon, Easter in St. Paul's, 227. 102 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE vanity, ostentation, self-righteousness, self-satisfaction and dis¬ satisfaction, resentment, impatience, alienation, discontent, in¬ dolence, peevishness, hatred or dislike, inconstancy, cowardice — untiring, hopeful effort after obedience to the will of God, and resolute, believing war with every temper contrary to the mind of Christ. It can be done, and it must be done. It is promised : it is commanded : it is possible. If you wish for something that you may not lawfully grasp, or cannot grasp, begin to fight, and never leave off until the wish is mastered and annihilated as completely as if it had never been once felt. This must be done not by desper¬ ate struggling so much as by calm, resolved, fixed faith. Do thus thy work, and leave sorrow and joy to come of themselves. . . . You see to obedience, faith, and righteousness. God will give you peace and joy in such measure as He pleases, and in increasing measure as the years go by. Until I was five or six and twenty, I think I had no peace or joy at all. Indeed, I never found any until I had given up caring for, praying for, hoping for, or in any way seeking after comfort and feeling. I took up with just an historical faith in the Bible and said : He will not make me glad, but He shall not find me, therefore, swerve from following Him. I will do His holy will so far as I can, I will serve Him as well as I can, though not perhaps so well as others to whom the joy of the Lord gives strength. I will be content to do without these inward rewards, but with or without such wages I will do my best work for the Master. With this resolve, arrived at after years of weary strife, rest began for me, and deepened afterwards into peace, and heightened eventually into joy, and now from year to year, almost from week to week, an ever-greatening blessedness.1 In the dark hour When phrases are in power, And nought’s to choose between The thing which is not and which is not seen, One fool, with lusty lungs, Does what a hundred wise, who hate and hold their tongues, Shall ne’er undo. In such an hour, When eager hands are fetter’d and too few, And hearts alone have leave to bleed, Speak ; for a good word then is a good deed,2 1 A. M. Stoddart, Life and Letters of Hannah Pipe, 119. 2 Coventry Patmore, Poems, ii. 36. PEACE AND PROGRESS 103 II. Peace in Warfare. Warfare is the chief characteristic of our life as we know it, whether we look upward or outward or within. And it is not to be wondered at that many who realize the horror and the waste and the apparent futility of a world of strife should preach to us “ peace at any price ” as the one cure of that world’s disorders. But yet, in proportion as we realize how radical these disorders are, we shall see also that a cure must go deeper than this. What is needed is not that the discordant energies of the universe should be silenced — that the contending elements should be congealed, so to speak, in all their present antagonism — but that they should be refined and purified and brought into their right relation, “ Peace at any price ” would be no cure for anything that was really wrong, nay more, it would itself be the most unrighteous of all possible failures. In a world where good and evil are mingled in an apparently inextricable confusion, it cannot but be a duty to fight. The truth, even in our blurred and partial vision of it, must of necessity come before peace. Our aspirations may be marred by self-seeking, our ideals may be mingled with much that is false, but we are bound to fight for them, such as they are. Our methods may need correction, for we may not fight the Lord’s battle with the world’s weapons, but even that, it may be, would be less heinous than to cry “ peace at any price.” The temper which is born of fighting needs to be constantly chastened and controlled ; but evil may not be acquiesced in. Quarrelling, no doubt, is a device of the devil, but fighting is a Christian duty. Life was to them the bag of grain, And Death the weedy harrow’s tooth. Those warriors of the sighting brain Give worn Humanity new youth. Our song and star are they to lead The tidal multitude and blind From bestial to the higher breed By fighting souls of love divined. io4 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE They scorned the ventral dream of peace, Unknown in nature. This they knew : That life begets with fair increase Beyond the flesh, if life be true.1 A shrewd thinker said the other day, speaking of the truth which underlies Nietzsche’s perversions, “ This call to conflict, this glory in danger, is very splendid, rightly understood, yet it is not a truth that appeals much to a man over fifty years of age.” No doubt, as a rule, that is true, and yet surely the Gospel is some¬ thing more than the mild and kindly touch of a hand that smooths the pillow of those whose climax and struggle is past or passing. The peace which Christ came to bring, the peace of souls reconciled with God, their neighbours, and themselves, is not a mere glorifica¬ tion of comfort — “ The ghastly smooth life dead at heart ” — “ No cross, no war to wage.” The air of the Mount of the Beati¬ tudes is sharp and tonic. The dew which descends into the heart of the disciples is a spirit which makes those hearts “ first pure then peaceable.” 2 Goethe’s saying : “I have been a man and that means a fighter,” is a fine comment upon an incident which Treitschke gratefully records in his History. The Secondary Schools of East Prussia presented the famous old castle, the Marienburg, with a costly painted window, and the inscription they chose was : “ He who is not a fighter shall not be a shepherd.” 3 With the north-east wind the soul is fain to fight as an armed man — The joy of combat is ours at least, and let him conquer who can : Let the strenuous warfare be swift and brief or weary and long to win, Who meetly wrestles with foe so fell, may surely rejoice therein.4 1. Where is life free from battle ? It was an ancient thinker who said of strife that it is the parent of everything. St. Paul’s words concerning the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain suggest at least, if they do not anticipate, the modern idea of struggle in the evolution of the universe, in the movement of 1 G. Meredith, “ The Thrush in February.” 2 C. E. Osborne, Religion in Europe and the World Crisis, 21. 3 M. A. Miigge, Heinrich von Treitschke, 30. 4 May Byron, The Wind on the Heath, 1 1. PEACE AND PROGRESS 105 nature from chaos to order, from the first dawn of life on the earth to the advent of man. The story of all living things is the story of struggle. In recent years much emphasis has been laid on the struggle for existence in the lower creation ; but the struggle is not one for existence merely, but for higher life. The necessity for it is organic in the structure of the world. A compulsion is upon every form of life to reach its ideal. There seems to be no other way of producing even physical excellence — of bringing to perfection plant and animal. And what is true of nature is equally true of man. Its conflicts are reproduced in human experience. Man is born to strife, born to live in a world where everything must be fought for. He comes to the consciousness of his life in the midst of struggle with the elemental forms and forces of nature. To exist at all, he has to fight a continuous battle for food and shelter. The sun will smite him by day, and the moon by night, water will drown him, the frosts of winter, earthquake and tempest will kill him, unless he is alert and vigilant. Not to be destroyed, to come off victorious with the powers of earth and sea and air, he must fight through all his life a battle in which there is no discharge. And the same law of struggle holds good when evolution introduces a new and nobler aim, and moral excellence becomes the ideal. All human progress has been through conflict. The law of conflict is the law of growth. It is under hard and stern conditions the life of man on the earth goes forward. Not anything which man has won has been won without struggle. Danger and difficulty have developed, and trained his faculties and virtues, and to them we owe his intellectual and moral achievement, the noblest fruits of human power and character. Then shall I wish for utter peace ? For light with calm around ? For all the stir of life to cease In apathy profound ? Ah ! no, too long I’ve warred with wrong ; I’ve loved the clash of battle-song ; For me, to drone in ease alone Were heavier than a churchyard stone.1 1 Edmund Gosse, Collected Poems, 354. io6 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE (1) There is the battle of thought. Shall we try to escape from the continual invasions on the creed of our childhood by putting up the shutters, refusing to look and listen, and allowing our belief to be sterilized into dead formulas ? Or are we to turn aside and say that nothing can be known on these high themes, and acquiesce in ignorance ? Nay, but rather we are to believe in the light, and pursue it without pausing or fearing. The form may pass, but the truth shines as the stars for ever and ever, and is made sure to those who are willing to do the will of God. Truth must come before peace, and it is only as truth is sought and found that we discover the perfect splendour of the Divine religion, and are at rest therein. ^ In that work with which I am best acquainted, I know that the secret, not perhaps of the most popular preaching, but certainly of the most fruitful, is this : it is the preaching of men who never cease to be students of the deep things of God ; men who never cease to train themselves in all high ways, to the end that their sensitiveness and loyalty to the spiritual and Divine aspects of life may ever become truer and finer. For them there is no rest, no vacation, no cessation from thought, no relaxing of energies ; in season and out of season they are busy, in times of peace they are preparing for war. And the best work is done by men in those very years when the cost to themselves is sorest. When a man begins to neglect mental discipline and drill, he begins to fail. There is no man, whatever his ability or his attainments, who can afford to live on his acquired power and knowledge, as a merchant lives on his capital ; and it is this conception of mental endow¬ ments and possessions which has betrayed many professional men to their undoing. Power here, strength of grasp, readiness of appreciation, can only be preserved by unremitting attention, by unceasing discipline, by constant struggle, by a war with foes without and within, in which there is no such thing as a furlough, a discharge.1 (2) And then there is the harder battle of righteousness. There is a moral as well as an intellectual struggle, a battle with appetite, greed, falsehood, envy, pride, and selfishness in all its forms, both coarse and refined. There are dangers in life more serious than the attacks of disease, material failure, the decay of mental power, or the loss of distinction in a chosen calling. We are daily and hourly exposed to temptations which threaten to overthrow us, 1 John Hunter, God and Life, 125. PEACE AND PROGRESS 107 and which, if yielded to, cannot but work deadly mischief in our moral nature. Hardly a day passes when the fundamental elements of character are not put to the test. Viewed from this standpoint, we may well speak of the inexorableness of life. The years, as they gather upon us, bring no release from moral risk — no dis¬ charge in this war. No man is ever safe. No man can ever afford to take his ease and to put oh his armour. To the best men, life is never other than a danger and a trial. St. Paul, many years after his conversion, and after multitudinous labours in his apostolic ministry, had not risen above the fear of final failure. He felt it necessary to keep his body under, not to neglect self-discipline, not to relax watchfulness, that he might not, after all he had over¬ come, and all the good he had done to his fellows, be himself a moral castaway at the end. The grey-haired saint may fail at last , The surest guide a wanderer prove. The third is Sorrow’s Ceasing. This is peace, To conquer love of self and lust of life, To tear deep-rooted passion from the breast, To still the inward strife. For love to clasp Eternal Beauty close ; For glory to be Lord of self ; for pleasure To live beyond the gods ; for countless wealth To lay up lasting treasure. Of perfect service rendered, duties done In charity, soft speech, and stainless days : These riches shall not fade away in life, Nor any death dispraise. Then sorrow ends, for Life and Death have ceased ; How should lamps flicker when their oil is spent ? The old sad count is clear, the new is clean ; Thus hath a man content.1 2. But let us remember, also, that every man has a war to wage with evil around him. It is possible to pay too high a price 1 Who Dies if England Live ? 27. io8 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE for peace. There are wars of just aggression, and wars of just defence all around us, in which sooner or later every Christian has to take his part. It is not likely, for instance, that the great and precious gift of Revelation from God to man should be allowed to remain unassailed. It is not likely that the Church, that great instrument for doing good, should be allowed to carry out her mission unmolested. It is not likely that in an evil world we should be allowed to work out the pure morality of the Gospel without a struggle. The very reason why so many of us rarely, or never, enjoy God’s peace is that we are taking no part in the Christian warfare against the wrongs, and unbelief, and devilry which are in God’s world. If we let them alone, the very love of God will desert us, and His peace will follow it. We always despair of the world’s evil so long as we are striking no blows against it. The perfect day seems to shift farther off to those who idly watch for its coming, and have no share in the wrestling for it. It is the man who works, and prays, and flings himself into the battle, who sees with his eyes God working, and believes in his deepest heart in the fulfil¬ ment of all the visions which tarry. To him alone, the peace of God is revealed, because he puts on the armour of light. Yet much remains To conquer still ; Peace hath her victories No less renowned than War : new foes arise, Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains. Help us to save free conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves, whose Gospel is their maw.1 3. It is a great and sacred thing for any man or nation to be able to say in the words of Luther, “ Here I stand, I can no other, God help me, Amen.” With all my faults, my wickedness, my sins, which I pray God I may feel more deeply, yet I know that in this awful conflict I strive and suffer on behalf of freedom and of justice and of peace. That was the underlying conviction of our young men at the war, not love of glory, or of power, nor hatred of the enemy. There is something in these things which fills us not merely with admiration but with reverence. It is not 1 Milton, 16th Sonnet {Works, ed. Masson, ii. 484). PEACE AND PROGRESS 109 mere heroic actions we acclaim. We have a sense of the divine in man, of something that passes understanding. That sense of being right and being called to give everything for right in the midst of awful peril makes for a deep peace of mind and heart. The two things are closely united, the anguish of peril and suffering, and the peace of being right. If I am merely arguing comfortably with a friend over the fire, and expressing truths of which I am quite certain, and trying to convince him of their truth, there is no deep sense of peace. If I am doing something in ordinary life which I know I ought to do, but which does not mean any great sacrifice or danger, there is no exaltation in my gladness. It is when loss and pain are involved, when the present is dark and the future uncertain, when a man is called to make the utmost sacrifice for right without seeing the issue, without any certain promise of success, that the sense of right and standing for right brings with it the deepest sense of peace. That peace does not exclude hot indignation against evil, but it excludes all bitter malice, all thoughts of revenge, all desire to inflict pain for our own pleasure. We are not worthy to fight for good against evil unless we keep ourselves free from the contagion of the evil against which we fight. The spirit of militarism against which we fight must not be ours. The spirit of violence and cruelty, and grasping lust of power against which we fight must not be ours. The more con¬ vinced we are of the evil in the system against which we strive, the more determined and anxious we must be to keep ourselves unstained by it. Garibaldi’s words have been often quoted during the last few years, and just because the war is over, it will be well to quote them once again. “ I offer you forced marches, short rations, bloody battles, wounds, imprisonment and death ; let him who loves Home and Fatherland follow me ! ” — and all Italy followed him. If only we could convince the young that Christ’s service meant no tame content with conventional religion, but was “ a great adventure ” which might land them in poverty instead of riches, dislike instead of shallow popularity, Central Africa instead of the comforts of home, and, as a matter of fact, is bound to involve a total revolution in all the world’s views on morality, and many Churchmen’s views on “ what is the right or correct thing ” — then we might see a rallying round the standard of the Cross such as gladdened the heart of Garibaldi, and it would need no CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE no new war to prove that the “Way of Service was the Way of Peace.” 1 4. It is possible day by day to go out to toil and care, and anxiety, and change, and suffering, and conflict, and yet to bear within our hearts the unalterable rest of God. Deep in the bosom of the ocean, beneath the region where winds howl and billows break, there is calm, but the calm is not stagnation. Each drop from these fathomless abysses may be raised to the surface by the power of the sunbeams, expanded there by their heat, and sent on some beneficent message across the world. So, deep in our hearts, beneath the storm, beneath the raving winds and the curling waves, there may be a central repose, as unlike stagnation as it is unlike tumult ; and the peace of God may keep, as a warrior, our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. I remember in an old church in Italy a painting of an arch¬ angel with his foot on the dragon’s neck, and his sword thrust through its scaly armour. It is perhaps the feebleness of the artist’s hand, but I think rather it is the clearness of his insight, which has led him to represent the victorious angel, in the moment in which he is slaying the dragon, as with a smile on his face, and not the least trace of effort in the arm, which is so easily smiting the fatal blow. Perhaps, if the painter could have used his brush better he would have put more expression into the attitude and the face, but I think it is better as it is. We, too, may achieve a conquest over the dragon which, although it requires effort, does not disturb peace.2 Now are they come unto the place of quiet, Into the heart of silence, where God is, Far, far away from all the mortal riot Safe in the home of lovely sanctities. And there they rest, who fought with no surrender, Lapt round with peace like water cool and bright Till God shall armour them again in splendour, To battle with the spirits of the night ! 1 Bishop A. F. W. Ingram, in The Way of Peace (ed. E. A. Burroughs), Intro¬ duction. 2 A. Maclaren, Expositions : Romans, 392. PEACE AND PROGRESS hi My soul, forestall awhile the ultimate fiat, A moment doff the body’s hindrance, And come thou too unto the place of quiet, Into the heart of silence, where God is.1 1 D. F. Gumey, in The Fiery Cross, 63. VIII. Peace with all Men. Literature. Allen, J. W., Germany and Europe (1914). Cunningham, W., Christianity and Politics (1916). Davies, J. LI., Spiritual Apprehension (1898). De Quincey, T., Works, vol. viii. (1897). Field, F., in Churchman’s Pulpit , pt. 58. Fremantle, W. H., The Gospel of the Secular Life (1882). Hill, A. C., The Sword of the Lord (1914). Holland, H. S., So as by Fire (1915). James, W., Memories and Studies (1911). Macmillan, H., Gleanings in Holy Fields (1899). Marshall, H. R., War and the Ideal of Peace (1915). Masterman, J. H. B., The Challenge of Christ (1913). Matheson, G., Pests by the River (1906). Mead, L. A., Swords and Ploughshares (1912). Montefiore, C. G., Truth in Religion (1906). Murray, W. H. H., in The American Pulpit of the Day, vol. iii. (1876). Osborne, C. E., Religion in Europe and the World Crisis (1916). Paget, S., Essays for Boys and Girls (1915). Skrine, J. H., The Mountain Mother (1902). Temple, W., Repton School Sermons (1913). Walker, W. L., The Holy Spirit (1907). Watkinson, W. L., Studies in Christian Character, 2nd Ser. (1901). ”4 Peace with all Men. 1. In the teaching of Jesus Christ and His apostles stress is often laid upon the inward peace enjoyed by the children of God, which arises from a sense of reconciliation with Him. That peace is at once fundamental and eternal ; for it lies between us and the Father of our spirits, and will find its consummation in His immediate presence, when the noise of this world will no longer fill our ears. Happy is he who enjoys “ the peace of God which passeth all under¬ standing,” won for us, and placed within the reach of every one of us, by the coming to the world of Jesus Christ. He was the em¬ bodiment of this peace, though none lived a more troubled life than He, and no legacy could have seemed more precious to His dis¬ ciples than that which He assigned to them in His parting words — “ Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you : not as the world giveth give I unto you.” He then implanted within their souls the germ from which universal peace was ultimately to grow, till the angels’ song, which at His birth foretold “peace on earth,” would be fulfilled in the deepest and broadest sense. But all Divine blessings have their earthward, as well as their heavenly, side. They are not like the moon, which always presents the same face towards us ; but like the earth, which presents to the sun every face in turn. The whole of life, not this or that part of it, is to be ruled by serenity. If we enjoy inward peace with God, there is no department of our life in which it is not to assert its supremacy. It should appear in the home, the church, and the business. In short, Divine peace, like Divine love, is to be full- orbed. Men are to see it as well as God ; for while we love the Lord our God with all our heart, and soul, and strength, we are also to love our neighbours as ourselves. Human nature is full of antipathies — antipathies of colour and 1 16 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE creed, of caste and culture, of social position and religious ritual. It would be difficult to say which of these is the most obstinate. It is quite certain as a matter of history that the only force that has ever had the power of effectually “ slaying ” these enmities is that embodied in the Cross of Jesus Christ. In Him there is neither Jew nor Gentile, bond nor free, wise nor foolish. Under the shadow of that gaunt tree on which He died, the flower of a universal charity has at last blossomed, and men, looking on Him whom they have pierced, have learnt to whisper “ brother ” to one another in the same breath as they have lisped “ Saviour ” to Him. He is the Universal Brother, and in Him all men are brethren. If even after nineteen centuries we have failed to learn this lesson effectu¬ ally, it is because there was so much antipathy and hatred between man and man to overcome, so much blindness to the simple scope and meaning of this glorious Gospel of humanity. I. Strife. 1. Where life is, there is strife. So it has been from the begin¬ ning, and so it will be always. In the world of animals there is in¬ cessant bloodshed : they prey one upon another : and “ the end of every wild creature’s life is a tragedy.” They fight for their mates, for their young, for their food : they die, every year, millions of them, wounded or starved out. Everywhere, it is strife : every hawk is an aeroplane, every spider’s- web is a wire entangle¬ ment. Even in the world of plants and flowers, it still is a sort of war. Each seed in the ground, each blade of grass, each separate bud on a spray of hawthorn, must stand up for itself, to get all that it needs of light and air and nourishment : it must enforce its rights, if it would enjoy them : or it will be defeated. You may be sitting in a garden, with all the magic of hills and moorland round you ; but you are in the midst of strife, for all that : you are in the zone des armies : and the sound of the fighting will be in your ears — if only you could hear it — till you are where no life is. I remember one Sunday, when Dr. Guthrie was haranguing in Evangelical style on the evils of war, a theme in my opinion PEACE WITH ALL MEN ii 7 often treated in a rather shallow fashion by pulpit haranguers, he launched forth the unqualified proposition that “ man is the only animal that goes to war with his kind.” The very next day I happened to be dining in the country at Craigcrook with my esteemed friend, J ohn Hunter, Auditor of the Court of Session ; and after tea, in the cool of the evening, we walked out, mine host and hostess with myself, into the domain of the garden and the adjacent grounds. After walking a little, suddenly we came in view of a heap of rubbish and straw, and other shades of things that were, on the top of which was standing a cock in a very dilapidated and displumed condition. “ What’s the matter with that poor animal ? ” said I to the lady. “ Oh, Mr. Blackie ! ” said she, “ Mr. Blackie ! it is a very sad sight that we see : if you had only been here this day last week, it was a magnificent animal ! ” “ And what happened then,” said I, “ in a single week to make such an awful change in its public presentment ? ” “ Well, you see, Professor, it was just this : there was only one cock here before, and this was he ; and oh ! but he was a grand animal, a very earl or duke among cocks ; but somehow we took an unhappy fancy to order another, and they fell to fighting, and the grand old fellow was dilapidated and 4 disjaskit ’ in the sad style you see.” “ Alas, poor cock ! ” said I, and then, reversing the key, I burst suddenly into a loud laugh. “ What makes you laugh, Professor ? ” said the lady ; “ I think you might rather have cause to weep.” “ In¬ deed I do both,” said I ; “ I weep for the poor brute, and I laugh at myself for having been so facile as for a day and an hour to believe what Dr. Guthrie said yesterday afternoon in his sermon ! ” “ What could that be ? ” rejoined the lady. I then told her the facts of the anti-war sermon : she smiled, and I returned to the house pondering the power of the spoken word that will teach the most sober-minded men to give credence for an hour to the most unquestionable nonsense.1 2. Is man also by nature a fighting animal ? Is it true that fighting instincts are given to him by inheritance, and that the law of his nature compels him from time to time to wage war ? To the first part of this question we must at once give an affirma¬ tive reply ; i.e., we must agree that, so far as we can read the story of his development, man as he has existed has been, and as he exists to-day still is, a fighting animal ; that is to say, that he has in the past answered, and still answers, certain stimuli by the immediate reactions which constitute fighting. In his lowest 1 John Stuart Blackie, Notes of a Life, 299. 1 18 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE state man was little removed from his gorilla-like cousins who have left their descendants for our study. We see every reason to believe that he was as ready as they are to fight his neighbours that he might gain the immediate satisfaction of his needs and of his desires ; and, so far as existing savages live what we picture to have been the lives of primitive men, we find them exemplifying these same characteristics. ^ Our permanent enemy is the rooted bellicosity of human nature. Man, biologically considered, and whatever else he may be into the bargain, is the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematicallly on his own species. We are once for all adapted to the military status. A millennium of peace would not breed the fighting disposition out of our bone and marrow, and a function so ingrained and vital will never consent to die without resistance, and will always find impassioned apologists and idealizers.1 At present the principles by which Puthans especially are guided in their intercourse with each other are those of retaliation — blood for blood, injury for injury, “ an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” An amusing instance of this occurred in a visit Edwardes paid one day in the hills. His host, a man of gigantic stature, to do honour to his visitor drew out his bed for a seat ; and Edwardes was in his own mind amused for some time at the ridiculous disproportion of its size, being a very short one. At last he said to his host, “ It surprises me how you, so tall a man, can lie upon a bed so very short.” “ Oh,” said he, “ I have a short bed in order to oblige me to sleep with my knees up, that I may sleep lightly ! Do you see that smoke curling up from the hill below ? ” Edwardes looked. where he pointed, and he saw a slight curl of smoke rising in the air. “ That smoke is from the house of my enemy,” said the man ; “I am two ahead of that man now, and I must sleep lightly. If I were to stretch myself out straight upon my charpoy, I should sleep so soundly that he would catch me asleep ; but by sleeping with my knees up, I wake easily ! ” “ Two ahead ” meant that he had killed two members of the other man’s family, that had to be paid off.2 3. We find evidence of the existence of this fighting instinct in the ordinary men around us. Remove but for a moment the 1 William James, Memories and Studies, 300. 2 Major-Gen. Herbert B. Edwardes, i. 300. PEACE WITH ALL MEN 119 restraints given in our civilized lands and this tendency is likely to become prominent upon the slightest stimulation. We see this exemplified in the lives of the pioneer and adventurer the world over : in that of the cowboy of the far West, in that of the rubber collector on the Amazon, in that of the ivory trader on the Congo. Then, too, the prize-fighter is still a prominent person in our com¬ munity taken as a whole ; and even in our sports, as engaged in by “ gentlemen amateurs,” we find it necessary to make rigid rules to prevent the friendly contest from developing into a fierce struggle for individual physical dominance. “ The state of peace between men who live near one another,” says Kant, “ is not the state of nature. The natural state is rather one of war.” This statement is too broad to be strictly accurate ; for under certain conditions the stimuli which lead to the instinctive reaction may be lacking, and then the fighting propensities of the man, or nation, will not be evidenced. Such exceptional cases, however, do not take from the weight of the evidence going to show that deeply embedded in man’s nature are instincts that lead him to fight ; to fight as an individual, and to fight with others of his kind in groups. We are led to overlook this fact that war is based upon man’s instinctive fighting tendencies by the complexity of the modern fighting machine, and the equal complexity of the governmental processes which nowadays culminate in the initiation of war. The early man invented crude weapons which he himself handled to serve his direct hostile purpose. The modern man has devised methods of warfare on a grand scale which involve the use of men as parts of the complex weapon. So the personal initiation of attack has given place to action under the command of officers who treat the individual men as their agents ; and these officers are subject to control from those still higher in position, who direct the beginnings and the processes -of the fighting. But behind it all lies the tendency of the individual to fight, complicated enorm¬ ously and masked by the fact that he has acquired a willingness to be guided by the judgment of others as to the best mode of gaining the victory. Like Buskin, Watts felt the horrors of war had a redeeming grandeur that an inglorious peace was without. He wished to trace for himself the larger forces behind the men of the moment i2o CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE who appeared to bear the responsibility of it. On this subject be said, “ They might just as well say when they look at the clock, that the hands made the hour.” “ The poet,” he thought, “ too often ignores the condition of conflict and its necessity, especially that state of effervescence amongst men which leads to war. Wars can never cease, because men are driven to it periodically by a force they cannot control, and which is inherent in nature. They will recur and recur again, unless co-operation brings about a revolution in the natural character of the human being.” 1 4. But, although instincts can rarely if ever be obliterated, their manifestations may be so altered as to give the animal quite new characteristics. And this means that if the characteristics which we describe as the expression of man’s fighting instincts could be so changed that these expressions were inhibited, or turned into quite new channels, the man would no longer be de- scribable as a fighting animal. Before Christ came there was no peace, either in principle or in expression, among men. War was the normal condition and practice of mankind. The strong ruled the weak. The world was divided into two classes, oppressors and slaves. Wrong had become systematized. Civil government, which should be a fountain of peace, was a source of war ; and nations were as wild animals that have no law but their appetites and their fears. Men in their individual relations were antagonistic and rude. Humane impulse had not been born. Brotherly love, as of one stock and race, was unknown. The Jew hated the Gentile, and the Gentile retaliated on the J ew. Even religion begat animosities, and men inspired by it became cruel and perverse. Now, Christ came to change all this, and the angelic heralds truly proclaimed His mission. He came to introduce a new and higher order of life and feeling, to awaken the dormant power of sympathy in man, to bridge the chasm of hatred which divided nations and races, and bring at last the acknowledgment and practice of universal brotherhood. But the struggle is not over yet. Sometimes it seems as though it had hardly begun. For the symbol of the wild beast still seems the best symbol for the great nations of the modern world. The British lion, the Russian bear, the German eagle, the Chinese 1 George Frederick W atts, ii. 295. PEACE WITH ALL MEN 12 I dragon — we are familiar with them all. But what do they imply ? Do they not imply that the appeal is still to brute force, that rapacity and carnage still rule the relations of nation to nation ? Where is the Kingdom of the Son of Man ? It is an appalling thing to realize how thin is the crust that civilization has spread over the volcanic fires of primitive savagery in modern life, how little it needs to change the voices of men into the wild howls of beasts of prey. Man holds his kingdom by a precarious tenure. It is because these things are so that there lies on us, who call ourselves Christians, so tremendous a responsibility. For our appeal can never be to the beast, but always to the man. That is what evolution means — the subjugation of the brute in us to the purposes of the spirit : If my body came from brutes, tho’ somewhat finer than their own, I am heir, and this my kingdom. Shall the royal voice be mute ? No ; but if the rebel subject seek to drag me from the throne, Hold the sceptre, human soul, and rule thy province of the brute. We know that this is true of our own lives, that the first Christmas Day began the fulfilment of the prophet’s dream of the brute world ruled by the hand of a little child. But are we sufficiently alive to the truth that the same law holds good for the life of the world ? II. As Much as in You Lieth. What then is the ideal as between man and man that we must aim at ? St. Paul expresses it in the words, “If it be possible as much as in you lieth, be at peace with all men.” 1. “If it be possible,” he says. And again, “ as much as in you lieth.” For no man knew better than he the difficulty of living peaceably in a world like this, and he knew also that the occasions are not rare when such peace is actually impossible. We could not maintain our self-respect without asserting certain i22 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE rights, and society itself could not exist without the assertion of these rights ; yet some of our fellows are so unreasonable that we cannot enjoy their goodwill unless we are prepared to ignore our personal, civic, and ecclesiastical claims and privileges. The truth is that we who enjoy any measure of spiritual life are left in this present evil world in order that we may fight against the animal nature in ourselves and in others, and the animal nature has teeth and claws, which it does not hesitate to use. All the strange legends of ancient time show that no dragon is slain without fighting. If you enter on a crusade against some popular vice, and dare to inveigh against its prevalence, and seek by legislation or otherwise to lessen its opportunities, you will be hated and hounded by those whose interests or passions run that way ; and your gentleness, or fairness, or courtesy, will not avail to turn aside savage attacks on your reputation or on your motives. You cannot snatch the prey from the jaws of a lion without hurting the lion or getting hurt yourself. The Son of God Himself could not redeem the world without a fight with the adversary, even up to the point of death. And as to His disciples, who, in His name, went everywhere preaching the Word, they were persecuted in every city they entered, and were reviled as disturbers of the peace, as men who turned the world upside down ! No man knew better than the Apostle who wrote these words that it would be folly to give as an unconditional command to the followers of Jesus these words — “ Live peaceably with all men.” (1) Live peaceably at home. — Very delicate and precarious is the unity of the home. Sometimes a marriage disturbs its peace ; what is a union in one sense being a serious division in another. Sometimes a death is fatal to brotherly love ; the property of the dead and the friendship of the living being divided at the same time. A thousand occasions naturally arise to put in peril the peace of kindred. If Be on your guard against sarcastic words, which sting and wound, provoking retaliation, and even revenge. Keep yourselves free from small selfishnesses, by which you interfere ruthlessly with the comfort of everybody else in the home, in order that your wishes may be carried out. Drive out, with God’s help, the spirit of suspicion, which makes you imagine a bad motive where there is none, and leads you to treat with distrust those who love you PEACE WITH ALL MEN 123 well. Beware of irritability, which is ready to take offence for a word, being easily provoked, and always thinking evil. And if you have been hurt, or offended, or wronged, then, for Christ’s dear sake, forgive, as you would be forgiven.1 There is a place where He hath split the hills ; No water fills The gap : A bow-shot wide Side stands to side, Indenture perfectly opposed, The outlet closed By seeming overlap — So severed are our hearts, so rent our wills ; And yet the old correlatives remain — Ah ! brother, may we not be joined again ? 2 (2) Live peaceably in the world. — Some Christians regard it almost as a duty to live in perennial controversy with the world, and consider it a merit on their part to provoke such conflicts ; but the Apostle gives different counsel. He teaches that all need¬ less irritation must be avoided, and that we must not make our¬ selves voluntary martyrs. Dr. Moule, in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Homans, remarks on this passage : “ Living at peace with all men ; yes, even in pagan and hostile Home. A peculiarly Christian principle speaks here. The men who had given over their bodies a living sacrifice might think, imaginably, that their duty was to court the world’s enmity, to tilt as it were against its spears, as if the one supreme call was to collide, to fall, and to be glorified. But this would be fanaticism ; and the Gospel is never fanatical, for it is the law of love. The surrendered Christian is not, as such, an aspirant for even a martyr’s fame, but the servant of God and man. If martyrdom crosses his path, it is met as duty ; but he does not court it as eclat. And what is true of martyrdom is, of course, true of every lower and milder form of the conflict of the Church, and of the Christian, in the world.” We must not assume a hostile attitude towards the great outside world, but treat all men in a pacific and conciliatory spirit. 1 A. Rowland, The Burdens of Life, 117. 2 T. E. Brown, Old John and Other Poems, 178. 124 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE The day is ended. ’Ere I sink to sleep, My weary spirit seeks repose in Thine ; Father, forgive my trespasses, and keep This little life of mine. With loving-kindness curtain Thou my bed, And cool in rest my burning pilgrim feet ; Thy pardon be the pillow for my head ; So shall my rest be sweet. At peace with all the world, dear Lord, and Thee, No fears my soul’s unwavering faith can shake ; All’s well, whichever side the grave for me The morning light may break.1 2. How is this to be done ? (1) By studying to be quiet. — “ And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you.” And if we would “ lead a quiet and peaceable life,” this is what we must resolve to do ; to attend dili¬ gently to our own affairs, and to interfere as little as possible in those of others. Those who have little business of their own, or who neglect their own business, are the very persons who are most apt to intermeddle with the concerns of their neighbours, with whom they might otherwise live on peaceable terms. This class of persons is repeatedly held up to reprobation in Scripture, under the odious name of busybodies. “ We hear,” says St. Paul to the Thessalonians, “ that there are some which walk among you dis¬ orderly, working not at all, but are busybodies.” And see in what bad company they are found in these words of St. Peter : “ But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evil-doer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters.” We have an example of judicious precaution against the commencement of strife, in the conduct of Abraham towards his nephew Lot. “ There was a strife between the herdmen of Abraham’s cattle and the herdmen of Lot’s cattle ” ; which would, probably, have caused a bad feeling between uncle and nephew, had not Abraham, as the elder of the two, determined to put a stop to the matter at once. “ And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between 1 Harriet McEwen Kimball. PEACE WITH ALL MEN 125 me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen ; for we be brethren. Is not the whole land before thee ? Separate thy¬ self, I pray thee, from me : if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right ; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left.’5 This was, literally, according to Solomon’s ex¬ pression, “ leaving off contention before it was meddled with.” Abraham stopped this quarrel at some personal sacrifice, contenting himself with that portion of the land which his nephew chose to leave him. (2) By being watchful at the beginning. — “ The beginning of strife,” says the wise man, “is as when one letteth out water ; therefore leave off contention, before it be meddled with.” So it is with those disputes and enmities which hinder men from living together in peace and love. In their beginnings they are commonly so trifling as to excite no apprehension in either party of what they may grow to in the end. But unless they are checked at once, “ left off before they be meddled with,” we shall probably have to say of them at last, “ Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth.” (3) But these rules will be of little avail, unless we have a friendly and sympathetic feeling towards those with whom we desire to live in peace ; that is, according to the apostolic precept, towards all men. Let us avoid the spirit in which strife originates. Bigotry, pride, unkindness, selfishness, ambition, and kindred qualities occasion alienations and conflict. There is, indeed, no cure for these vicious tendencies and the confusion they create except in real, living, daily union with Christ. We can hardly deal effectu¬ ally with any vice by treating it directly ; we must fetch a compass, make a wide circuit to get at it : and we cannot tame human nature by an immediate technical discipline, but only by fellowship with Christ and by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. What is diviner than the peace of foes ! He conquers not who does not conquer hate, Or thinks the shining wheels of heaven wait On his forgiving. Dimmer the laurel shows On brows that darken ; and war- won repose Is but a truce when heroes abdicate To Huns — unfabling those of elder date Whose every corse a fiercer warrior rose. 26 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE 0 ye that saved the land ! Ah yes, and ye That bless its saving ! Neither need forget The price our destiny did of both demand — Toil, want, wounds, prison, and the lonely sea Of tears at home. Oh, look on these. And yet — Before the human fail you — quick ! your hand ! 1 1 R. M. Johnson, Library of American Literature, xi. 116. IX. Peace or War. 127 Literature. Barnett, S. A., Religion and Politics (1911) Barry, F. R., Religion and the War (1915). Bartlett, L., The Spirit of Christ and War (1915). Bosanquet, B., Some Suggestions in Ethics (1918). Boutroux, E., Philosophy and War (1916). Bryce, J., Neutral Nations and the War (1914). Cadoux, C. J., The Early Christian Attitude to War (1919) Cairns, D. S., The Answer to Bernhardi (1914). Crosby, 0. T., International War (1919). Danks, W., The Gospel of Consolation (1917). Emmet, C. W., in The Faith and the War (1915). Enelow, H. G., The War and the Bible (1918). Fisher, D. W., in The International Journal of Ethics (Oct. 1917). Graham, J. W., War from a Quaker Point of View (1915). „ „ The Faith of a Quaker (1920). Greene, W. B., in The Princeton Theological Review (Jan. 1918). Holland, H. Scott, So as by Fire (1915). Hodgkin, H. T., in Friends and the War (1915). ,, ,, in Christ and Peace (1916). Holmes, E., The Nemesis of Docility (1916). Lees, Harrington C., The Practice of the Love of Christ (1915). Leonard, G. H., Love came down at Christmas (1914). Macaulay, A. B., The Word of the Cross. Masterman, J. H. B., The Challenge of Christ (1913). Mecklin, J. M., in The American Journal of Theology (Jan. 1919). Moffatt, J. , in The Dictionary of the Apostolic Church. Mozley, J. B., University Sermons (1876). Oman, J., The War and its Issues (1915). Paterson, W. P., in The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics ( s.v . War). Rashdall, Hastings, Conscience and Christ (1916). Royden, A. Maude, The Great Adventure. Shillito, E., Through the War to the Kingdom (1915). Simpson, J. G., in The War and the Kingdom of God (1915). Smith, G. A., Our Common Conscience (1918). Stubbs, C. W., Christ and Economics (1893). Unwin, E. A., As a Man Thinketh (1919). Watson, J., The State in Peace and War (1919). Woods, E. S., On Service. Constructive Quarterly , March 1915 (H. T. Hodgkin). Hibbert Journal , October 1914 (J. W. Diggle). Interpreter , January 1916 (L. W. Grensted). „ October 1917 (J. D. Maynard). London Quarterly Review , January 1915 (J. Hope Moulton). Seeker , May 1915 (J. L. Macbeth Bain). 128 Peace or War. We have reached the great alternative, Peace or War. It is an alternative that has been much discussed of late. The newspapers, the magazines, and innumerable books have con¬ sidered it in every possible aspect, turning it round and round and tossing it from hand to hand. And this much at least the discussion has done, it has shown us how many and how fundamental are the issues that are involved in it. 1. One question that has come to the front, and has become indeed quite painfully acute, is the place of the individual con¬ science. Has the individual conscience any right at all in the matter ? Is not peace or war a question for the State ? Are not our statesmen alone responsible ? Have we who are private citizens any duty, but to accept their decisions and obey their com¬ mands ? We cannot escape our responsibilities as individuals. That is the German attitude ; it is not ours. Germany is or was the land of organization and strict discipline. Other nations believe in the efficacy of the solitary effort of a man of genius, or in the duty incumbent on the community to respect the dignity of each of its members. German organization, starting with the idea of the All, sees in each man a Teilmensch, a partial man ; and, rigorously applying the principle of the division of labour, restricts each worker to the special task assigned to him. From man it eliminates humanity, which it regards as the wheel- work of a machine.” 1 2. But the moment we give conscience a hearing, serious and apparently insuperable difficulties arise. The best case is that of 1 E. Boutroux, Philosophy and War, 65. 9 1 3o CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE the Quakers. One of their number, John W. Graham, Principal of Dalton Hall, asks what would have happened in Belgium at the beginning of the war if there had been Quakers in that country. “ Some,” he says, “if we may judge from English action, would have fought with the rest — some also would have made in Christ’s name no resistance whatsoever. The remainder would have taken service with the State in helpful and necessary ways, not implying a personal share in killing.” 1 3. This variety of response is due to various causes. Tempera¬ ment, as Mr. Graham says, has something to do with it. But the chief cause is ignorance, or at least uncertain knowledge, of the mind of Christ. The Quakers are Christians. When Mr. Lewis Bartlett, who is a Quaker, comes to the discussion of Peace or War, he puts the question, “ Has Christ a place for war waged by His disciples for the establishment of His Kingdom ? I don’t ask,” he continues, “ may people whose life and thought and char¬ acter are but partly Christian, and whose motives and outlooks are largely determined by other influences than Christ, may they look to war as an honourable and noble way of working righteous ends ? but can those who desire above all things to be influenced by the Spirit of their Lord and Master, and the interests of whose Kingdom is their whole desire, can they find in His Spirit that which would lead them to use war as an infinitely sad, but essenti¬ ally noble and therefore beautiful way of helping towards His Kingdom ? ” 2 4. Now, it is not so easy as some men think to discover the mind of Christ. One who has spent his whole life in the study of the Gospels and their interpretation — Professor Hope Moulton — confessed that on this very question he had been compelled to change his attitude. He said : “A distinguished Quaker in my hearing declared the Christian position to be 4 quite simple ’ ; war is wholly and utterly condemned, and there is no room for a Christian man in an army. £ I am a Christian and therefore I cannot fight,’ is the reply of a consistent follower of Jesus, now as much as in the second century. I have myself approached this 1 J. W. Graham, War from a Quaker Point of View, 66. 2 L. Bartlett, The Spirit of Christ and War, 3. PEACE OR WAR 131 position so nearly that I must utter some palinodes before I can admit that the matter does not now appear to me ‘ quite simple,’ but surrounded with deep perplexities. It is well to be absolutely frank about certain mistakes of which our opponents, with natural satisfaction, are reminding us at the present time. We should have the courage to confess wherein we miscalculated, and I for one face the task, not with alacrity indeed, but from sheer desire to be honest.” 1 One thing is certain, the teaching of Christ cannot be under¬ stood by isolating one or two sayings and ignoring the balance of the New Testament as a whole. On the one hand, we have the journalist who writes as though “ forgive your enemies ” was a modern invention of “ pro-German sentimentalists ” ; on the other there is a tendency to pick out a few texts from the Sermon on the Mount and treat them as though they explained themselves and represented the complete teaching of Christ. It is as though a casual visitor to a beach should light on one or two rare shells and argue from them as if they were characteristic of its general conchology. Their real significance could, in fact, only be ex¬ plained by one who had a full knowledge of the whole subject, who realized their rarity, and could account for it. I. The Teaching of Christ. What is the teaching of Christ on Peace or War ? 1. We turn first of all to the Sermon on the Mount. And it is only a short section of the Sermon on the Mount that we have directly to do with. The passage is Matt. v. 38-48. This is how it reads in the Revised Version : “ Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth : but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil : but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man would go 1 J. Hope Moulton, in London Quarterly Review , Jan. 1915, p. 32. i32 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. “ Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy : but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you ; that ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven : for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. For if ye love them that love you, what reward have ye ? do not even the publicans the same ? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others ? do not even the Gentiles the same ? Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Now it is not necessary to treat the Sermon on the Mount as though it were an ethical text-book, every word in which was to be taken literally and baldly like a stage in Euclid’s propositions. That would be a grave fault of interpretation. It is plain that we are not dealing here with a sermon at all, but with a summary, in the manner of St. Matthew, of our Lord’s Galilean teachings. The passages collected into one place by St. Matthew are to be found scattered in many places in the Gospel of St. Luke. They constitute the texts of sermons or the rememberable sayings, perhaps those frequently repeated. Such repetition may account for there being two differing collections of Beatitudes. We do not know what qualifying words or what context may have accompanied them. No honest interpreter, also, can pretend that in daily life we even begin to obey literally such commands as to give to every one who asks us, and to lend freely without security. We are aware that that would be wrong ; it would soon reduce society to confusion and ourselves to poverty. Nor do we understand the exhortation to take no thought for the morrow as forbidding us to insure our lives, or arranging to meet future financial demands upon us. But all these passages have, in fact, a very easily comprehended meaning. We are to be liberal and open-handed, we are not to spend our strength in worrying over the means of life, but are to live with some of the careless gladness of the birds and the lilies of the field ; we are to live with the melody of the bird and PEACE OR WAR i33 the colour and scent of the lily, instead of being overwhelmed by grinding care. The expression “ Resist not evil,” then, must be subject to the same canon of interpretation. 2. The interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount will occupy the next chapter, and we may pass from it for the moment. Is there any other teaching of Christ’s to be considered ? (1) One passage upon which reliance is generally placed for the justification of war is that in which He bids His disciples buy a sword, under the new conditions of universal hostility, even selling their coats to provide the means. The passage is confidently taken to justify war by men whose judgment must be respected ; but surely the context makes that interpretation impossible. The bewildered disciples, as much bewildered as the modern interpreter, immediately answered Him by showing that they had two swords already. He sadly replied, “ It is enough,” deprecating explanation since they had been too dull to understand Him. He was only contrasting, in His own vivid way, the new conditions with the old. They had once gone forth into a world where welcome awaited them everywhere. Now the deadly, hostility that was bringing the Master to death would turn upon the servant too. The sword would be the symbol of human relations in future, even within families that had been united before He came to be the test of a higher loyalty. We shall not take literally the “ sword ” which He saw interposed between mother and daughter ! That He as little intended the other “ sword ” to be taken literally is suffi¬ ciently shown by the sequel. As soon as one of those swords was applied to the only purpose for which swords were made, the Master issued a stern rebuke. We are apparently to infer that the swords were to be purely ornamental : His disciples must sell their coats to buy them, but they must never be used. And if we want to prove this inference, it is enough to point out that the disciples never did use those swords till the final victory was already won. The Church fought the Roman Empire single-handed, the forces of love and suffering pitted against all the brute force in the world. Never once in all those generations did it occur to them to sell their coats and buy swords for literal revolt against the Roman Empire. They won their victory by dying and not by killing, and it was the greatest victory that the world has ever seen. It is strange (is it i34 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE not ?) that they should have unanimously agreed to ignore a com¬ mand which modern interpreters think so plain ! (2) Is any significance to be attached to the eulogy addressed to the centurion (Matt. viii. 5 ff.) ? Mr. Emmet thinks there is, at least when coupled with the generally sympathetic attitude of the New Testament to soldiers, and the free use of military metaphors. “ The conclusion is not, of course, that war is a good thing, but that Christ and His followers can hardly have regarded it as always and unconditionally sinful. One who held all forms of betting to be unconditionally wrong would hardly have special and unqualified praise for a bookmaker, or illustrate his religious teaching freely from the procedure of the betting ring without any reminder that he was drawing a comparison from an unholy trade.” 1 (3) In Matt, xviii. 21 ff. the scope of forgiveness is explained as being practically limitless — “ till seventy times seven ” — while the duty itself is insisted on in general terms in the Lord’s Prayer and in other similar passages in the Gospels. The same holds good of the Epistles, the most important passages being Rom. xii. 14 ff. (Render to no man evil for evil. . . . Avenge not yourselves, etc.) ; Eph. iv. 26, 32 ; Col. iii. 13 ; 1 Thess. v. 15 ; 1 Pet. ii. 21. This teaching echoes the teaching of Our Lord without adding anything fresh or introducing any very significant qualifications. The subject of Christ’s attitude to War is discussed fully by Dr. James Moffatt in the Dictionary of the Apostolic Church , by Dr. C. J. Cadoux in The Early Christian Attitude to War , and by Professor W. P. Paterson in the Encyclopcedia of Religion and Ethics. 3. But Christ’s words must be interpreted by His acts. A some¬ what undue stress is sometimes laid on His cleansing of the Temple, since we are not told that He actually used force against any indi¬ vidual ; John ii. 15 alone mentions a scourge, and this was appar¬ ently used only to drive out the cattle — perhaps a sufficient answer to the extremists who argue that force should not be used even with animals ! At the same time the whole incident does show that when Our Lord found Himself confronted with an abuse He did not content Himself with mere rebukes, but took active and even violent measures to remedy it, while it is really very difficult 1 C. W. Emmet, in The Faith and the War, 192. PEACE OR WAR !35 to believe that if the Temple police had been alive to their duty and had found it necessary to resort to physical force to expel the intruders He would have disapproved. If The small cattle-whip does not figure very successfully as a symbol of material force. And does any one seriously suggest that it was by a display of force that He did His deed ? The miracle of it lay in the tremendous exhibition of purely moral force. Angry men who could have overwhelmed Him immediately by weight of numbers shrank before Conscience as it blazed forth through His eyes. Abashed the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is. But force was soon enough to win what it thought to be revenge ! 1 4. Some indication of the mind of Christ has been found in His conduct when tempted by Satan to use force. The temptation was to secure a right end by the use of wrong means. When the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them were presented to His mind and heart, and the fulfilment of His whole purpose promised in the offer that they should be given to Him, the thought and hope were altogether right. For the world to come under the dominion of Jesus Christ was the very thing to be longed for, the perfect blessing of man, the fulfilment of the purposes of God — “ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace.” But it was made con¬ ditional on an act of evil worship. Is Satan to have a place in our life ? Are these evil instruments that men invent things for Christ’s people to use towards His kingdom ? Is it not a kind of worship of Satan ? an acknowledgment of him, and an acceptance from him of help towards the Kingdom ? Did Christ invent these things ? or did He give a place for them ? There is an illuminating passage in the “ Holy War ” where the missionary of Diabolus is pleading that his master may still have some place in the town of Mansoul, even after it is restored to Emmanuel, pleading in a miserable kind of way after place after place is refused, for a less and less place, without any sense of self- respect. The answer is always express and absolute — He is not to have any place at all — and never will by Emmanuel’s consent. And if a thing appears to be of Satan we must give it no place either, 1 J. Hope Moulton, in London Quarterly Review, Jan. 1915, p. 39. 136 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE but go on towards the redemption of the world as our Master did. One of the pathetic fallacies of the day is that the War was a war to end war. War cannot end war. If war is ever ended, it will be by self-sacrifice, and patience, and humility, and love, and by nothing else. St. Paul says that “ the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds. Though we walk in the flesh we do not war accord¬ ing to the flesh, casting down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against God.” Militarism is one of those high things, and we want to overcome it. But will it be overcome by itself ? Never. Satan does not cast out Satan. If militarism is ever to be overcome it will only be by patience, meekness, gentleness, faith, love, sacrifice.1 And who the bravest of the brave ; The bravest hero ever born ? ’Twas one who dared a felon’s grave, Who dared to breathe the scorn of scorn. Nay, more than this : when sword was drawn And vengeance waited for His word, He looked with pitying eyes upon The scene, and said, “ Put up thy sword.” 0 God ! could man be found to-day As brave to do, as brave to say ? “ Put up thy sword into its sheath,” Put up thy sword, put up thy sword ! By Kedron’s brook thus spoke beneath The olive-trees our valiant Lord, Spoke calm and kinglike. Sword and stave And torch and stormy men of death Made clamour. Yet He spake not save With loving word and patient breath The peaceful olive boughs beneath, “ Put up thy sword within its sheath.” II. The Secret of Christ. The secret of Christ is Love. However we interpret His words, however we are led to follow His example, this is always to be the 1 L. Bartlett, The Spirit of Christ and War, 9. PEACE OR WAR i37 light we walk in, this is always to be the motive that constrains us. His life breathes one spirit — and that spirit is love. Throughout His life He showed forth love, and in His death He threw Himself utterly on God, loving men to the last, and turning away from every weapon which love could not sanctify, and every thought which love could not own. In that supreme act we are taught that, if evil is to be overcome in the world, even the eternal God has no surer weapon than self-sacrificing love. All the words of Jesus lead up to the emphatic enunciation of universal indiscriminating love to one’s neighbour, even to one’s enemy. “ All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them.” If it be the Evan¬ gelist who adds the words, “ for this is the law and the prophets,” he is only bringing out the very deepest and most characteristic thought of his Master. The law of God which was of universal obligation was the law of universal love, the law which regards every other human being as of equal intrinsic importance to one¬ self, as equally entitled to have his true good promoted by every other rational being. The most certain thing about the teach¬ ing of Jesus is that He did teach this doctrine of universal love. Anyone who admits that He did so, and that He taught nothing inconsistent therewith, and who also regards this teaching as the fundamental truth of morality, is already a disciple of Jesus, in a very distinctive and definite sense. 1. There were those who had walked with God before He came, though none ever walked with God as He did. And many had spoken wonderfully the truths concerning our state, and even concerning our hopes ; they had sounded great depths in the sea of wisdom ; they had drawn the line between what is solid and what is vain in life ; they had caught firmly and clearly what was worth living for ; they had measured truly the relative value of the flesh and the spirit. But none but He had so combined with the sternest reason the deepest love. This was what made Him new and without parallel in the world. It was that, in Him, truth, duty, religion, ended in love — love inexhaustible, all-pervading, infinitely varied. It is this new commandment, new to the world, but as old as the eternal Word who brought it, which turns the Sermon on the 138 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE Mount from a code of precepts into tlie expressions and instances of a character. Its words do not stand by themselves ; they are not as the definite commandments of a law ; they cannot be repre¬ sented or exhausted by any rules ; they have their interpretation and their reason in that divine temper which had come with JesuS Christ to restore the world. The purity, the humility, the yielding and forgiving mind, the ungrudging and unflagging goodness they speak of, were but some among the infinitely varied ways of acting out the meaning of His last charge — “ That ye love one another as I have loved you ” ; and of His last prayer — “ That the love wherewith thou hast loved me, may be in them, and I in them.” His life, and the character revealed in it, is the interpreter of what He means by love. A great deal may be said of love without ever really touching what is its vital essence. But here our sympathies are appealed to. We see how Jesus Christ showed what it is to lead a life of love. He showed how it could be carried out to the uttermost in what we call an extreme case of our human condition. If Love came down at Christmas and we see the weakest thing in the world, the child — new-born — in swaddling clothes, laid in the manger because there was no room in the inn. The weakest thing in the world ? Not so. There is one thing weaker still — that solitary figure, in the darkness, on the cross ! And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice , He said , “ Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit ” ; and having said thus, He gave up the Ghost. The will to love brought the child in the manger even to this ! He was taken from prison and from judgement ; He was cut off out of the land of the living ; He was “ lifted up.” If that were the end of the storv Christ was weak indeed, but it is not the end — He was lifted up, and He drew all men unto Him. So the Galilean conquers always wherever the exhibition of His love is made, and the old “ strong gods ” go down before Him because in the end He is stronger than they. His power begins in the cradle and goes on through the cross. He was cut off out of the land of the living and is alive for evermore. The sure and certain hope of the Christian lies in Bethlehem and Calvary and the open grave.1 2. But is the practice of love of absolutely universal applica¬ tion ? If we seek for some definite point below which force is 1 G. H. Leonard, in Payers in War Time, xi. 12. PEACE OR WAR i39 proper, but above which it should be avoided, it must be found by considering the psychology of the person to be coerced. The lunatic, the criminal, and to a less extent the animal or the child, have to be coerced just so far as they cannot respond to a higher motive. That is to say, we ought never to apply force where there is the power of appreciating and being influenced by reason, justice, shame, mercy, or a sense of duty, and where there is time to call out such motives. These ought to be tried so far as they will go, and they will go much further than the thick thumb of mankind has usually probed. With violent criminals particularly — who are grown men in possession of all their faculties — the records of the Society of Friends and of the Salvation Army show many decisive victories of the spirit of love. 3. Is then the love of our neighbour consistent with war ? Is it not the height of absurdity, it may be asked, to speak at once of fighting people and of loving them ? The inconsistency is certainly startling, and if the Christian cannot fight and love at the same time there can be no question which alternative he must choose. Christ demanded an allegiance transcending every other loyalty. To all who care for the world’s good, especially to those who look for the coming of God’s Kingdom, the most terrible thing in war is the spirit which drives it, and follows it — the spirit of venomous, murderous hate, with its legacy of enduring bitterness for the years to come. This spirit reached its climax in the tempest of hatred for our nation which at one time swept through the length and breadth of Germany. Some told us to repay atrocities with reprisals, slaughter with vengeance, hate with hate. Perhaps it is necessary to remind ourselves that for those who wish to retain the name of Christian such a response is utterly impossible. Christ had an ugly name for that hating temper of mind ; He called it murder. But He went further than this ; He even told men to love their enemies. Love our enemies ! Love the Germans, who forced this War on a peaceful world, who murdered Belgium, who hated and would have destroyed us if they could ? The thing seems absurd, impossible. And yet — Christianity is full of absurdities and impossibilities, that have a curious way of getting themselves turned into rational realities. Might not that happen in this case too ? Is there really any limit 140 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE to the influence of Christ’s spirit on the heart of man ? All depends, indeed, on that transfiguring influence. Left to ourselves we might hate the Germans with a lusty hatred — but when we try to make any room for the Spirit of Christ — well, the hating business becomes frankly impossible. Move over to the side of Christ, and have a look at your enemy from that angle of vision — he begins to look different then ; you even feel he may after all turn out to be one of the family. This is the only possible vantage-point from which to listen to and answer that German “ Hymn of Hate ” : He drew a circle that shut me out — Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win, We drew a circle that took him in. 4. With what clearness and authority has the Church, amid an atmosphere of bitterness and hatred, proclaimed this truth ? Many warnings against unthinking hate and unworthy retaliation have come from our soldiers. Can it be said that the utterances of the pulpit and of the religious press and the general temper of Christian people have been calculated to leave an unmistakable impression that those who profess the Christian name prize love above everything else ? Yet this is the hall-mark of Christianity. If in the hour of testing the Church is forgetful of its first principles, can it hope to retain its moral authority over the minds of men ? If the salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted ? Ought not the whole world to know that Christian people, because they are Christians, unreservedly desire the good of all men, and are striving for the triumph of love over hate ? Some time ago I heard a minister of religion make play in a large meeting with the dread phrase of the Book of Revelation, “ the wrath of the Lamb.” He spoke seriously enough and, I am sure, in all good faith. It was shortly after the publication of the report of Lord Bryce’s Commission, and no one could do otherwise than hope and pray that at least one consequence of the war would be to render the repetition of such barbarities as it disclosed impossible for all time. Still the question remains : “ Is it the duty of the man of God to fan the flame even of righteous indignation, when the nation to whom he speaks is engaged in a war in which its own most vital interests are concerned ? ” Nothing PEACE OR WAR 141 is more difficult tlian to observe the apostolic injunction to “be angry and sin not.” To hate the sin and love the sinner is character¬ istic of God. For imperfect mortalsMikeourselves, the border¬ line between righteous wrath and personal hatred is soon passed. The glosses which have been made on the words “ Love your enemies,” both in newspaper correspondence and even in sermons, make this sufficiently evident. People often seem utterly incapable of entertaining the notion that it is possible to love those who rain bombs on defenceless towns and destroy passenger ships ! But does God love them ? This is not a matter of hurling texts, but of interpreting the work of Christ. “ God is love,” says St. John. And he finds the evidence of this in the very fact that He loved us, when we did not love Him, and “ sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” In other words, what attracted Him towards us was what our inherent unattractiveness enabled Him to do for us. To Him “ our sins ” were infinitely more detestable than any German “ frightfulness ” can be to us. They included, not only that “ frightfulness ” but the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the iniquity of those who were dis¬ obedient before the Flood, and the hatred which cried : His blood be on us and on our children. And yet His love never let go until it found out the way to draw all men to Himself.1 I believe that in some measure it has come to each of us, and that we are going forth with bowed heads, having heard the words of our risen Master : “As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.” We go to preach a new gospel, and yet the gospel which is given to us is no new one, but the same glorious gospel of love once for all given to men in Him who laid down His life on Calvary.2 5. Let us not only preach it but live it. It is the love of Christ which constrains us, when we seek to give effect to this Spirit in our lives. Towards those who misunderstand and despise us, towards those who vex us and make life a burden to us, towards those who put obstacles in our path and wrong us, this is the attitude which our Lord prescribes, and to which He Himself was ever faithful. There is no limit to the patience and forbearance which we ought to display for His sake, no length to which we ought not to be prepared to go in the way of endurance and gentle¬ ness. You will look in vain for indications in the Scriptures as 1 J. G. Simpson, in War and the Kingdom of God, 1 19. a H. T. Hodgkin, in Friends and the War, 105. I42 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE to the precise circumstances that are to call forth this temper, and for explicit guidance with respect to the course that you ought to take on any given occasion. “ A religion of love,” as Dr. Denney has said, “ cannot be a statutory religion.” Every day of our lives, abundant opportunities are presented to us “ to turn the other cheek also.” And the ability to recognize such opportunities, as well as the moral power to respond to them, cannot be acquired save through daily communion with the Spirit of Christ. U “ When a Christian spirit is spoken of,” says the author of ‘ Ecce Homo,’ “ it may be remarked that a forgiving spirit is usually meant.” (1) In private life we are called upon to check our actions at every point by the principle of love. Our conversation, our ex¬ penditure, our domestic life, our business, must come under review, and the ultimate decision as to what is legitimate for us must be determined by love. If we hate war between nations we are com¬ pelled to admit that the spirit which makes war finds expression in family hatreds, personal dislikes and grudges, in class envy or contempt. So far as these feelings are given a place within our hearts, or expression in our acts, we are sinning against the light. Even the fundamental presuppositions of all our thinking must be subject to this scrutiny. What is really involved in an acceptance of the principle is a revaluation of life. We speak of things that are “ worth fighting for.” If fighting (in the sense of opposing evil with evil) is the surrender of the soul, is anything of this supreme value ? What shall a man give in exchange for his own soul ? The whole universe which has determined our standards of value is influenced by ideals of self-interest. The “ man of the world ” has a standard which even the spiritual babe realizes to be false. Spiritual manhood, the state in which we “ put away childish things,” is based upon a growth, not so much in prophecy, in faith or in knowledge, as in Love. (2) In national life what vistas open out to us as waiting to be redeemed by the spirit of love. The same spirit which chafes against the war-demon among the nations must seek with a passion¬ ate desire for a release from the chains of the present competitive system, from business methods which crush the weakest and reward relentless efficiency, from methods of manufacture which reduce PEACE OR WAR i43 men to machines, from a penal system that scarcely attempts to be remedial, from conditions of life that can hardly fail to destroy both body and soul. What is demanded is, of course, no indis¬ criminate “ charity.” It is rather a grouping together of men and women who will apply the principle of love with thoroughness to all these great national problems, relying upon it entirely, and who will be bold enough to make experiments, however hopeless they may seem to be when judged by the ordinary standards of society. This may have to be done, in the first place, in a small way. There may be many apparent failures as we seek to work out the national life on the basis of love. Those who believe, how¬ ever, that we have not only a basis, but the only satisfactory basis for human life in this kind of love, are called upon to try, % and to go on trying to apply it. It may be that small communities of those who accept this view of life could achieve more by living and working together than could be done either by individual effort or by attempts at legislative reform. What is supremely required is that, in our relations with one another, we should give the principle of love a fair trial. Whether this would ultimately lead to the elimination of force in the machinery of the State it is, perhaps, impossible to say at the present stage of society. Certainly there are many things which must first be dealt with. As one problem is solved the way to the solution of the next will probably become clear. (3) In our international relations we are called upon to think out far more thoroughly what would be involved in a world State whose ultimate sanctions were mutual trust and goodwill as be¬ tween the component nationalities. Nothing less than this should be our aim. We may be far nearer to it to-day than we realize. There can be no doubt that very many, including especially, perhaps, those who have had personal experience of warfare, are ready to consider any reasonable proposition which can be brought forward with a view to bringing an end to war. It goes without saying that those who agree with the dictum of Bernhardi, that the law of love “ can claim no significance for the relations of one country to another,” will not be prepared to accept any such proposals. Our contention, however, is that, since love is the ultimate force behind the universe, it does actually supply the principle upon which the relations of nations to one another can be determined. The 144 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE opposite principle has certainly failed lamentably. We might almost say that the European war demonstrates the fact that the principle of force cannot be a satisfactory basis for human society, and is, therefore, not the ultimate principle on which the universe rests. We have tried to erect a civilization which is really grounded on a pagan philosophy of life, and the fact that we call it Christian has blinded many of us to the fact that its fundamental presuppositions are utterly un-Christian. This fact has been sud¬ denly revealed to us. Dare we face the consequences ? Have we courage and wisdom enough to set about the reconstruction of our international life upon a genuinely Christian basis ? 0, who shall win, and who shall lose, and who shall take the glory Here at the meeting of the roads, where every cause is right ? 0, who shall live, and who shall die, and who shall tell the story ? Each strikes for faith, and fatherland, in that immortal fight. High on the grey old hills of Time the last immortal rally, Under the story of the last great tattered flag, shall laugh to see The blood of Armageddon roll from every smoking valley, Shall laugh aloud, then rush on death for God and chivalry. Kings of the earth, Kings of the earth, 0, which of you then shall inherit The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory ? For the world’s old light grows dim, And the cry of you all goes up all night to the dark enfolding Spirit, Each of you fights for God and home ; but God, ah, what of Him?1 1 Alfred Noyes. X. The Sermon on the Mount. IO Literature. Bacon, B. W., The Sermon on the Mount (1902). Bartlett, L., The Spirit of Christ and War (1915). Braithwaite, G. H., The Society of Friends and War (1917). De Brath, S., Mysteries of Life (1915). Carpenter, J. E., in Ethical and Religious Problems of the War (1916). Carpenter, W. B., The Great Charter of Christ (1895). Chadwick, W. E., Social Relationships in the Light of Christianity (1910). Church, R. W., The Gifts of Civilization (1880). Davies, J. LI., Social Questions (1886). Emmet, C. W., in The Faith and the War (1915). Farquhar, J. N., The Crown of Hinduism (1913). Gardner, C. S., The Ethics of Jesus and Social Progress (1913). Gore, C., The Sermon on the Mount (1897). Graham, J. W., War from a Quaker Point of View (1915). Hodgkin, T., Human Progress and the Inward Light (1911). Keyser, C. J., Science and Religion (1914). Lacey, T. A., The Elements of Christian Doctrine (1901). Lilley, A. L., The Nation in Judgment (1911). Lindsay, T. M., College Addresses (1915). Lyttelton, E., Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (1905). McAfee, C. B., Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (1910). Martineau, J., National Duties (1903). Mathews, S., The Social Gospel (1910). Meyer, F. B., The Directory of the Devout Life (1904). Oman, J., The War and its Issues (1915). Peile, J. H. F., The Reproach of the Gospel (1907). Powell, J. W., What is a Christian ? (1915). Rashdall, H., Conscience and Christ (1916). Simpson, J. G., The Spirit and the Bride (1911). Streeter, B. H., War, this War , and the Sermon on the Mount (1915). Stubbs, C. W., Christ and Economics (1893). Thornton, L. S., Conduct and the Supernatural (1915). Westcott, B. F., Social Aspects of Christianity (1887). 146 The Sermon on the Mount. We cannot tope to understand the Sermon on the Mount unless we keep in mind (1) the persons to whom it was addressed ; (2) the style in which it was delivered ; and (3) the end in view in its delivery, that is, the delineation of the ideal Kingdom of God* I. Its Hearers. 1. The Sermon on the Mount was addressed to Orientals. Jesus was an Oriental teacher. Oriental teachers make large use of short parables, proverbs, and what are called apothegms or wise sayings — familiar to the people whom they are trying to instruct — and throw their teaching into that form. Oriental peoples can scarcely understand our direct and definite Western teaching. They are not accustomed to it. It is not familiar to them. The words fall on their ears — words quite plain and in¬ telligible to us — and yet fail to make any impression on their understanding. So much is this the case that many a missionary has failed to make his hearers understand what we should call the plain truths of the Gospel till he has learned a collection of Arabic or Hindu or Chinese or Swahili proverbs and wise sayings ; and when he has illustrated what he has to say by these familiar sayings, he has then been able to make the people understand him. So common was this mode of teaching in Bible lands that there is one book of the Bible which is nothing but a collection of these sentences of condensed and popular wisdom. It is very difficult to describe a proverb or wise popular saying ; i48 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE but there is this to be said about it, that it is seldom or never universally true, and does not hold good in every case. It is often an extreme instance of the universal truth which it teaches. So much is this the case that you may have wise sayings which are almost contradictory. You have an example in the Book of Proverbs (xxvi. 4) : “ Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him ” ; and ver. 5 : “ Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.” Now the precepts about non-resistance belong to this class of wise sayings. They are all true. In most cases it is neither wise nor Christian to resist an ill done to us, or to go to law, or to refuse to help a neighbour. But what we have are extreme cases — instances in the extremest form to be imagined of the general principle of Christian love to our neighbour. ^ When Jesus promised His followers a hundred-fold return in this present life for all the sacrifices they had made for the Kingdom of Heaven, Peter and John were not misled into expecting to become possessors of vast landed estates ; nor did even Tolstoi attempt to interpret this saying literally. So when Jesus declared that no man could be His disciple without hating his own mother, no one has ever for a moment imagined that Jesus meant this literally. We recognize it plainly for what it is, an extreme and startling statement of a profound spiritual truth. The statement in the form in which it was made could not by any possibility be true. We frankly discount it by the application of common sense.1 We have enough evidence to indicate that our Lord Himself did not intend His precepts to be taken with the deadly literalness which Western minds, bent either on a too literal imitation of the outward accidents of the Master’s life on the one hand, or anxious to represent them as obsolete and impracticable on the other, have been disposed to take them. The most unsympathetic modern critic of Christ’s utterances will not seriously contend that our Lord meant that men were to mutilate themselves in order to observe His precept about the offending member, or that He who bade us love all men really meant that His followers should hate — in the ordinary sense of the word “ hate ” — father and mother and child, or that forgiveness was to cease after 490 offences. So to interpret Christ is to reduce His teaching to a mass of inconsistent, self-contradictory nonsense. He declared 1 J. W. Powell, What is a Christian ? 36. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 149 that to call a brother fool might be as bad as murder : yet He is recorded once at least to have used the word Himself, and on other occasions used language of equal vehemence and severity.1 2. The next thing to notice is that the hearers are addressed as individuals. They are not yet organized in a society. The Sermon on the Mount contains the principles which shall make a Society possible and inevitable and these principles are given to prepare the individual to take his place, and do his duty, as a member of it. The whole emphasis is laid upon the possession of certain fundamental dispositions of the heart and will by the individual. The whole atmosphere is one which is intensely personal ; interest centres in the supremacy of the three love- values (God, Self, and Neighbour) over each individual soul. If the motives and dispositions of the heart or will are such that love reigns over it on these three sides, then it is assumed that the resulting conduct will be true. Jesus began His ministry at the time when the ancient, narrow, closed-group organization of society had been broken up by the combination and commingling of the multifarious groups in one great empire. That was the necessary preparation for the emergence into full consciousness of the value of the individual. At that period a number of ethical teachers appeared who appre¬ hended with more or less clearness the central value of the in¬ dividual, and embodied the principle with more or less consistency in their systems. But in the evangel of Jesus it found its most perfect expression ; and the emphasis it received in His teaching has never been exceeded since. So strongly did He stress it, and so constantly did He assume it in all His religious and ethical doctrine, that many of His followers have not unnaturally attri¬ buted to Him an extreme individualism, and failed to grasp the broader social implications of His message. He came “in the fullness of time,” when the systems of religious and ethical thought, organized in and adapted to the old regime, had disintegrated, and the inner life of mankind had not been reorganized about a new centre. That new centre was the individual rather than the clan or tribe or nation. More properly speaking, the social consciousness was so broadened as to include all humanity, and 1 H. Rashdall, Conscience and Christ, 148. 150 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE in this consciousness the individual necessarily appears as the centre of value. It was Jesus who effected this transference of emphasis. (1) This at once makes a distinction. Christ demands the renunciation of revenge, which is personal, but does not interfere with the application of retribution, which is social. And this is no fanciful or unintelligible distinction. If the offender strikes me on the right cheek, I am to turn to him the other. But suppose he strikes my mother on the right cheek am I to look on while he strikes her on the left ? Does the precept contemplate any such case ? Does it prohibit the generous interposition which flings back insults directed against the innocent, and stands between the defenceless and their oppressor ? Not in the least ; and if it did, no argument could be heard to prove that such a religion was divine. No ; these are simply maxims of se£/-renunciation ; not renunciation of our brother’s rights, of all struggle for the just and good, of all practical vindication of God’s will. They suppose the case when only two persons are present on the scene — the aggressor and the aggrieved ; and teach simply how to deal with the mere hurt inflicted on the sufferer’s self-love ; to suppress the resentment which promotes retaliation ; to make no claim on his own account against the offender ; but in the presence of higher ends to surrender himself to even further harm, and leave the award to a fitter tribunal than his own anger. If, like the first disciples, I am a lonely missionary, sent forth as a lamb among wolves, and seeking to win conquests with only the shield of faith and the sword of the spirit, it may be wise to ask no support from the sense of justice, but to disappoint insult by meekness, and break down the stubborn heart by unexpected love. But there is a third presence upon the stage in every scene of the great drama ; usually in the shape of human beings, whose wrongs we witness, so that we have to play the part, not of sufferers, but of spectators, of injury ; and if not, in the viewless form of God Himself, whose Law demands our testimony and makes its repellent expostulation in our hearts. To confound this divine indignation at wrong with personal resentment, to see any resem¬ blance, to miss the intense contrast, between the wrath of conscience and the petty spite of wrong, to look at the open countenance and free gesture of the one and not know it for a godly inspiration, to watch the pinched features and rigid shrinking of the other THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 151 and not perceive it to be a devilish possession, is the mistake of a blindness without excuse. To quell our personal passion is Christian quietude ; to stifle our moral indignation is sin against the Holy Ghost. If Much confusion has arisen from a failure to distinguish the position and duties of an individual from the powers and re¬ sponsibilities of an earthly Ruler, in the application of Divine commands. In consequence of this, there is considerable mis¬ apprehension as to the real attitude of the Lord Jesus Christ towards the use of physical force by earthly Rulers. Happily, however, He has not left us in doubt as to His will, for when before the Roman Governor Pilate, in answer to the latter’s question “ What hast thou done ? ” Jesus replied, “ My kingdom is not of this world : if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight that I should not he delivered to the Jews ” (John xviii. 35-36). 1 (2) Another point is that Jesus is clearly not thinking of political problems. They lay entirely beyond His province. The people whom He was addressing had nothing to do with govern¬ ment or the administration of justice : they had no votes and did not sit on juries. This must not be distorted into the doctrine that Christianity has nothing to do with politics or social questions. The principles of Ethics, whatever principles they are that we adopt, must necessarily be applicable to all spheres of life. Those who have accepted Christ’s principles of conduct must necessarily, when they find themselves in power, regard them as their rule of action in their official or civil capacity as well as in their business life and their private affairs. The principles must be applied to politics : but Christ did not so apply them Himself. 3. But more important is the fact that the Sermon on the Mount is addressed to those who are, or are understood to become, Christ’s own followers. Its principles express the climax of the character of a Christian. They imply a high stage of moral development, and can only be in place when they are of a piece with the rest of the life. This is true even of the individual. Refusal to resist a wrong can make its appeal only when it is perfectly clear that it does not arise from laziness or cowardice, pride or hypocrisy, or the desire to curry favour. It has been well said, with regard to the Bishop in Les Miserables who defends 1G. H. Braithwaite, The Society of Friends and War, 7. 152 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE the convict he has sheltered by pretending that he has given him the stolen candlesticks, that “ you must be that bishop to be able to do such a thing.” Very few Christians have, in fact, risen to this level in their private lives ; the Churches emphatically have not in their dealings with one another. Least of all have States. The world very naturally finds an occasion of stumbling in our Lord’s command not to be anxious about the morrow, but to imitate the insouciance of the birds and flowers. This teaching has been described as some of the most foolish and pernicious teaching ever given by a moralist. And so it would be, were it addressed to all the world. But it is not addressed to all the world ; it is addressed solely to His own followers, and it is bound up with the special relation in which they stand to God. Like Himself, they are to seek first God's Kingdom and righteousness ; they are to be entirely devoted to God and to His service. They are not to be anxious about the things of this life, because, while they live wholly for God, He Himself will provide for their lower needs. That His teaching has no bearing either upon the individual or upon the corporate life of those who do not share His devotion to God, He Himself implies : “ Be not therefore anxious, saying, What shall we eat ? or, What shall we drink ? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed ? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek.” It is entirely natural that the Gentiles should seek them. Living as they do for their own ends rather than for God’s, they have every reason for anxiety. The future is uncertain, and death by starvation is not impossible. If they do not anxiously endeavour to provide for themselves, they have no assurance that God will provide for them. A similar limitation holds with our Lord’s teaching as to non- resistance. His teaching may be held to apply to the corporate action of the Church as fully as it applies to the action of the individual Christian. But it does not apply to “ the children of this world,” or to the corporate action of “ the kingdoms of this world,” nor would they be right, remaining as they are in other respects, to follow our Lord’s teaching in this one particular. On the contrary, their resistance to evil, individually and corporately, has a real place in the Divine scheme, and a real value in relation to it. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT T53 II. Its Method. 1. The aim of Christ was not to conform the outward actions of men to the letter of the moral law, but rather to transform them by the awakening of a loftier and truer inward spirit. Accordingly He did not lay down specific rules for conduct, which might be inapplicable under certain circumstances ; He stated principles which would be applicable in all circumstances. Every lawyer knows the difference between constitutional law and statutory enactment. Strictly speaking, a constitution should be nothing but the statement of general fundamental principles. The statute law is an attempt to apply these principles under specific conditions to specific cases. It is impossible to enact any law that is valid at all times and under all conditions. It is possible so to analyze the principle of justice as to arrive at a fundamental legal doctrine which is universally valid and which the judgment and practical sense of every generation must apply for itself. 2. Accordingly, when we turn to Christ’s Sermon to gather from it directions how to behave in regard to various ethical questions, we discover that in this respect it is profoundly unsatisfying. Not only are very many questions wholly unnoticed, but the treatment of those which are touched is so paradoxical and apparently so inapplicable to human life, that we find ourselves, to our dismay, not spared the trouble of thinking, but powerfully stimulated to think. To get anything of guidance for conduct out of these verses, we have to notice metaphors and get below the outward form of words, and decide how far the parabolic cast of phraseology may be pressed ; we have to settle why we abandon the literal fulfil¬ ment of the precepts, and whether we are to take much account of Oriental forms of speech and of Jewish modes of life prevailing in the first century of our era. And when we have done all this and more besides, we notice that there are whole tracts of human life on which apparently no ray of light falls from Christ’s words. We are at our wits’ end to know what to do about such matters as the treatment of bodily appetites of all sorts — recreation, its character and amount, friendships, comfort and luxury, matrimony 154 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE and celibacy, war, sport and the treatment of animals, gambling and all kinds of betting, and competition. People clamour loudly at “ the churches ” for not laying down precise directions about these things, but “ the churches ” in refraining from doing so are only following the example of Christ, who apparently thought that in giving us a rule, parabolically stated, of distrusting appetites and inclinations, He was giving all that was good for us. For in spite of the copiousness and power with which He enforces the commands of the Decalogue, the obligation of love to God and to man, it is true that throughout His teaching generally there is a silence, to us surprising, on such questions as those enumerated, leaving His followers to trust to personal spiritual guidance, and sharply discouraging them from looking for mechanical rules. The result is that any sincere follower of the Saviour is often in dire perplexity for a time. He has to wrestle with conflicting claims and divergent duties, but he feels that in so wrestling he is gaining something very precious which would have been lost to him if he had relied on definite precepts, because the difficulties of decision throw him into closer contact with the divine Spirit, and in that contact he feels that his true life consists. Neither our Lord nor any of His Apostles ever sat down to write a text-book, like the law of Moses, or the Koran of Mohammed. There exists no apostolic “ Treatise on Christian Duty.” We may be thankful that it is so, for the written word remains unchangeable, whereas the spirit is adaptable to every need. A fixed detailed code either would have been neglected by this time as obsolete, and so have discredited our whole faith, or it would have acted as an intolerable drag on conscience. Probably both evils would have occurred here or there. There are many great blanks in our system of conduct still, so that a code of Christian morality issued even at this enlightened date would hereafter become obsolete. We are still too comfortable about the existence of poverty, we have hardly moralised our empire and the exploitation of natives, and we still permit great suffering among animals.1 3. The Sermon on the Mount is the unalterable standard, not of Christian practice, but of the Christian spirit. As long as Chris¬ tianity lasts the heroic ideal as set forth in this Sermon must be the standard of all human life. But the Christian spirit is a free spirit. 1 J. W. Graham, War from a Quaker Point of View, 13. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT i55 The Sermon on the Mount is not to be regarded as some civil statute, where in section, subsection, and schedule you may ex¬ pect to find all ethical difficulties codified and ticketed with their appropriate fines and punishments. Jesus Christ did not come, as some people seem to suppose, to give to man a new system of morality, whose maxims and precepts should be sufficient to solve the difficulties of ethical action for all time. He did not come to teach man how to be good, how to distinguish right from wrong in any new way. What He did come to give men was a new motive to be good, to do right, to avoid wrong in the old way. The abstract principles which Christ inculcated remain still intact ; but the concrete shape into which He was obliged to throw those principles has changed with changed conditions. It would be only a stupid literalism which would mistake the outward form for the essential spirit. What we have to do is to go to the New Testa¬ ment not as to a code of maxims and dicta, but as to a well- spring of spiritual influence ; not to insist on taking the doctrines of Christ according to the letter, but to imbue ourselves “ with the same mind that was in Christ,” and let our behaviour afterwards flow freely from it. I have often wondered why the Bible does not condemn war in so many words, but I think I have seen the reason very clearly during these awful months. It is simply because it would be no good to. What the Bible does is a much greater thing than that. It condemns the bad passions that lead to war — pride, arro¬ gance, selfishness, envy, malice, hatred, uncharitableness, self-seek¬ ing. War is only the fruit of these things, and, as long as they are, war will be. It is these that have to be done away, and that can only be by the love of God in Jesus Christ. So that the Gospel is the only thing that can possibly put the world right ; and the Gospel is shaped in such a way to make it impossible for those who receive it to glory in themselves before God. When we utterly cease from self-praise, and only glory in the suffering love, the Cross of Jesus Christ, then war will cease and not before.1 4. When we look closely at those sayings of Jesus which seem to inculcate the doctrine of non-resistance, we find that they are in reality nothing more than illustrations of His fundamental principles of love and service. 1 L. Bartlett, The Spirit of Christ and War, 9. 156 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE When these principles are applied to the differences which inevitably arise between men in everyday life, Jesus interpreted them as carrying with them three things ; first, a demand that all men should recognize the rights and necessities of others, pre¬ ferring to sacrifice themselves rather than to cause others to suffer ; second, the spirit of the utmost forbearance, patience, and self- control in dealing with those who would inflict wrong upon us ; third, the utter absence of the spirit of revenge in our attitude towards those who have wronged us. The disciple is to forgive unto seventy times seven. We are bidden to love our enemies, to return good for evil, to overcome evil with good. In these three principles is summed up the entire ethical philosophy of Jesus as it relates to the natural conflict of rights which inevitably takes place in an imperfectly developed social order, as well as to the more serious disorders which arise from the presence of evil and perverse men. III. Its Aim. 1. Christ’s aim in the Sermon on the Mount was to make its hearers “ perfect.” “Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Now in the language of the New Testament the “ perfect ” is that which is come to its own proper completion. In the simplest use it means a full-grown man, one whose bodily development is complete, and who has the use of all his natural faculties. By an obvious transition it is used to express the full possession of super¬ natural grace, this also being required for the completeness of man according to the purpose of God. In no other sense but this can we take the promise of the Lord and the aspiration of St. Paul. The perfect man according to the measure of Christ is the man who has grown to the utmost in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, the man in whom Christ is formed, and who is conformed to His image. There is, however, a lower grade of advancement which is also called perfection. “We speak wisdom,” says St. Paul, “ among THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT i57 the perfect ” — men, that is to say, who are called perfect though still living the life of the flesh. He assures the Colossians that prayers are being made for them to the end that they may stand perfect. In writing to the Philippians, he puts the two kinds of perfection vividly in contrast. “ Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect,” he says, “ I count not myself yet to have apprehended : but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal.” He then immediately adds the exhortation, “ Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded.” It is the aim of our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount to bring His followers to the higher perfection. In the other sense they are “ perfect ” already, just because they are followers : they are “ saints,” in the language of the Epistles. And just as the “ saints,” those who are called according to the purpose of God, have to work out their own salvation, so the perfect have to go on unto the full stature of manhood in Christ Jesus. This full stature may not be attained in this life. Perfection is a promise of the future ; in hope of this promise a Christian man labours to purify himself ; but the work is not yet complete, nor can be in our present state. “ We know in part,” says St. Paul, “ but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.” Perfection is not for this life, but for the life which is to come. 2. It is thus manifest that the Sermon on the Mount offers an ideal of life. It is an ideal just because its end is perfection like that of our heavenly Father. And it is an ideal to be realized even though its end may never be completely attained in this life. Take as example the command to love our enemies (Matt, v. 43-48). Whatever reservations it may be necessary to make as to the meaning of “ love,” it is indisputable that Christ here commands something which is above man’s natural instincts, and which most people would say is above his natural powers. Even if the word were restricted to its least exacting signification, as equivalent to “ wish for the welfare of ” our enemies, how many of us could honestly say that we are able to rise to this, in the 1 58 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE case of one who has malignantly thwarted us, or gone out of his way to slander our name and make life harder and bitterer than it would be if he had never been born ? Or even suppose one with whom we are constantly thrown, who irritates or wearies us every hour, our wish for such a person’s welfare is very often only of a languid and abstract character ; certainly it falls short of the point where we feel impelled to take trouble. Hence arises the important question : Is this command one of the paradoxes in the Sermon which are obviously not to be taken literally, such as that of turning the cheek to the smiter ? And the answer is quite complete. In the case of the real paradoxes, our Lord’s own conduct contradicts the literal precept, but in the case of this command He fulfils it. The records of His life, and especially of His Passion, are full of indications of His deep and tender concern for the highest moral interests of His bitterest, most brutal enemies. Otherwise, we should never have known what the fulfilment of the precept meant, so utterly alien to ordinary human nature it had always been, and always, we may conjecture, would have remained. In short, the command involves an ideal of conduct actually realized by Jesus Himself and capable of realization by us. We are to strive to realize it, never forgetting that it belongs to the eternal purpose of God to present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. If Jesus has no doubts about the capacities of human nature. He speaks to the peasant, the fisherman, the artisan, the shepherd, and he dares to challenge them to achieve the perfection of God ! In the midst of poverty and toil he sees his comrades in labour and privation under “ The light that never was on land or sea, The consecration and the poet’s dream,” invested with ability to resemble the Maker and Sustainer of the world ; and he lays on them the tremendous duty of reproducing in their own being and character the moral completeness of the Father on high.1 3. But not only does the Sermon on the Mount offer an ideal of personal life, it also offers an ideal sphere within which that 1 J. E. Carpenter, Ethical and Religious Problems of the War, 70. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT i59 life is to be lived. That ideal sphere is called by Christ the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God was presented in glowing colours and magnificent imagery by the prophets. The words with which they described it throbbed with moral and spiritual passion. But the outlines of this social order in which the righteous reign of Jehovah over the world was to be realized were not clearly drawn. Jerusalem was its centre and it included the ends of the earth ; it was filled with the glory and peace of Jehovah’s presence ; in it “ the swords had been beaten into plowshares ” and “ the trees of the field clapped their hands for joy.” The splendid poetry of it thrills the heart, but it cannot be subjected to critical analysis. This very defect is doubtless a virtue and shows its superiority to the ideal of Plato or that of the Stoics. It may be less satisfying to the intellect than they, but its appeal to the emotions makes it a more effective social dynamic. This somewhat nebulous ideal, however, took definite shape in the popular mind as a political world-order with Jerusalem as its capital, and the Jews as a pre¬ ferred and ruling class ; and this was the actually current ideal when Jesus came. This Jewish phrase, “The Kingdom of God,” was often on the lips of Jesus. He made it the most general concept of His teaching, and put into it a new content of meaning. 4. Did Jesus think of the Kingdom as a subjective state of the soul or as an objective social order ? The answer must be, both. Times and conditions may lead students of His teaching to put the emphasis sometimes on one and sometimes on the other phase of His great ideal ; but exclusive emphasis upon either always obscures the beauty and power of the great concep¬ tion ; and the positive rejection of either amounts to a downright perversion of His teaching and results in a fatal crippling of Christianity. If The Kingdom of God is at once spiritual and historical : eternal and temporal : outward and inward : visible and invisible : a system and an energy. It is an order of things in which heavenly laws are recognized and obeyed. It depends both for its origin and for its support upon forces which are not of earth. It is in¬ spired by the principles and powers of a higher sphere. It implies a harmonious relation between men and the beings of the unseen i6o CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE universe ( the Kingdom of Heaven). It places its members in a social and personal relationship to a Divine Head, as citizens to a King, as children to a Father (“ the Kingdom of God ” “ the King¬ dom of your Father which is in heaven ”). 1 (1) Now the primary principle of the Kingdom is the subordi¬ nation of the human will to the will of God ; though the word 1 ‘ subordination ” does not fully express the idea. It is rather a union of the human will with the divine \ it is the human will freely accepting the divine will. There is no suggestion of re¬ straint or coercion about the act. It is surrender ; but it is sur¬ render not to a superior force, but to a superior, or rather the supreme, moral excellence, which is perceived and appreciated. The act is, therefore, rational and free— the expression of the real personality of the man. In a word, though not in the meta¬ physical sense of the word, the will of the man and the will of God become one ; but this moral identity results from the change of the human will. Ideally, the Kingdom of God as a subjective state means the complete conformity of the inner life to the character of God ; the bringing of the thoughts and the intents of the heart, the affections, the purposes, the ideals, the whole voluntary nature — including impulses, aims, and decisions — not into subjection to, but rather into harmony with, the divine life. (2) But the incorporation, so to speak, of the will of God in the wills of individual men means, of course, the conformity of the actions of men to the will of God. If all the interests, purposes and ideals of a man are inspired by the will of God, then all the actions of the man which have any moral significance will be expressions of that will ; and all actions which grow out of or affect the relations of men one to another have moral significance. The Kingdom of God, therefore, becomes external — objectifies itself, so to speak — in all our social relations, and is of necessity embodied in a social order exactly as far and as fast as it is realized internally in individual men. To try to separate the inner lives of men from the social order in which they live is as foolish and disastrous as to try to separate the roots of a tree from its trunk and branches. Such a separation may be effected in the case of a tree, but wil certainly result in the death of the trunk and branches, and prob¬ ably in the death of the roots. To separate the inner lives of 1 B. F. Westcott, Social Aspects of Christianity, 88. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 161 individuals from the social order is really impossible. But the very attempt may be extremely hurtful. The concave and convex surfaces of a hollow sphere are no more inseparably related and invariably proportioned to one another than the inner individual and outer social spheres of human life. The inner life and the social order act and react upon one another always and inevitably. We must conclude, then, that the Kingdom of God is also a social order — a system of human relations, the organic principle of which is the will of God. n XI. The Realization of the Ideal. i6j Literature. Burns, C. D., The Morality of Nations (1915). Cairns, D. S., in Friends and the War (1915). Carpenter, J. E., in Ethical and Religious Problems of the War (1916). Church, R. W., The Gifts of Civilization (1880). Clifford, J., The Secret of Jesus (1904). Diggle, J. W., in The Hibbert Journal (Oct. 1914). Emmet, C. W., in The Faith and the War (1915). Davidson, R. T., “ Quit you like Men ” (1915). Gardner, C. S., The Ethics of Jesus and Social Progress (1913). Hodgkin, H. T., in The Constructive Quarterly (March 1915). Horton, R. F., Reconstruction (1915). Hume, R. A., An Interpretation of India’s Religious History (1911). Jones, J. D., The Unfettered Word (1912). Jowett, B., Sermons Biographical and Miscellaneous (1899). Liddon, H. P., Advent in St. PauVs (1891). Lowrie, W., Abba , Father (1908). Mackintosh, H. R., Immortality and the Future (1915). Marshall, H. R., War and the Ideal of Peace. Masterman, J. H. B., The Challenge of Christ (1913). Mozley, J. K., The Christian Hope in the Apocalypse (1915). Muirhead, J. H., German Philosophy in Relation to the War (1915). Oldham, J. H., The Decisive Hour : Papers for War Time, No. 5 (1914). Peters, J. P., Modern Christianity (1909). Rashdall, H., Conscience and Christ (1916). Rawlinson, A. E. J., Dogma, Fact and Experience (1915). „ „ and Parsons, R. J., in Foundations (1912). Roberts, R., in Friends and the War (1915). Shillito, E., Through the War to the Kingdom (1915). Speer, R. E., Christianity and the Nations (1910). Streeter, B. H., in Foundations (1912). Thornton, L. S., Conduct and the Supernatural (1915). Westcott, B. F., Social Aspects of Christianity (1887). Wilmshurst, W. L., in The Seeker (May 1915). 164 The Realization of the Ideal. Christ’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount contains an ideal of life. It is an ideal for the individual disciple, that he is to be per¬ fect as his heavenly Father is perfect. When he becomes a dis¬ ciple he becomes a member of the Kingdom of God, and within that sphere he with other disciples lives his life and endeavours to reach his ideal. He presses toward the goal in order to obtain the prize of his high calling. Now the ideal of personal perfection may not be reached in this life. But the follower of Christ is bound to make every effort by faith and love to be “ perfect,” not only in the first sense of accept¬ ance in Christ, but also in the further sense of fellowship with Christ. He must not be content until every thought is brought into captivity to the mind of Christ. He must learn, by however slow and painful a process, to love his enemies. If any man smites him on the right cheek he must turn the other, understanding that that is an instance of a general principle which he is to apply accord¬ ing to the circumstances in which he is placed and the opportunities which his life offers. As he does these things, and other disciples do them with him, the will of God is done on earth as in heaven and the Kingdom of God comes. We admit that many evils may arise out of premature attempts to live the life of angels, forgetting that we are but men : but the ideal would be useless if it exercised no influence on our lives and actions, if it brought the world no nearer to Christ. At some time, we know not when ; at some place, we know not where ; in our hearts, if not in the history of nations, we believe that truth and peace will prevail. The ultimate end is the love of God and man diffused throughout the world and in every age ; and we may make some progress towards the realization of this great hope. 1 66 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE But the end on which we fix our eyes is a long way off, and we cannot anticipate the silent influence of opinion.1 1. The Kingdom of God is not limited in its realization by the conditions of our present existence, but it is manifested under them. It is in the world though it is not of the world. The scene on which it is shown to be realized is the scene of human life. The Spirit, which is consistently spoken of in the New Testament as a pledge or instalment, guaranteeing the fulness of the future Kingdom, was in the actual experience of the early disciples far more than a mere earnest of the future. It was a present Reality which dominated and possessed them, a transforming Presence by which they were moulded and inspired. Outwardly it was manifested in ecstatic utterances, in the enthusiasm of prophesyings, in healings and works of power. Inwardly it wrought in them as a fountain of love and joy and peace, a certainty of salvation so glad and strong and free that it could face rulers and kings, suffering and persecution and death, and “ count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus ” their Lord. 2. Thus the most important question is not, Are we to wait until after death for that “ perfection ” which we are told to reach ? Nor is it, Are we to look for the full manifestation of the Kingdom of God in time or in eternity ? The question is, Did Christ promise the immediate coming of the Kingdom, or did He warn His disciples that the victory over the world would be slowly won ? For if the Coming was immediate, the disciples would, of course, proceed at once to put His precepts into practice and probably with a literal interpretation of their meaning. But, if the Coming was to be long delayed, they would understand, and every generation would understand after them, that these precepts were to be put into practice as it was found possible to apply them, and not even then with the literality of a legal instruction, but under the direction of a living spirit. Thus, in the one case, they would probably refuse to become soldiers, since they had been told to love their enemies ; they might even decline to take any part in civil affairs, since their citizenship was in heaven. In the other case, they would recognize that their heavenly citizenship all the more required 1 B. Jowett, Sermons Biographical and Miscellaneous, 301. THE REALIZATION OF THE IDEAL 167 of them to accept the duties and responsibilities of earthly citizenship. 0 world invisible, we view thee, 0 world intangible, we touch thee, 0 world unknowable, we know thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch thee ! Does the fish soar to find the ocean, The eagle plunge to find the air — That we ask of the stars in motion If they have rumour of thee there ? Not where the wheeling systems darken, And our benumbed conceiving soars ! — The drift of pinions, would we hearken, Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. The angels keep their ancient places ;• — Turn but a stone, and start a wing ! ’Tis ye, ’tis your estranged faces, That miss the many-splendoured thing. But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) Cry ; — and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross. Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, Cry, — clinging Heaven by the hems ; And lo, Christ walking on the water Not of Gennesareth, but Thames ! 1 I. The Coming of the Kingdom. 1. Two different types of teaching seem to be contained in the Gospels about the Coming of the Kingdom of God. (1) On the one hand words are frequent which imply or expressly state that Christ taught that that present “ generation should 1 Francis Thompson. i68 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE not pass away till all things were accomplished,” that the disciples would not have time even to “go through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man be come,” and that the final consummation of the Kingdom would come “ like a thief in the night,” in sudden and catastrophic form. Such sayings are so numerous, and in many cases so intimately bound up with the context and with other sayings, that they cannot be explained away without grave risk of explaining away along with them the historical character of the Gospels altogether. Moreover, even if such language could be eliminated from the Gospels, the universal belief of the primitive Church — testified to in practically every one of the Epistles — could hardly be accounted for, except as based on something in our Lord’s teaching. (2) On the other hand, it is equally unscientific to explain away the collective force of certain passages of a different tenor. Such are the parables of the Mustard Seed and Leaven, the Seed growing secretly, the Hidden Treasure, and the Pearl of great Price ; also certain shorter sayings like, “ If I by the finger of God cast out devils, then is the Kingdom of God come upon you,” “ the Kingdom of God is within you ” ; or again, the mention of the fact that “ the blind see, the lame walk . . . the poor have the Gospel preached unto them,” as a token to John the Baptist that our Lord was the Expected One. And there are other less striking utterances, all of which seem to imply that there is a sense in which the Kingdom is already present. Many of them, indeed, also imply, and all are consistent with, the view that in another sense it is still future, and that only in the light of the richness of that future will the real importance of the present be seen. The future, indeed, is the harvest, but the present is the seed. 2. How could our Lord speak at one time of the immediacy of the end of the world, and at another of its long delay ? He was a prophet. Now the function of the Hebrew prophets was not primarily to forecast future events, but to interpret the ways of God to man. Their claim was not in its essence that of the soothsayer or the clairvoyant. They were, first and foremost, men uniquely sensitive to spiritual issues, who saw God at work in the world, but who saw also His purposes thwarted and defeated THE REALIZATION OF THE IDEAL 169 for the time being by the sin and waywardness of man ; and their mission was to declare to their contemporaries Jehovah’s mind and will, to utter a message from on high. In speaking of the present, they spoke also of the future ; but their anticipations in this regard were not, as a rule, of the nature of exact predictions, nor was their fulfilment in detail of moment to their essential truth. The Book of Jeremiah, for example, still includes among the prophet’s utterances an early foreboding of the coming of judg¬ ment against Jerusalem out of the North, in spite of the fact that the invading Scythians, to whose coming in the year 626 b.c. the passage probably refers, did not actually reach Judaea, but advanced upon Egypt by the coast road through Philistia, and were eventually bought oh by the Egyptians. It is likely enough that the prophet’s failure on this occasion to forecast accurately the course of events went far to discredit his message in the eyes of his countrymen at the time, and may partly explain why his subsequent preaching fell so largely upon deaf ears. But the fact of the oracle in question having been literally unfulfilled did not lead the prophet, or those who collected and edited his writings, to suppress it. Judgment did fall upon Jerusalem, though the agents of her destruction were not Scythians from the North but Babylonians from the East ; and the vision of the seething cauldron, whose face was from the North, is retained in the sacred text as a true word of the Lord, justified not in the letter, but in the spirit. So also Ezekiel, in a group of prophecies referring to Tyre, announces the immediate downfall and annihilation of the city, utters a dirge over its former splendour, and proclaims the dire punishment of its king for his arrogance ; though as a matter of fact Nebuchadnezzar, after besieging Tyre for thirteen years (585-573 b.c.), failed to take it, and was obliged to raise the siege without any decisive result in favour of the Babylonians, as Ezekiel himself later on admitted. If what the prophets expected was not realized as they expected, if God’s plans for the world were other than they thought and hoped, is that to say that these thoughts and hopes of theirs are valueless to us ? Not the form of the apocalyptic vision, not the description of the future according to sensuous and imaginative 170 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE conceptions, not the mystical dates and numbers, not the symbolism now so terrific, now so peaceful, is that essence of apocalyptic which we find still to be an inspiration, an inspiration of a kind and worth not elsewhere to be found. It is the spirit which lies behind apocalyptic, the presuppositions of apocalyptic, the power which makes apocalyptic a possibility, that we have to take count of, and on which we can stay ourselves. For all Apocalypse is, as has been said, a “ Tract for Bad Times,” and it is in such times that man is tested, whether he can rise to any vision of God’s ways and purposes, whether the spirit of man can become the candle of the Lord. ®[f Some years ago a book was published entitled, The Decisive Hour of Christian Missions. Its main argument was that the peoples of Asia and Africa are at the present time passing through a renaissance more remarkable and far-reaching than the move¬ ment which changed mediaeval into modern Europe ; that their entire political, economic, social, intellectual, and religious life is in process of reconstruction ; that their ancient faiths, standards, and social systems are proving insufficient to meet the demands of the new time ; and that the question of all questions for the Christian Church is whether in the present hour of crisis and of destiny it can give to these peoples a spiritual faith, to be the strength and inspiration of the new world which they are setting out to build. The same view as to the decisive nature of the present oppor¬ tunity was taken by the World Missionary Conference that met at Edinburgh in 1910. In words which in the light of recent events seem prophetic, it affirmed the critical importance of the next few years in determining the spiritual evolution of mankind. “ If those years are wasted,” it declared, “ havoc may be wrought that centuries are not able to repair. On the other hand, if they are rightly used, they may be among the most glorious in Christian history.” Such statements have been criticized as extravagant and fever¬ ish. Every generation, it is said, is apt to have an exaggerated notion of the particular tasks which it is called to undertake. And yet history supplies abundant evidence that there are tides in the affairs of men ; that real crises occur in the life of nations and of the Church as well as of indivdual men ; and that when they arise, life or death may depend on the capacity of the individual or the nation or the Church to recognize and to meet them. The belief that the present time is of critical importance in the spiritual history of the non-Christian peoples rests upon a solid basis of facts ; THE REALIZATION OF THE IDEAL 171 and if the Church is too preoccupied, or has not sufficient insight, to grasp the meaning of these facts, the spiritual loss to the world will be great and inevitable.1 3. It may be said that in His words regarding the end of the world Christ is rather an apocalyptic than a prophetic speaker. But the difference is here of no account. Apocalyptic writers or speakers, both Jewish and Christian, lacked nothing in moral strength and insight. Righteousness is as dear to them as to the prophets. There is no idea that the time to come, the supernatural age, the revelation of God and of Messiah, can be anything except a final vindication of good over evil, the doing of right by the Judge of the whole earth, a manifestation of what in a modern term we may call the survival-value of all goodness (while the corruption of wickedness is for destruction only), the sealing of those who have gone after the way of the Lord and kept His commandments. Where apocalyptic generally differs from prophecy is in its sense that a whole new era — the future as opposed to the present — must dawn, a different and outwardly supernatural set of conditions arise, before God’s purposes can be made clear and His ways be justified. The prophet speaks to his contemporaries and bids them see God’s hand in the working out of the history in which they play their part, and rouse themselves to help His counsels to prevail. The apocalyptist, speaking in the name of some worthy of past time, no longer with the “ Thus saith the Lord ” of the prophet, bids Israel endure in patience the present discontent and wait for the end. Both prophet and apocalyptist demand righteousness in God’s people, but for the one it is the righteousness which is ready to be up and doing, with the other it approaches what we call quietism : everything is determined ; the saint is not so much a fellow-worker with God as a pious observer of God’s works. Clough’s poem gives something of the spirit which a writer of Apocalypse would try to breathe into those who cared to listen to him : December days were bleak and chill, The winds of March were wild and drear, And, nearing and receding still, Spring never would, we thought, be here. 1 J. H. Oldham, in Papers for War Time, v. 3. 172 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE The leaves that burst, the suns that shine, Had, not the less, their certain date : — And thou, 0 human heart of mine, Be still, refrain thyself and wait. 4. It is therefore no surprise that the earliest disciples looked upon the end of the world as at hand. The dominant note in the religious life of this earliest band of Christian disciples was that of expectancy. They were looking for the visible return of their Lord in triumph on the clouds of heaven, and the great event was daily and hourly awaited. What was necessary in the meanwhile was that men should repent and be baptized and believe the Good News that the Messiah was at hand, and that He was none other than Jesus. Their first instinct was to have all things common. The religion taught by St. Paul and St. John is a religion of poverty, with little or no interest in the present life ; which submits to violence and ill-usage as a matter of course ; which accepts the loosening of family ties ; which preaches indulgence without limits, even to seventy times seven, “ as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven ” ; in which devotion to the unseen, a sense of the citizenship in heaven, fills the thoughts, and throws into the background, into utter insig¬ nificance, things visible and temporal. It discourages wealth, and says hard things of the love of money ; it is shocked at appeals to law, and holds it far “ more blessed to give than to receive ” ; it regards industry as a moral remedy against idleness, and riches only as what may be turned into “ the treasure in heaven ” ; it contemplates a state of mind in which war between Christians is inconceivable and impossible ; it brands ambition and the “ minding of earthly things.” But after the first generation of Christians this was no longer possible. The end of the world did not come. Then it was seen that Christian society was meant to take in, as avowedly legiti¬ mate, other forms of life than those insisted on and recognized at first. It was not always to have all things common. It was not always to live by the literal rule, “ Take no thought for the morrow.” It was not always to set the least esteemed to judge, or to turn the other cheek. It was not always to decline the sword. It was not always to hold itself bound by the command, “ Sell all THE REALIZATION OF THE IDEAL 173 that thou hast.” Probably it is not too much to say that Christi¬ anity helped largely in that break-up of ancient society out of which modern society has grown. But society, broken up, was re¬ organized ; and as, while time lasts, society must last, the common, inevitable laws of social action resumed their course when society entered on its new path with the Christian spirit working in it, sometimes more, sometimes less ; ebbing or advancing, but manifestly, in the long run, influencing, improving, elevating it. If The history of Christendom has fallen far short of the ideal of the New Testament. Yet I do not think we can doubt that true Christian living has had at least as fair chance, in the shape which the Church has taken, as it could have had if the Church had always been like one of those religious bodies which shrink from society. It has had its corruptions : we may be quite sure that it would have had theirs, if it had been like them. In its types of goodness it has had what is impossible to them — greatness and variety. And its largeness and freedom have not been un¬ fruitful. I am not thinking of exceptional lives of apostolic saintli¬ ness, like Bishop Ken’s. But in all ages there have been rich men furnished with ability, busy men occupied in the deepest way with the things of this life, to whom Christ’s words have been no unmeaning message — students, lawyers, merchants, consumed with the desire of doing good ; soldiers filled with the love of their neighbour ; “ men,” as we call them, 4 4 of the world ” following all that is pure and just and noble in the fear and love of God ; of whom if we cannot say that they are men in earnest to follow in the steps of Jesus Christ, it is difficult to know of whom we can say so.1 II. The Increasing Purpose. It seems impossible to exaggerate the apparent contrast between Christian society in its first shape and that society which has grown out of it ; between the Church, as it was at first called forth out of the world — at open war with it, condemning its morality, rejecting its objects, declining its advantages, in utter antipathy to its spirit — and Christian society as we know it, and live in it, and on the whole take it for granted. The Sermon on the Mount 1 R. W. Church, The Gifts of Civilization, 61. 174 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE was once taken very literally : it is easy to say, take it literally still, with, the Poor Men of Lyons or the Moravians ; only then you sacrifice society. But society, as well as religion, is God’s creation and work. If we have anything to guide us as to God’s will in the facts of the world — if we see His providence in the tendencies and conditions amid which we live, and believe that in them He is our teacher and interpreter, we must believe that social order, with its element¬ ary laws, its necessary incidents and pursuits, is God’s will for this present world. He meant us to live in this world. And for this world — unless there is anything more to be done than to wait for its ending — what we call society, the rule of law, the employments of business, the cultivation of our infinite resources, the em¬ bodiment of public force and power, the increase of wealth, the continued improvement of social arrangements — all this is indis¬ pensable. There is no standing still in these matters ; the only other alternative is drifting back into confusion and violence. ^ Man has to live his appointed days on earth. He must live them according to the conditions, physical, moral, social, which one greater than man has imposed upon him. He must live in society, and fulfil the obligations which social and political life imply and require. He must render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. He must , if his life here is not to be a wreck and a ruin submit himself to the law of duty, of reason, of conscience : he must tame the wild beast within him, he must crush the dull brute selfishness, which, at the very height of polished civilization, would cut him off from his kind, in a deadly isolation from sympathy and help and love.1 1. The Christians of long ago, though they shared the antique view of the universe which harmonized with the apocalyptic notion of the Kingdom, were unable to maintain the faith in its speedy coming. Time itself had belied that expectation. We, on the other hand, with our totally different conception of the world, are staggered not so much by the delay of the Kingdom as by the strangeness of the whole notion. If we are honest enough to confess it to ourselves, we must realize that we do not seriously expect a catastrophe which will involve the sun and all the stars of heaven in the fate of this small planet which is our earth. Our 1 R. W. Church, The Message of Peace, 43. THE REALIZATION OF THE IDEAL 175 present astronomical knowledge forbids us to entertain the con¬ ception that the stars might fall in showers upon the earth. Some cosmical catastrophe there may be, some startling intervention of God in the history of the world. But in the main we rather expect that God will work out His purpose by gradual and orderly means, and with whatsoever religious ardour we have we devote ourselves in the way of our several callings to the amelioration of this world as we now find it. The Prince of Peace works in the centuries ; He takes His time. As it was in the days of His flesh, so it is in history. He teaches men as they are able to bear His teaching. Not by sudden revolutions, but through the slow and gradual emergence and victory of principles, does He make captive the powers of the world. Slavery was from the first implicitly condemned to abolition by the essential principles of the Gospel. But it was tolerated and emptied of its characteristic evils by the great Apostles ; while it only disappeared, even from the Christian world — if it has dis¬ appeared — in the nineteenth century. And as with slavery, so with war. War is condemned by the spirit and drift of our Lord’s teaching, although the New Testament seems, in a sense, to recognize it by laying down the duties of soldiers, just as it seems to recognize slavery by prescribing the duties of masters and slaves. But war, so an Apostle teaches us, as a rule, has its origin in unregulated human desires ; and when all hearts and minds, or those of the majority, are brought into the obedience of Christ, war will become impossible. (1) We are bound to see that the coming of the Kingdom is to be progressive, but we are not bound to admit that it will be slow. In that assumption we have been misled by analogies from Nature. The pre-human stages were leisurely ; therefore we had said, God in His grace must be leisurely. We had come to acquiesce in God’s delay ; many had come to acquiesce in war as the human sequel to the struggle for existence ; and with as little reason. From the unlawful tyranny of biology, applied blindly to human history, we were delivered by the discovery of the apocalyptic element in the Gospel. “ The Kingdom need not tarry.” (2) One thing more, the Christian spirit must enter into every part of thought and life. That obedience, which is implicit in 176 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE Christian discipleship, is something which carries right to the furthest frontiers of our lives. We have been told that Christianity has nothing to do with business. Consequently, there have been Christian men who have lived up to a high Christian standard in other respects, but, when they have come to business, have accepted the conventional business standards of the time. We know what the consequences of that are. We have similarly heard it said that religion has nothing to do with politics, as if religion and politics could be separated. So we have been dividing our lives because we have not yet disciplined ourselves to the view and to the practice which make Christianity imperial right through the whole of our lives. ^ I had a letter only yesterday from a friend of mine. He says that under all the circumstances, Christians may be justified at the present time in coming out on to a sub-Christian platform. I think that that is where the Church has always been, so that it will be nothing new for it to come out on to a sub-Christian plat¬ form. We have not yet, in a thoroughgoing way, claimed for our Lord Jesus Christ that empire over the whole of life which belongs to Him by right.1 2. But are we really making progress ? Yes, we are making progress. Though the delay has proved long, though the wheels of the chariot tarry, though the morning-red faded into a colour¬ less day, and the sunset consummation-lights are not yet in sight, much has been accomplished. U We are tempted in our despondency with the state of Christen¬ dom to forget how much better it is than non-Christendom. I remember, after spending a short time in Mohammedan countries, on my return to England, feeling for some months as if everything here were perfect. To see the roads made and life safe, to go about without fear of personal assault or robbery, to know that women were honoured, and that law was effective, stood out against the picturesque hell of the Moslem communities as a solid and gleaming reality, an achievement for which we should be daily thanking Cod. It seemed to me in that period as if it would be a worthy object of life to get the rule of Islam pushed out of Europe and the Holy Land, where I had seen its desolating and corrupting sway. But when I visited a heathen country these impressions were 1 R. Roberts, in Friends and the War, 35. THE REALIZATION OF THE IDEAL 177 even stronger. After seeing Madura and Kalighat, the images of Siva and Kali, the object of a people’s worship, after hearing of what goes on continually in the homes and the temples of Hinduism, I could hardly believe the happiness of being on an English ship, and on Sunday hearing the service and joining in a Christian hymn. The overwhelming difference between Christendom and the countries which have not come into contact with the Christian truth at all, I can only imagine. But I know that it is impossible to put the two pictures side by side without knowing that Christ’s good news has penetrated the world and produced an effect which is, as He said, like leaven hidden in three measures of meal, working until the whole be leavened.1 *[[ On the 14th of June 1910, at the Central Y.M.C.A. Hall in Bombay, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bombay, who is a Justice of the Bombay High Court, a Hindu gentleman of the highest standing, who does not call himself a Christian, made an address on “ The Kingdom of Christ and the Spirit of the Age.” Among other things, he said : “I should like to say at the outset that it is not an easy thing for me to stand on this platform and address a Christian audience on the Kingdom of Christ and the Spirit of the Age. Let me tell you what I consider the greatest miracle of the present day ; it is this : that to this great country, with its three hundred millions of people, there should come from a little island unknown by name even to our forefathers, many thousand miles distant from our shores, and with a population of but fifty to sixty millions, a message so full of spiritual life and strength as the Gospel of Christ. This surely is a miracle, if ever there was one. And this message has not only come, but it is finding a response in our hearts, for as I have already indicated to you, the old conception of a spiritual worship of God has not entirely perished from the minds of the people, though it may be buried below a mass of ceremony and superstition. The process of the conversion of India to Christ may not be going on as rapidly as you hope, or in exactly the manner that you hope, but, nevertheless, I say India is being converted ; the ideas that lie at the heart of the Gospel of Christ are slowly, but surely, per¬ meating every phase of Hindu thought.” 2 3. The progress is not continuous. There comes a set-back. It has been so in all the history of Christendom. But the defeat is only temporary. Since Christianity began to act on society, 1 R. F. Horton, Reconstruction, 298. 2 R. A. Hume, An Interpretation of India's Religious History, 215. 12 i7S CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE as unprecedented, as characteristic, is the power of recovery which appears in society in the Christian centuries. What is the whole history of modern Europe but the history of such recoveries ? And what is there like it to be found in the ancient world ? Dark days have been, indeed, in Christendom. Society seemed to be breaking up, as it did at last at Rome. But wait awhile, and you saw that which you looked for in vain at Rome. The tide began to turn ; the energy, the indignation, the resolute, unflinching purpose of reformation began to show itself ; and whether wise or not, whether in its special and definite work a failure or even a mischief, it was at least enough to rouse society, to set it on a new course, to disturb that lethargy of custom which is so fatal, to make men believe that it was not a law of nature or of fate, that “ as things had been, things must be.” That terrible disease of public and stagnant despair which killed Roman society has not had the mastery yet in Christian ; in evil days, sooner or later, there have been men to believe that they could improve things, even if, in fact, they could not. And for that power of hope, often, it may be, chimerical and hazardous, but hope which has done so much for the improvement of social life, the world is in¬ debted to Christianity. V The great reforms in Christian days have been very mixed ones ; but they have been reforms, an uninterrupted series of attempts at better things ; for society, for civilization, successive and real, though partial, recoveries. The monastic life, which was, besides its other aspects, the great civilizing agent in the rural populations ; the varied and turbulent municipal life in the cities ; the institutions in the Middle Ages, on a broad and grand scale, for teaching, for study, for preaching, for the reformation of manners ; the determined and sanguine ventures of heroic enthusiasts, like St. Bernard, Savonarola, or Luther, or of gentler, but not less resolute reformers, like Erasmus and Colet ; the varied schemes for human improvement, so varied, so opposed, so incom¬ patible, yet in purpose one, of Jesuits, of Puritans, of the great Frenchmen of Port Royal — all witness to the undying, unwearied temper which had been kindled in society, and which ensured it from the mere ruin of helplessness and despair.1 4. Such a set-back is the great European War. At least so it seems to us as we stand so near it. But even we, and in spite of 1 R. W. Church, The Gifts of Civilization, 202. THE REALIZATION OF THE IDEAL 179 all the frightfulness, even we can discern progress. The moral sense of mankind is surely, though slowly, developing into a new type of higher power : which of itself is both a cause and an effect of the shrinkage of the power of evil. And future generations will probably look upon our toleration and practice of war with much the same marvel with which we regard the barbaric customs of our ancestors. In the upward march of the ages, war will vanish as a glory and descend to a shame. Formerly, no one dreamed of apologizing for war. Multitudes exulted in it. But already war has come down to this low estate, that it has to apologize for its existence. For who now, except those militarists whose glory is their shame, and those rare writers whose super-man is little better than a brute, thinks of war otherwise than as essentially evil — necessary, it may be, for a time as a counter- irritant to other evils, or as a poisonous microbe injected into the frame of things to devour other microbes still more poisonous, yet none the less radically evil ? A great advance in moral evolu¬ tion has manifestly been made when, as now, conscience, erect and august, with the voice of resistless command, summons war to its bar to vindicate itself ; instead of lying, as once it lay, prostrate and dumb under its Juggernaut wheels. It is difficult for us to realize how late in the history of man is the acquisition of those sentiments adverse to war, so very general in our day, which are based upon man’s repulsion from the immediate torture it entails. For untold ages he has seemed to think lightly of war’s horrors. He appears to have but just awakened to the realization of the fact that they far outbalance any possible gains it can bring. Not until 1792 was organized effort made to mitigate these horrors by the establishment of ambulance services on the field ; and the Geneva Convention that founded the beneficent Red Cross was held only fifty-one years ago. But note how rapid has been the development of this move¬ ment in the last five decades. In like manner, it is only in late times that men have thought to count the cost of war in resultant misery and monetary loss, and to balance this against the supposed benefit attained ; with the result that they begin to look upon war as stupid rather than glorious. Admirable as is Norman Angell’s book The Great Illusion, it must be seen that it could not have appeared to be 180 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE so striking and effective had not the masses of thinking people been quite unprepared for the thesis it maintains. Another indication of this rapid spread of sentiments opposed to war is, of course, found in the far-seeing efforts that have led in very late decades to the establishment of The Hague tribunals, and, above all else, the League of Nations. In 1870 Dean Alford wrote : God knows we are far enough from being an example to our neighbours : but perhaps this much may be said, that the individual and family life of our people is more generally led under the guidance of bond fide religious faith than is the case elsewhere : and that, however lamentable may be our inconsistencies, and however considerable our shortcomings, a vast pressure in the Christian direction is exercised by English public opinion over the acts and plans of our Government. We are obliged to take shame to ourselves in acknowledging that great blots may be pointed out even in recent times. Few religious men can derive satisfaction in reading of the vengeance taken in India or in Jamaica ; but this we may at least venture to hope, that an utterly wanton and unjustifiable war would be for England impossible : and that in any case of national misunderstanding, there would be in this country every guarantee that all measures for keeping the peace would be tried, before the last issue, that of arms, should be joined. We know now that that hope has been justified.1 Is it a will-o’-the-wisp, or is dawn breaking, That our horizon wears so strange a hue ? Is it but one more dream, or are we waking To find that dreams, at last, are coming true ? Aye, surely, in that golden glimmer streaking The cloudy sky-line of the life of man, We see the blessed day he has been seeking In all directions since the world began. Sign to each struggling and exhausted nation Of hope fulfilled, redemption and release ; Sign of the end of needless tribulation, And the beginning of the reign of Peace. Country with country, brother with his brother, Content to share, and not to grab and steal ; Ceasing the wild-beast battle, each with other, To work in concert for the common weal. 1 Dean Alford, Truth and Trust, 72. THE REALIZATION OF THE IDEAL 181 No class-strife more, neighbour with differing neighbour ; No waste or want, to breed the plague of crime ; No soul-debasing pomp and sordid labour, No wars, no famines, in the coming time ! But swords of slaughter — valour and brains and money — Turned into ploughshares for the lands redeemed, To fill men’s homes, as full as hives of honey, With wealth unknown and happiness undreamed. Great Art no more the plaything of the idle, But nurse and minister to every need ; Nature no longer cowed with bit and bridle ; Conscience enfranchised and Religion freed. All round our darksome isle the tide encroaches, Distant and dim as yet, but spreading fast. The reign of Love and Liberty approaches ! The heirs are coming to their own at last ! 1 5. The future is ours. In spite of all glories of what we look back to, and all discouragements in what we see now, Christianity ever claims the future for its own. If we have the spirit of our religion, it is on the future that we must throw ourselves in hope and purpose. But if we dare to hope in the future for a greater triumph for Christianity than the world has ever seen (and why should we not if we believe our own creed ?) we shall come to see that the language of the New Testament has not yet lost its meaning. For the world is not to be won by anything — by religion, or empire, or thought — except on those conditions with which the kingdom of heaven first came. Some time ago I was standing with a friend near a fir wood high up above the valley of the Tweed. Some of his workmen had been excavating there for him, and had begun the opening of a prehistoric grave, and we had gone up to examine what might be in it. As we stood looking into the cist at our feet, we saw some white specks of bone, which were all that remained of what had once been a man ; and our thoughts went back to the savage mourners who had been around that grave face to face with the great mystery of death the last time that it was open to the sun. We thought of those poor savage men living their life under “ the 1 Ada Cambridge, The Hand in the Dark, 55. 182 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE terrible conditions of prehistoric times,” bating tbeir fellow-men, and living at enmity with them in perpetual tribal war. Then we looked around us at the wide, sunny valley that we both knew so well. We saw the smoke of many homes ascending in the clear winter air, and thought of the honest, faithful human lives that were being lived under those humble roofs. We looked at the cultivated fields around us, and thought of all that science had done to make the ground fruitful. We were living in a world of which in a measure we had learned the secrets — the hidden forces of the earth and of the sky and in the depths of the human heart. Now, the same wealth was around the poor savage man, but he was not able to take it in. The electric forces were there ; the coal was there ; and deep in the human heart there were treasures of fidelity, honour, truth, and love ; but he had not the clue to them. They were all riches that were waiting for him. Is not that a parable of what is around you and me ? There is a great wealth of love and of victory over death and chance and time waiting for us in Almighty God. We are but beginning to learn the profound secret of simple confidence and trust in His absolute power and love and liberty to help man. And, surely, too, there is a great wealth of noble inspiration lying around us in human hearts which we have as yet to discover.1 — Beyond the war-clouds and the reddened ways, I see the Promise of the Coming Days ! I see His Sun arise, new-charged with grace Earth’s tears to dry and all her woes efface ! Christ lives ! Christ loves ! Christ rules ! No more shall Might, Though leagued with all the Forces of the Night, Ride over Right. No more shall Wrong The world’s gross agonies prolong. Who waits His Time shall surely see The triumph of His Constancy ; — When, without let, or bar, or stay, The coming of His Perfect Day Shall sweep the Powers of Night away ; — And Faith, replumed for nobler flight, And Hope, aglow with radiance bright, And Love, in loveliness bedight, Shall greet the morning light.2 1 D. S. Caims, in Friends and the W ar, 85. 3 J. Oxenham, Bees in Amber, 12. XII. The Use of Force. Literature. Allen, J. W., Germany and Europe (1914). Barry, F. R., Religion and the War (1913). Bartlett, L., The Spirit of Christ and War. Boutroux, E., Philosophy and War (1916). Buckham, J. W., in The Biblical World (Jan. 1916). Burns, C. D., The Morality of Nations (1915). Burroughs, E. A., The Fight for the Future (1916). Coulton, G. G., The Main Illusions of Pacificism (1916). Dawson, W. J., The Reproach of Christ (1903). Emmet, C. W., in The Faith and the War (1915). Goudge, H. L., in The War and the Kingdom of God (1915). Graham, J. W., War from a Quaker Point of View. Hogg, A. G., Christianity and Force (1915). Holland, H. S., So as by Fire (1915). Horne, C. S., The Model Citizen. Lucas, E., in The Holborn Review (Jan. 1914). Mackenzie, J. S., in The International Crisis : The Story of the State (1916). Marshall, H. R., War and the Ideal of Peace. Martineau, J., National Duties (1903). Masterman, J. H. B., The Challenge of Christ (1913). Meyer, F. B., The Directory of the Devout Life (1904). Moffatt, J., The Second Things of Life. Muirhead, J. H., German Philosophy in Relation to the War (1915). Nasmyth, G. W., in Friends and the War. Oman, J., The War and its Issues (1915). Powell, J. W., What is a Christian ? (1915). Rashdall, H., Conscience and Christ (1916). Selwyn, E. G., The Teaching of Christ (1915). Stout, G. F., in The International Crisis in its Ethical and Psychological Aspects (1915). Streeter, B. H., War, This War and The Sermon on the Mount (1915). Stubbs, C. W., Christ and Economics (1893). Thornton, L. S., Conduct and the Supernatural (1915). Wilmshurst, W. L., in The Seeker (May 1915). Wilson, W. E., Atonement and N on- Resistance (1914). 184 The Use of Force. Is the use of physical force ever allowed to a follower of Christ ? The answer does not settle the question of the lawfulness of war. There are certainly forms of force that have not the un-Christian features that belong to war, and it is not fair to treat the two words “ war ” and “ force ” as if they were synonymous. One may reasonably hold that some forms of force are inconsistent wfith the Christian faith, while holding that others are consistent with it. There are two extreme theories regarding the use of force. The pacifist view (to use an ugly but convenient term) is that force is never to be used for moral or spiritual ends. The militarist view is that force is the only effective weapon, and is to be used for all purposes without scruple. Let us look at these two theories. I. % The Pacifist Theory. 1. The Pacifist Theory condemns every form of violence, as contrary to the ethical law of love and human brotherhood. It was in harmony with this idea that the Fathers of the Church in the early centuries condemned all recourse to arms as unjust, and that many Christians refused to render service in the imperial armies. Abandoned by the Church after its alliance with the Roman Empire under Constantine, the doctrine was never quite lost from sight. It was adopted by the Mennonites in Holland and by the Quakers in England. T[ We may pause here to consider the attitude of the early Friends towards war. Accepting the teaching of Christ as a gospel 1 86 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE of pure love, they held that war was unchristian, and this alike in its origin and in its results. George Fox had been called out of “ that nature whence wars arise,” and “ lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars.” Barclay too applied the peaceable ethic of Christ without flinching to the whole of life. Friends did not indeed deny that force was needed in the community, as in the family, to restrain ill-doers, to protect the weak, and to preserve that ordered peace upon which freedom itself and the power to work out man’s nature depends. For the community includes many persons who have not come, as Barclay would say, to the pure dispensation of the gospel, but are still “ in the mixture,” and for these the restraint of force is needed in the spirit of love. As their consciences become enlightened to under¬ stand the teaching of Christ more fully, such restraint will be needed less and less, even to vanishing point. The use of force in maintain¬ ing civil order is however marked off from the sphere of war by this distinction, that the former is regulated by justice and law, and the latter by uncertain motives, often greed or offended dignity. That war too might be governed by justice was a desire that sometimes found expression on the part of the earlier Friends. Edward Borough in 1656 charged the soldiers in Ireland to use their swords justly, and even wrote to the army at Dunkirk in 1659 that it should avenge the blood of the guiltless. War in a just cause Barclay held to be not altogether unlawful to a magistrate whose conscience was not fully enlightened. Pen- ington said that “ the present estate of things ”, in which the earthly spirit prevails, might require the use of the sword, and a blessing would attend its right use ; but, he added, there is a better state. There were indeed occasions in the great struggle for liberty which was waging in England at the time of the rise of Friends, when they were asked to give active help to the parliamentary forces, and when some of the best amongst them hesitated as to their duty. But Fox and others stood firm : no carnal weapons were to be borne : Friends were not to join the militia ; the testimony of the society against all war was clear and emphatic. Several of its early leaders — Dewsbury, Hubberthorne, Nayler and others — had come out from the ranks of the army to serve the Prince of Peace, in the Kingdom which is “ righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” But whilst it was the clear duty of the Friend in his personal conduct and on his own behalf to deny all war, the position was less easy for those who held places of responsibility in the community on behalf of their fellows. Such offices were held by early members of the society in America. The sturdy Quaker governors of Rhode THE USE OF FORCE 187 Island thought it their duty to the people who had elected them that they should assent to preparations for the military defence of the colony. John Archdale, governor of the Carolinas, held a commission which nominally appointed him Admiral and Com- mander-in-Chief. The Assembly passed a Militia Act during his term of office, under which all Quakers were excused from service who, in the judgment of the governor, refused to bear arms on a conscientious principle of religion. These Friend governors did not, as it appears, engage in war, nor were they, on the other hand, sub¬ jected to disownment by their own body. They seem to have taken the view that, although all war was evil, a defensive war might on occasion be a necessary accompaniment of civil government, when that government was exercised on behalf of a mixed population only partly enlightened ; and that in the public office they held they did right to connive at it. A citizen cannot act merely for himself : he has a share in the state and in its responsibilities ; he may have to countenance methods of government not ideally right, though he must never be content with them, nor cease to labour for their removal. The question as it presented itself in the home country was somewhat different, for there the authority which public officers derived from the king was apt to overshadow their responsibility to their fellow-citizens. But in either land it was one of great moment, and it had a fateful influence upon the history of the society. Could Friends with their pure and high ideals take part in government ? Some of the early Quakers thought that they could ; Christians, said Penn, should keep the helm and guide the vessel to its port, not steal out of the stern of the world, and leave it without a pilot. The later society, led mainly by English Friends, came in effect to the decision that they could not take such part ; no doubt the customary oath of office was an especial hindrance ; and in consequence they withdrew for a century and a half into private life. It would be out of place here to do more than allude to the emergence of English Friends from this position in the course of the nineteenth century, and to their gradual entrance in consider¬ able numbers into magisterial, civic and parliamentary life.1 It may be noted that John Bright based his opposition to the several wars of his time upon the circumstances of each ; he re¬ signed from Gladstone’s Cabinet in 1882, because the bombard¬ ment of Alexandria was in his judgment an act of unjustifiable war. This might nevertheless be consistent with a strong personal conviction that all war was wrong. See M. E. Hirst, in Fds. 1 R. H. Fox, Dr. John F other gil\ and His Friends, 294. 1 88 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE Quart. Exam., Jan. 1916. Upon the attitude of the early Friends to war and the facts quoted above, see W. C. Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism ; George Fox’s Journal, ed. Camb. ; E. Burrough, Works ; Barclay, Apology, Prop* XV. ; I. Penington, Works, i. 323. For the question as it emerged on the outbreak of the European War see W. Littleboy, The Day of our Visitation, Appendix.1 If At a Conference held by Quakers at Llandudno in September 1914, the question was asked : Has Christ nothing but implicit condemnation for men who offer their own lives in order to stop a tyrant’s cruelty to others ? The answer was : All self-sacrifice for a worthy end is good and noble and Christlike, and we cannot believe that Christ would ever condemn it as such, or that it is His will that in the presence of tyranny and cruelty we should stand aside and do nothing. But the answer of those who have lived nearest to Him in spirit, like many of the first Christians and of the early Quakers, would seem to be that His followers must have patience even with tyranny and cruelty, and seek to “ wear it out ” by long suffering. In James Nayler’s words, they “ take their kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keep it by lowliness of mind.” The early Quakers, though they never used force, were vigorous in their protests against injustice to themselves and others. The recognition gradually won by the Christians and the Quakers, without any use of violence, seems to show that such patience is not in vain, if it is not mere indolence or cowardice, but is inspired by the faith that there is in all human hearts, even in the most apparently cruel, something that can be won at length by long-suffering love.2 2. In support of this view, it is argued (1) that it has never had a fair trial ; and (2) when it has been tried it has worked well. (1) As regards the trial of non-resistance, it is held that we are Christians only to our own shame, and to our Master’s dishonour — Christiani ad contumeliam Christi : that whether it is possible or not to place society on a strict basis of Christian principle we cannot say, for that very few have ever really tried : that discussion as to the feasibility of a Christian socialistic state in which Christ’s five great commandments — Be not angry — Do not commit adultery — Take no oaths — Resist not evil — Make no war — were obeyed, must for the present at least be merely conjectural and speculative, 1 R. H. Fox, Dr. John Fothergill and His Friends, 296. 2 E. G., in Friends and the War, 143. THE USE OF FORCE 189 for very few have ever attempted to put them into practice : and that those who have, like St. Francis of Assisi, or Laurence Oliphant, or the Moravians, or the Poor Men of Lyons, or the American Shakers, have generally been laughed down by the rest of Christen¬ dom, as either foolish fanatics or mad. The precept “ Love your enemies ” does not seem to be generally recognized in this way as a practical guide amid the stress and strain of daily life. It is not even generally appealed to as a standard for approving or condemning the ordinary behaviour of men. It is not effectively sanctioned by public opinion and senti¬ ment. If we inquire why this is so, there appear to be two answers, vaguely and confusedly underlying the position of common sense. The first is that any sustained effort to pursue the ideal under the actual conditions of human life is so impossible that it is useless to attempt it. The second is that if we did succeed in loving our enemies and in acting as if we loved them, the result would be disastrous ; the good would be exposed without defence to the forces of evil and life would no longer be worth living. For one or both of these reasons it seems to be tacitly assumed that in practice we are justified in setting aside the precept “ Love your enemies,” and in substituting for it the precept “ Love your friends and hate your enemies.” At the same time it is generally granted that under conditions different from ours the rule of love would be universally applicable. But this concession turns out on examination to mean very little. For the state of things con¬ templated under which we might be reasonably expected to love our enemies seems to be one under which our enemies would be prepared to love us or might easily be induced to love us, and this almost amounts to saying that we can only be reasonably required to love our enemies when there are no enemies for us to love. In fact, in common with the rest of Western Europe, we have too long made the geographical expression “ Christendom ” coextensive with Christianity. Thus we have equated Christian ideals with the current standards of European civilization, and called on Christ to supply religious sanction for what is really the code of Mrs. Grundy. If Many people dismiss the whole question of non-resistance with the remark that it is simply impossible to practise it in such a world as this. If Christianity really requires it, they would say, 1 9o CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE then so much the worse for Christianity. What would happen if we were to dismiss all our police, disband our Army and do away with the Navy ? Evil men and evil nations would have it all their own way. But, of course, no sane man advocates anything of the kind. Morality is a growth, and you must have first the blade, then the ear, and only after long waiting the full corn in the ear. To advocate the immediate abolition of the Army and Navy is simply to begin at the wrong end. The spirit must first be created. Public action will follow after, and not precede, private and individual action (duelling goes out of fashion before war), and even private and individual action is of little value till a certain level of public opinion has been gained. The first step in every reform is the creation of a suitable atmosphere. Does that atmosphere, as regards the powerlessness of force, the duty of non-resistance, and the value of gentleness and love, as yet exist ? There are a few, a very few, earnest Christians feeling after a practicable doctrine of non-resistance. Tolstoi’s influence has not been without effect. The leaven of the Friends is always at work. But speaking broadly, the Church has not yet begun to realize what is really the question of the day, namely, How to practise the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. And this war is its punishment for that failure.1 If If persons in sympathy with the Society of Friends had been in a position to conduct the entire foreign policy of this country, and, a fortiori, that of more countries than one, since the foundation of that Society, it is quite possible that war might have been put an end to, and the several countries been much more prosperous and successful than they have been in fact.2 (2) It is claimed that where the rule “ Resist not evil ” has been obeyed — obeyed literally and entirely — it has met with success. To a very large extent the community of the primitive Church acted out the precept of non-resistance. Its gentleness made it great. The law of love, patient, forbearing, unprotesting love, manifested amidst persecution, cruelty, deprivation of rights and liberties, wrongs inflicted upon themselves and their fellows ; this law gave to the small community a power which shook to its foundations the mighty edifice of Roman imperialism. It is the secret of the most amazing conquest in history. On the one side a few empty-handed Christians, on the other a colossal world- 1 G. K. A. Bell, The War and the Kingdom of God, 87. 2 B. Bosanquet, Some Suggestions in Ethics, 142. THE USE OF FORCE 191 power bending all its mighty energies to crush them. To-day the wild beasts, the axe, the flame ; to-morrow the Emperor a convert and the Roman eagles bearing the 'cross. Again, it is undeniable, and we are coming to see it, that the object of punishment is not vengeance but reformation. The warden of Sing Sing prison inaugurated a new era not long since when he went unarmed into a room filled with prisoners, sent out all the guards, and talked with the prisoners, man to man, regarding various phases of their life together. In treating them as men and not as dogs he enlisted all of their own best impulses, and already we are told that the results are apparent in the temper of the men and their attitude toward the obligations that are laid upon them. If this is true in dealing with hardened criminals, it is infinitely more true in the common relationships of human life, wherein by far the greater portion of our differences grow out of our ignorance of each other’s life and our failure to under¬ stand each other’s needs and desires. Moreover, there are modern examples of the success of non- resistance. At the beginning of the Boer War the houses of Joshua Rowntree and other Quakers in Scarborough were seriously damaged by a patriotic mob. The following letter, drafted by Joshua Rowntree, was addressed to the inhabitants of Scarborough, and signed by seven members of the Rowntree family, and by Mr. William Smith, whose property had also suffered. It is dated March 21, 1900 : “ Fellow-Townsmen, — It is our desire that the sores arising from the recent visit of Mr. Cronwright Schreiner to Scarborough may speedily be healed. As one contribution to this end, we wish to state that it is not our intention to make any claim against the Borough Fund for property damaged or destroyed during the riot which occurred on the night of the “ Reception ” given by one of our number. The loss of property, though not light to some of us, is as nothing compared with the peril to which some of those dearer to us than life were that night exposed, or with the loss of free speech won for us by brave men and women of old. We respectfully submit to our fellow-townsmen of all creeds and parties, that the wrecking of buildings, and especially mid¬ night assaults on the homes of women, children, and aged persons, are acts of cruel lawlessness which nothing can justify. Inquiries 192 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE made seem to show that the violence was chiefly the result of the delusion that the visitor to our town, a colonial fellow-subject of British blood, who had come to lecture on ‘ The Conditions of a Durable Peace in South Africa,’ was a Boer, whose life might fairly be taken, and that it was encouraged by some who are supposed to know better. Edmund Burke’s entreaty to his fellows, ‘ so to be patriots as not to forget to be gentlemen ’ seems still to be needed. “We are all at one in desiring the honour and greatness of our country ; we are intensely anxious for the good name of the British Empire amongst the nations of the earth. But we hold that the fostering of prejudice and enmity, even against our foes, is in the long run hurtful to ourselves, and that injustice to strangers never leads to justice to our own people. Our convictions on some great questions are, we know, different from those of the majority of our fellow-countrymen ; but for these convictions we must render our account, not to men but to God. If we are wrong, resort to lynch law will not set us right, while it inflicts serious injury on the whole community. “We desire to acknowledge, with sincere thanks, many expres¬ sions of support and sympathy from both strangers and friends. History often has to reverse the popular verdicts of the day, and we believe it will reverse the verdict of violence which has been given against us.” This letter aroused sympathy and respect from all parts of the country, and from greatly varying types of men. Sir Edward Grey, speaking at Nottingham a few days after its issue, said : “It is full of deep and noble feeling.” The late Mr. Alfred Lyttelton, afterwards Colonial Secretary, said of it to Lord Loreburn : “ That was real Christianity, and must do a great deal of good.” The Manchester Guardian's comment was : “ There are few things more cutting than the Quaker’s practice of dismissing those who offend against him with no severer punishment than an accurate and moderate statement of what they have done.” Mr. Cronwright Schreiner wrote of the letter : “ The Rowntree letter was a splendid one. These are the acts that score in the long run. I believe it to be eternally true that one does more good for a cause by suffering for it than by making others suffer for it.” 1 U In connection with the missionary society working among the tribes on the Congo, in which I am deeply interested, one of the missionaries resolved that he would teach a literal obedience to 1 S. E. Robson, Joshua Rowntree, 114. THE USE OF FORCE i93 these words of our Lord, lest any evasion of them might lessen their authority over the hearts and lives of His people. His hearers were greatly interested and excited, and were not slow in putting the missionary to the test. On one memorable day they gathered around his house, and began asking for the articles which excited their cupidity, and which he had brought at such cost from home. In an hour or two his house was literally stripped, and his wife and he betook themselves to prayer, for, of course, it is impossible for Europeans to live in that climate without many accessories which are needless for the natives. But, in the evening, under the shadow of the night, one after another stole back, bringing the article which he had taken away, and confessing that it was impossible to retain it in his possession, because of the burden which had come upon his heart.1 If During the last ten years many travellers in Persia have fallen into the hands of brigands. Miss Bird told how “ Dr. Carr fell into the hands of a robber band, who carried him, his servants, and his caravan off to one of their mountain haunts, and took everything — clothes, money, goods, and animals — from him, only allowing him to have his sun hat and some old clothes of their own. After keeping him two days, almost without food, he and his party were released and had to tramp about eighteen miles to a village. While he was with these brigands, they constantly expressed their regret that it had been his kismet to fall into their hands. He returned their treatment by doctoring them and telling them of the true way of salvation. The man who told us of it said, “ It was wonderful, the doctor never swore once, though we took all his things.” 2 II. The Militarist Theory. 1. In the Militarist Theory no apology is made for the use of force for moral or other ends. Force is in itself a fine and noble thing, which the weak deprecate only because they are afraid of it and cannot enrol it on their own side. Force is superiority according to nature ; this is a supreme and inviolable law. Force is the principle of everything that exists in reality, and not simply in the abstract. It is the basis of all laws and contracts, and these become nothing when it is no longer there to sanction them. 1 F. B. Meyer, The Directory of the Devout Life, 17. 2 Mary Bird in Persia, 54. 13 i94 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE In the picture which they have drawn of force, these men have left no room for justice and moderation, which alone make it worthy of respect and bring about lasting results. The triumph, such as it is, of violence, bounds their whole horizon. Clausewitz writes : “War knows only one means : force. There is no other : it is destruction, wounds, death, and this resort to brutal force is absolutely imperative. As for that right of nations, about which its advocates talk so much, it imposes on the purpose and right of war merely insignificant and, so to speak, negligible, restrictions. In war every idea of humanity is a blunder, a danger¬ ous absurdity. The violence and brutality of combat admit no kind of limitation.” Froude preached the gospel of force. Thus he expressed it in reply to Cromwell’s critics : “I say frankly, that I believe the control of human things in this world is given to the strong, and those who cannot hold their own ground with all advantage on their side must bear the consequences of their weakness.” The Holy Inquisition might have used this language in Italy or in Spain. Any tyrant might use it at any time. It was denied in anticipation by an older and higher authority than Carlyle in the words, “ The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.” There is a better morality, if indeed there be a worse, than reverence for big battalions. Sceptre and crown Must topple down, And in the earth be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade ; • •••••• Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in their dust.1 If In time it came about that, just as the Greek concept of beauty was countered by a competing complementary one, so Thor’s hammer was contrasted with Christ’s cross ; the primitive Norse ideal of forcefulness was confronted with a contrary standard of gentleness and tenderness which, if cultivated, would have been found indued with a peculiar and more effective force of their own. But, as we see to-day, that lesson has not yet been learned ; the check has proved but temporary, so fiercely and stubbornly does the human mind — and the invisible powers of the air that dominate 1 Herbert Paul, Life of Froude, 214. THE USE OF FORCE i95 it — resent the “ foolishness ” of the Christ-standard. “ Christianity (wrote Heine, years ago) has in some degree softened, but it could not destroy, that brutal German joy of battle. When once the taming talisman, the Cross, breaks in two, the savagery of the old fighters will gush up anew. That talisman is decayed, and the day will come when it will piteously collapse. Then Thor, with his giant’s hammer, will at last spring up and shatter to bits the Gothic cathedrals.” The prediction has become verified. The modern Teutonic mind, suddenly recanting every Christian principle, has reverted to the spirit and methods of its barbaric ancestry and to-day, through all its princes, professors, philosophers and theologians, is once more exclaiming : Force rules the world still, Has ruled it, shall rule it. Meekness is weakness, Strength is triumphant. Over the whole earth Still it is Thor’s day ! Thou art a God too, 0 Galilean ! And thus single-handed Unto the conflict, Gauntlet or Gospel, Here I defy thee ! 1 2. There are two steps in this estimate of force. First, might is made to take precedence of right ; and then might and right are identified. The means is transformed into an end. Not only does force precede right, but force itself is right. This is, in the end, as Boutroux says, “ force, material brute force, above every principle that can be conceived by man.” ^ Carlyle was often charged with maintaining that Might is Right. His answer was that he did not hold that Might is Right, but rather that Right is Might. Against this it has been urged that, if either of these sayings is seriously pressed — if, that is, either of them is regarded as an equation — the two are exactly equivalent. This is, of course, obvious ; but it may be safely said that neither Carlyle nor any others who have put forward such statements have ever intended them to be understood strictly as equations. Those who say that Might is Right — as Bernhardi, 1 W. L. Wilmshurst, The Seeker, xi. 6. 196 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE for instance, appears pretty definitely to do — mean that Might, and especially the Might of an organized State, is the basis or ground upon which Right is established. Those, on the other hand, who say that Right is Might, mean that Right is the ultimate source of strength. To treat the two statements as equivalent would be like regarding the statement that Knowledge is Power as equivalent to the saying that Power is Knowledge. Nevertheless, it is not altogether easy to keep the two statements distinct ; Carlyle at least was not very successful in doing so. Carlyle’s view was, in the first instance, based on an optimistic theory of the Universe — a theory which he expressed in the saying that “ the great Soul of the world is just.” Referring to Mohammed’s advocacy of the use of the sword, Carlyle said, “ In this great duel Nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong. The thing which is deepest rooted in Nature, what we call truest, that thing, and not the other, will be found growing at last.” This certainly comes very near to the doctrine of the “ survival of the fittest ” in the “ struggle for existence,” on which Bernhardi and others rely in their defence of war as the arbiter of national destiny. At least one wants to know what Carlyle understands by Truest. Does it mean “ best,” or only “ best adapted to the circumstances ” ? Moreover, Carlyle was constantly telling us that it is impossible to ascertain the Rights of Man, whereas their Mights can be pretty easily discovered ; and I think it is true to say that in his later writings the optimistic theory of the universe has largely disappeared. Hence it is not altogether unfair to say that in the end his doctrine is hardly distinguishable from the view that Might is the only practical basis for Right in human affairs. In view of the confusion that is thus created, it is very desirable to try to understand what the real connection between Might and Right is.1 III. The Word and Example of Christ. 1. There is no doubt that our Lord commands His followers not to resist evil by force. “ Resist not him that is evil ; but whoso¬ ever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man would go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him take thy cloke also. ... I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you ; that ye may be sons of 1 J. S. Mackenzie, in The Theory of the State , 69. THE USE OF FORCE 197 your Father which is in heaven ; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.” 2. In all this Christ is primarily dealing with the relation of His followers to the hostile world, and their relation to that world as they carry on His work must be the same as His own has been. It is not that our Lord, like Marcion in later days, believed that the Heavenly Father was incapable of wrath ; He believed the very contrary. Our Lord, as saying after saying of His proves, believed that the wrath of God against sin was a great reality, to be poured out upon the finally impenitent in very awful ways. But it was not His task in His earthly life to manifest this. He came in His earthly life not to condemn the world, but to save the world, to minister to it, to die for it and to rise again. And to this end in His earthly life He^practised to the uttermost the non-resistance which He enjoins upon His followers. Till His “ hour ” came, He always withdrew before the world’s hostility ; when it came, He yielded Himself up to the worst that His enemies could do. He remonstrated, He denounced evil, He warned of its future con¬ sequences, but He never resisted it. Nor was it any part of His earthly mission to right the wrongs of others. “ Man,” He said, when He was asked to do this, “ who made me a judge or a divider over you ? ” Though He had twelve legions of angels at His com¬ mand He never called upon them to put a stop by force to the oppression and cruelty which He saw around Him. Though the Jews expected the Messiah to do all this, though one day He will do it, in His earthly life He refused to do it. The appeal of love must be urged to the uttermost before the time can come for the exercise of judgment, and it is by the Cross, by suffering to the uttermost in making the appeal, that the way must lie to the throne of judgment. If “ Is there no way,” asks Andrew Fuller, “ to bring home a wandering sheep but by worrying him to death ? ” Owen’s greater Anglican contemporary writes to the same effect in his Liberty of Prophesying. “ Any zeal,” he observes, “ is proper for religion, but the zeal of the sword and the zeal of anger,” since no secure basis for a reasonable religion can be won “ if the sword turns preacher, and dictates propositions by empire instead of arguments, and engraves them in men’s hearts with a poniard.” One wonders 198 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE if the Puritan was thinking of the anecdote which narrates how Michelangelo, who was engaged in designing a statue of Julius n., asked that eminently meek and saintly representative of Christ if he would care to hold a volume in his hand. “ What volume ? ” cried the indignant Pope ; “ a sword ! I know nothing of letters, not I.” 1 3. It is as His followers, in our conduct towards one another and towards the world, especially in our efforts to extend His King¬ dom in the world, that we are not to resist evil. But as the repre¬ sentatives of the Lord to the world we have nothing to do with the establishment of justice either by police action, or by military action, or in any way at all except by following the Lamb. If indeed members of our own body, in spite of all remonstrance, act with injustice towards their brethren, we must expel them from our society, so that they sink back into the ranks of the world from which the Lord has rescued them, but we are not as Christians charged in any way with the present administration or establish¬ ment of justice in the life of the world. And so our Lord teaches us : “ Put up again thy sword into its place ; for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Or thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father, and he shall even now send me more than twelve legions of angels ? How then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be ? ” For the Church, individually or corporately, to take the sword is an act of consummate folly ; with the world’s weapons the world will always prove the stronger. For the Church to take the sword is an expression of distrust in God ; He could save us without it, if He so willed. But He does not so will ; to suppose that He does is to set aside the whole witness of “ the Scriptures,” to declare that their anticipations of the Cross for the Lord and for ourselves are without meaning. Retributive justice is right and necessary in its own place, and in its own time ; even in our patience we are to remember that it lies in reserve ; but its place is not the Church of God, and its time is not yet. We cannot, in our attitude towards the world, set forth at one and the same time the patience of God and the severity of God, and though we may witness to both, we have now as Christians, like the Lord in His earthly life, to manifest the former only. “ Avenge not 1 J. Moffatt, The Golden Booh of John O wen , 90. THE USE OF FORCE 199 yourselves, beloved, but give place unto the wrath ” of God : “for it is written, Vengeance belongeth unto me ; I will recompense, saith the Lord. But if thine enemy hunger, feed him ; if he thirst, give him to drink : for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” If Mackay has been accused of interfering in African politics, and advocating armed intervention in the interests of religion ; but there is no justification for this charge. The force he advocated was the kind of pressure which you can bring to bear upon a man when he sees it more to his interest to be gentle than to be cruel, to be just rather than unjust. He held it to be the duty of our Consuls on the coast to use all the means within their power to secure the personal safety of traders and missionaries, and of the home Government by legislation, backed, if necessary, by force, to prevent such trading as directly hindered the work of Christianity and civilization.1 4. But the pacifist not only objects to the employment of force by Christians in the fulfilment of their mission to the world ; he objects to its employment by the world itself for those moral pur¬ poses which the world rightly recognizes. For this he finds no justification in our Lord’s teaching. The fact is not merely that our Lord expects the kingdoms of the world to continue until He returns to establish the Kingdom of God, but that He recognizes that they have a function to perform, lower indeed than the function of the Church, but God-given, and necessary in its own place. Our Lord in His earthly life had very little to do with the kingdoms of the world, and did not, except in His eschatological teaching, frequently allude to them. But His attitude towards them is shown clearly enough by both word and example. He sees in the authority of the earthly State a God-given authority, and He approves of the State’s employment of force in the exercise of it. Our Lord not only says that we are to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s ; He Himself shows the utmost respect to the judicial authority of the State when He comes into contact with it. How does He act when He is brought before Pilate ? He respects the judicial position of the Roman magistrate, and gives him full opportunity of arriving at the truth. “ Sayest thou this of thyself, or did others tell it thee concerning me ? ” No 1 Mackay of Uganda, 342. 200 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE Messianic rising has taken place to alarm Pilate ; he is allowing himself to be made the tool of others. Very carefully our Lord explains the true character of His claim to rule. “ My kingdom is not from this world ; if my kingdom were from this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews ; but now is my kingdom not from hence.” His kingdom, that is to say, has a heavenly origin, and will come into existence by heavenly power ; it does not break the Emperor’s peace, or come into conflict with those principles of public order which Pilate is bound to maintain. If the Lord is a King, it is because He is first a Prophet. He has come into the world to “ bear witness unto the truth,” and it is only those whose hearts respond to the truth, who “ hear his voice,” and bow to His authority. It is only at a later stage, when Pilate in his superstitious fears asks a question which has nothing to do with his judicial duties, that our Lord refuses him an answer. But even then His respect for Pilate’s authority is perfectly clear. “ Thou wouldst have no authority against me, except it were given thee from above ; there¬ fore he that delivered me unto thee hath greater sin.” Pilate’s judicial authority, that is to say, is a God-given authority ; the greatness of the sin of Caiaphas lies precisely in this, that he is endeavouring to exploit a Divine institution for his own evil purpose. Now what does our Lord do here except recognize clearly the authority of the State to employ force in the exercise of justice ? St. Paul is quite aware of the duties of Christians as Christians ; they are not to resist him that is evil. But the very next subject of which he speaks is their duty to the State, and his language is even clearer than the Lord’s. “ Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers : for there is no power but of God ; and the powers that be are ordained of God. Therefore, he that resisteth the power, withstandeth the ordinance of God. For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. And wouldst thou have no fear of the power ? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise from the same ; for he is a minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid ; for he beareth not the sword in vain ; for he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him that doeth evil. ... For this cause ye pay tribute also ; for they are ministers of God’s service, attending continually upon this very thing.” It is in entire accordance with this view that he claims the privileges of his Roman citizenship, and appeals to Caesar when his life is in danger.1 1 G. K. A. Bell, The War and the Kingdom of God , 38. XIII. War. 201 Literature. Aked, C. F., Changing Creeds and Social Struggles (1893). Barnett, S. A., Religion and Politics (1911). Barry, F. R., Religion and the War (1915). Bartlett, L., The Spirit of Christ and War. Bell, G. K. A., in The War and the Kingdom of God (1915). Bradley, A. C., in The International Crisis (1915). Cramb, J. A., The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain (1915). D’Arcy, C. F., in Irish Church Quarterly, viii. (1915). Dickinson, G. L., in Towards a Lasting Settlement (1915). „ „ The Choice before us (1917). Emmet, C. W., in The Faith and the War (1915). Forsyth, P. T., The Christian Ethic of War (1916). Foster, J., Lectures, ii. (1853). Glasier, J. B., The Meaning of Socialism (1919). Goudge, H. L., in The War and the Kingdom of God (1915). Green, P., in The War and the Kingdom of God (1915). Hales, A. G., Where Angels Fear to Tread (1918). Harrison, A., Before and Now (1919). Hughes, H. M., in The London Quarterly Review (April 1916). Inge, W. R., Faith and Knowledge (1904). Jacks, L. P., in The Hibbert Journal (April 1916). Jowett, B., Sermons Biographical and Miscellaneous (1899). Lindsay, A. D., in Oxford Pamphlets, No. xvi. (1914). Lucas, E., in The Holborn Review (Jan. 1914). McFadyen, J. E., The Bible and the War (1915). Mantripp, J. C., in the Holborn Review (Jan. 1917). Martineau, J., National Duties (1903). Massingham, H. J., People and Things (1919). Maurice, F. D., Social Morality (1893). Moffatt, J., art. War, in the Dictionary of the Apostolic Church. Moulton, J. H., in The London Quarterly Review (1915). Mozley, J. B., Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford (1876). Miigge, M. A., The Parliament of Man (1916). Murray, G., in Oxford Pamphlets, No. xviii. (1914). Oman, J., The War and its Issues (1915). Osborn, E. B., The New Elizabethans (1919). Paterson, W. P., In the Day of the Muster (1914). „ „ art. War, in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, xii. (1922). Peabody, F. G., in The Biblical World, xliv. (1914). Perla, Leo, What is National Honor ? (1918). Phillips, T., in The Free Church Year Booh (1915). Sclater, J. R. P., The Eve of Battle (1915). Smith, A. L., in Oxford Pamphlets , No. lii. (1915). Westcott, B. F., Lessons from Work (1901). Wood, F., Suffering and Wrong (1916). 302 War. 1. Though we believe that we may use physical force, it does not follow that we must approve of war. Martineau, a strong advocate of war, says : “If coercion be allowed at all for the attainment of moral order, there seems to be no reason, beyond the rational calculation of efficacy, for stopping short at one degree or form of it rather than another. All merely physical powers are at the right¬ ful disposal of the ends, human and divine, that are higher than themselves ; and if they can be made available for the enforcement of just restraints upon lawless passion, whether at home or abroad, I know of no principle which antecedently precludes resort to them. It is henceforth a question of gradation and detail alone. There is no intelligible ground of distinction between what is absurdly called “ moral compulsion ” and physical ; between pain to the body and torture to the mind ; between simple constraint and active infliction ; between forfeiture of liberty and forfeiture of life ; between the execution of national law by police, and of international by armies.” 1 But this is a mistake. The use of force on a small scale may be beneficial and on a large scale hurtful. Fire is force, and we use it to warm our rooms and cook our food, but we do not feel logically driven to burn down our house, or set fire to a forest. Charles Lamb, in one of his delightful essays, tells us that the virtue of “ roast pig ” was discovered by the accidental burning of the building in which “ a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs ” were housed. Thereafter, “ as often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze.” At last “ a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discovery, that the flesh of swine, or indeed 1 J. Martineau, National Duties, 70. 203 204 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE of any other animal, might be cooked (burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it.” 1 2. In order to show that if we allow the use of force at all we approve of war, it has to be taken for granted that the use of force under any circumstances and in any degree is evil. Dr. Oman says : “ The man who covets his neighbour’s field and seizes it is doing exactly the same in principle as the King of Assyria who gathers the nations as one gathers eggs, and the magnitude of the latter crime in no way alters the identity of principle.” 2 But the objection to war may be not that it invokes force to check evil, but that it does so in an entirely crude and ineffective fashion. If the amount of suffering and loss caused by war is out of propor¬ tion to the good attained ; if punishment falls on the innocent as much as, or more than, on the guilty ; and if there is no guarantee that the final result will be the vindication of right and justice, then war is condemned as war, but the condemnation does not carry with it the rejection of force under all circumstances. If I saw prevailing throughout the Christian world a licence in making war of which even barbarous nations would have been ashamed ; recourse being had to arms for slight reasons or no reason ; and when arms were once taken up, all reverence for divine and human law was thrown away, just as if men were thence¬ forth authorised to commit all crimes without restraint.3 The committee of the Peace Society received in response to their request for Peace sermons one significant reply. I can quote it, for the witty individual who wrote it had wit enough not to sign it. He wrote : “ It is not my intention to preach a Peace sermon, believing that bullies, whether national or individual, are all the better for a good thrashing.” Now do you seriously believe that in modern war the people who do the bullying are the people who get the thrashing ? 4 I. That War will always be Necessary. There are two ways of regarding war. One way is to hold that it has always been and will always be necessary. It may % 1 Charles Lamb, Essays, 246. 2 The War and its Issues, 28. 3 M. A. Miigge, The Parliament of Man, 9. 4 C. F. Aked, Changing Creeds and Social Struggles, 245. WAR 205 be an evil, but it is a necessary evil. The other way is to deny altogether its necessity. Perhaps it need never have been ; now, at any rate, it need not be, and it need never be again. We shall first of all see what is to be said for the belief that war is inevitable. The supporters of the doctrine that wars are inevitable may be divided into those who hold that war is an evil, though one that cannot be avoided, and those who, like General von Bernhardi and some writers and preachers in this country, do not want to abolish war. Such persons as the latter must not be confused with those who hold that in certain circumstances war is desirable. Most of us might agree to that but deplore the circumstances which called for war. General von Bernhardi thinks that it would be a catastrophe to mankind if war were abolished; he believes that the natural relations of nations to one another are enmity and competition, which, unlike the envy and competition of individuals, have no higher power to control them, and thinks that such enmity and competition are good in themselves. 1. The question whether war is in itself a good thing need hardly be discussed. It has plausibility only when war is identified with any kind of competition or struggle and justified on biological grounds. A moment’s consideration will show that the growth of civilization and peace has not eliminated struggle and com¬ petition, but changed their nature. Progress consists largely in raising the terms on which competition is carried on and the qualities in which men compete, and in the higher forms of com¬ petition co-operation plays a greater and greater part, and the success of one competitor means less and less the death or ruin of the other. We think it a good thing that there should be rivalry between German and French and English culture, and that the best should prevail ; but we think that it ought to prevail because it is the best culture, not because those who have made it happen to be more ruthless in war or less scrupulous about treaties than are others. Now though there may be much that is ignoble as well as much that is noble in the rivalry and competition of peace, no one would deny that the life of a modern nation at peace is better than it would be in a state of internecine strife. No one can disagree with Hobbes’s famous description of a time of war where every 206 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE man’s hand is against his neighbour’s : “In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain ; and consequently no culture of the earth ; no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea ; no commodious building ; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force ; no knowledge of the face of the earth ; no account of time ; no arts ; no letters ; no society ; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death ; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” The most inspiriting facts in modern war, the common devotion and patriotism of a whole nation, are possible only because that nation has been at peace with itself. If it fights to defend its culture, that culture is possible only through peace ; for in war, as Thucy¬ dides said, we lose that “ margin of everyday life ” in which culture can flourish. There is no sense in defending war as a good thing in itself. Even General von Bernhardi does not desire war between the component parts of Germany. All Germans would agree that the united Germany of the end of the nineteenth century is prefer¬ able to the Germany of the Thirty Years’ War. A more objectionable misinterpretation of the naturalists’ doctrine of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence is that made by journalists and literary politicians, who declare, according to their political bias, either that science rightly teaches that the gross quality measured by wealth and strength alone can survive, and should therefore alone be cultivated, or that science (and especially Darwinism) has done serious injury to the progress of mankind by authorising this teaching. Both are wrong, and owe their error to self-satisfied flippancy and traditional ignorance in regard to Nature-knowledge and the teaching of Darwin. The “ fittest ” does not mean the “ strongest.” The causes of survival under Natural Selection are very far indeed from being rightly described as mere strength, nor are they baldly similar to the power of accumulating wealth. Frequently in Nature the more obscure and feeble survive in the struggle, because of their modesty and suitability to given conditions, whilst the rich are sent empty away, and the mighty perish by hunger.1 If The struggle for existence neither in the human nor in the animal kingdom has anything to do with war. When it is said that a certain species was victorious in the struggle for existence, 1 Ray Lankester, The Kingdom of Man , 7. WAR 207 this does not at all mean that it had overcome any enemies in direct encounters or real battles. It simply means that sufficient adaptation to external environment enabled the species in question to survive and to multiply — which all do not equally succeed in doing. In the struggle for existence mammoths in Siberia dis¬ appeared and martens were victorious. But this does not mean, of course, that martens were braver than mammoths and ex¬ terminated the latter in open fight with the help of their teeth and paws. In a similar way the Jewish nation, which is com¬ paratively small and was disarmed long ago, has proved to be unconquerable in the struggle for existence, whilst many centuries of military successes did not save from downfall the huge Roman Empire, as well as other warlike states that had preceded it.1 2. For the most part men admit that war is an evil, yet they hold that it is a necessity. (1) To begin with the most fundamental argument : War is inevitable because man is a fighting animal. The state of war is natural to him. Ancient nations were more often at war than at peace. The Greeks, the Romans, the Jews, lived in an almost uninterrupted state of warfare ; and probably every former con¬ dition of mankind, even the Thirty Years’ War of the seventeenth century, the first fifteen years of this (not to speak of civil strife), would in this respect appear intolerable to us. In all ages and countries, almost up to our own day, such has been the history of mankind. U That within the human breast there has always lived and still lives the spirit of battle is best shown by the powerful appeal Art made and still makes to man, whether through the effect of “ trumpets loud and clarions ” or the sight of Turner’s “ Fighting Temeraire,” or the splendour of Milton’s language describing the desperate struggle of the Arch-foe with Michael and his legions. Sculptors, painters, poets and musicians have derived their finest inspirations from the subject of war. The fine battle-reliefs of Bertoldo di Giovanni and Michael Angelo fascinate our eyes as much as the paintings by Stanfield and Caton Woodville, by Meissonier, Chantilly and Yernet ; Tschaikowsky’s “ 1812,” the quaint music of a passing military band playing “ The Campbells are Coming,” throw over us a magic spell more powerful than that of the sirens. Even “ It’s a long, long way to Tipperary ” had its charms. 1 V. Solovyof, The Justification of the Good, 388. 208 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE But more than all the other artists together have the poets and writers given expression to the fact that the very essence of life and existence is contest and strife. Next to Love, War has been their favourite theme. According to the poets, war was in the beginning, and war was with gods and with men. Uranus, the first ruler of the world, was defeated and deposed by his sons, the mighty Titans. They raised Cronus to the throne. He and the ruling Titans, however, were in turn crushed, after a fierce contest that lasted ten years, by his son Zeus, assisted by the Cyclopes. Nor was the reign of Zeus to be a peaceful one. There arose against him Prometheus who said : “ I know naught poorer Under the sun, than ye gods ! Ye nourish painfully, With sacrifices And votive prayers Your majesty ; Ye would e’en starve If children and beggars Were not trusting fools. Here sit I, framing mortals After my image ; A race resembling me, To suffer, to weep, To enjoy, to be glad, And thee to scorn As I ! ” The literature of Greece and Rome is one vast storehouse of evidence that to live means to fight. Is not the Iliad just one big record of magnificent battles ? Are not Achilles and Hector the idols of our youth ? All Olympus joyfully participates in the struggle ; men hurl the spears but the gods direct the blows, and Homer is the first poet who tells us : “ A glorious death is his who for his country falls ! ” Never was a poet so highly honoured as Tyrtaeus who, more than two thousand five hundred years ago, stimulated the courage of the Spartans in their conflict with the Messenians when he sang : “ On him shall fame, shall endless glory wait, Him future ages crown with just applause, Who boldly daring in the field of fate Falls a pure victim in his country’s cause.” 1 1 M. A. Miigge, The Parliament of Man, 41. WAR 209 ^ I had the opportunity, in crossing the Atlantic in the spring of 1910, of securing a personal impression of Lord Kitchener, who was at the time on his way to London after an absence from England of seven years. The General gave me one evening the benefit of a talk all to myself on the essential importance and value of war for the development and maintenance of character and manliness in the individual and in the community. He could conceive of no power or factor that could replace war as an influence to preserve man from degeneracy. He did not lose sight of the miseries and the suffering resulting from war, but he believed that the loss to mankind would be far greater from the “ rottenness ” of a long peace. Speaking from recent experience, he pointed out that the princes and “ gentle ” classes of India who considered war as the only possible occupation (with the exception of hunting) for gentlemen, found their chief grievance against British rule in the fact that it prevented fighting throughout the Peninsula. Kitchener agreed with the Indian princes in the belief that they and their noble subjects were decaying in character under the enforced idleness of the pax Britannica, and he sympathized keenly with their princely grievance. I suggested to the General that during the periods in which Europe had accepted most thoroughly the domination of the soldier class and the influence of the military ideal, as for instance during the Thirty Years’ War, there had been no satisfactory development of nobility of character. He admitted this objection as pertinent, but contended that war could be carried on with methods and with standards that would preserve it as an instrument of civilization. I asked whether it would be a good thing for India if the British force, once every ten years or so, should establish a “ ring fence ” within which the princes might, for the purpose of keeping themselves in condition, carry on a little fighting with their own followers, a kind of twentieth-century tournament. “ I could hardly take the responsibility, Major,” he replied, “ of formally recommending such a plan, but I am con¬ vinced that it would have many advantages.” 1 Man is a fighting animal, ’tis said, And war an instinct planted in his soul ; Cupidity and lust in him are bred, And passion that can never brook control : But is he so irrational a thing ? So mere a brute, so void of sense and thought ? Then, Nature ! to an end his story bring, And let no trace remain of all he wrought ! 1 G. H. Putnam, Memories of a Publisher , 271. 14 2io CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE Let the brute meet the fortune of the brute, And perish by the hunter’s vengeful hand, If man must still in man seek his pursuit And prey, and glory in the murderer’s brand : Who knows not how his passions to control Is brute in nature, with a devil’s soul ! 1 (2) Nations must work their own destiny, and in doing so come inevitably into conflict. States are like living organisms. They grow and expand. And since there is not room for them all to expand indefinitely, they necessarily come into antagonism and war. This kind of fatalism is the stock-in-trade of the champion of war. Here is a characteristic example from Germany : “ So long as England exists as a World Power, she will and must see in a strong Germany her foe to death. . . . The war between her and us is not confined to such narrow geographical limits as the war between France and Germany. It turns upon the mastery of the seas, and the priceless values bound up with that, and a co-existence of the two States, of which many Utopians dream, is ruled out as definitely as was the co-existence of Rome and Carthage. The antagonism between England and Germany will therefore remain until one of them is finally brought to the ground.” This talk about national destiny is usually nonsense. It implies that nations have no intelligent control over their actions. It is commonly only a hypocritical way of excusing actions for which there is no decent excuse. It is true that the outcome of national actions depends upon the joint effect of a large number of factors, which cannot all be known to the statesman who commits the nation to action, and that therefore a statesman has much less power of anticipating accurately the outcome of actions than has a man who is acting for himself in ordinary life. That, however, does not acquit him or the nation which follows him of responsibility for his deliberate actions : rather it increases that responsibility. There can be no sense in saying that men must make war on each other, as though that were a fundamental element in their nature. For as we look back in history we can see how within the area now occupied by any of the great nations, continual inter¬ necine strife has given place to settled and orderly government. It is true that we have not made civil war absolutely impossible. 1 Bertram Dobell. WAR 2 I 1 Orderly and constitutional government demands of a people a certain mutual forbearance and respect for mutual rights in which under stress of circumstances they may fail. Nevertheless no one would say that if we determined so to act that our children should never suffer the horrors of civil war, we were following an illusory ideal. Rather we feel that, thanks to the political good sense of our ancestors, that ideal is already practically realized and we are the children who are benefiting by it. If towns and districts which once lived in a state of war with one another can, without giving up their local individuality, unite to form one nation under orderly and peaceable government, why cannot nations in turn give up war among themselves ? Why should the relations between men of different nations be different from those between the men who now form one nation ? These are the questions which those who disbelieve in the possibility of putting an end to war have got to answer.1 (3) One argument more may be mentioned. It is best expressed by Professor Cramb ; “ If we were to examine the motives, im¬ pulses, or ideals embodied in the great conflicts of world-history, the question whether war be a necessary evil, an infliction to which humanity must resign itself, would be seen to emerge in another shape — whether war be an evil at all ; whether in the life-history of a State it be not an attestation of the self-devotion of that State to the supreme end of its being, even of its power of consecration to the Highest Good ? “ Every great war known to history resolves itself ultimately into the conflict of two ideals. The Cavalier fights in triumph or defeat in a cause not less exalted than that of the Puritan, and Salamis acquires a profounder significance when considered, not from the standpoint of Athens and Themistocles merely, but from the camp of Xerxes, and the ruins of the mighty designs of Cyrus and Hystaspes, an incident which iEschylus found tragic enough to form a theme for one of his loftiest trilogies. The wars against Pisa and Venice light with intermittent gleams the else sordid annals of Genoa ; and through the grandeur and ferocity of a century of war Rome moves to world-empire, and Carthage to a death which throws a lustre over her history, making its least details memorable, investing its merchants with an interest beyond that of princes, and bequeathing to mankind the names of Hamilcar and 1 A. D. Lindsay, in Oxford Pamphlets. 2i2 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE Hannibal as a strong argument of man’s greatness if all other records were to perish. Qui habet terram habet helium is but a half-truth. No war was ever waged for material ends only. Territory is a trophy of battle, but the origin of war is rooted in the character, the political genius, the imagination of the race.” 1 This is called by Mr. F. R. Barry “ the mystical beauty of War for its own sake.” He says : “ The loathsomeness of the present experience has cured us of that. The best-known English exponent was the late Professor Cramb.” (4) There is one thing more. It is not an argument ; it is a sentiment, and it is all the more powerful on that account. The word “ glory ” has not yet lost its glamour. For over four months the Germans fought with their full avail¬ able strength to capture Verdun. In the first rush they seized Fort Douaumont — a hill ; after three more months of ferocious fighting, every inch of the ground being contested, they managed to cross the four hundred yards which separated them from Fort Vaux and entered it — to-day they lie in or behind the marshland to the north-east again, and the fort is cheerily occupied by a few French soldiers. And now from every French soldier there irradi¬ ates the sense of a national glory. Even that tattered, magnificent, and rather ridiculous relic of human courage makes the blood rush quicker through the veins ; for that, men fought as perhaps never before in history, for that crumbled piece of masonry and concrete which represented, and to-day is, the heart of France. It lives. To-day it is the emblem of France, her pride, they will tell you, her justification. Why ? On ne sait pas. The soldiers laugh, but they adore every stone of it. They touch it with the fingers of a caress. Close by, the Germans watch it, shell it, and no doubt daily curse it. All around it the dead in their thousands sleep. At times the enemy fire furiously upon the ruin. You approach it by night, for the crest is exposed to fire by day. “ Voila,” the guide explains, “ that is Vaux, which we took back from the Germans.” There is a valley in the North-east of Italy walled in by great towering mountain ranges, whose peaks are often hidden in the soft fleecy clouds that seem to fall from heaven like waves of eiderdown. The peasants call it the path of blood. It is the road where once the mighty trod in the mad march in search of fame, the fame that 1 J. A. Cramb, Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain, 113. WAR 213 is won by the butcher’s steel in the shambles of the world. Along that thread of space, history lies graven in characters that will live as long as man endures. There Alaric and his yellow-haired Goths had stormed along with steel — dripping blades glued in their scab¬ bards, and dinted shields slung at their backs, with rape, pillage and murder blazoned on their uncouth banners. That little ribbon of a road upon which I gaze down as an eagle gazes from its eyrie had trembled to the thunder of their tread, and Alaric’ s name had rung from bearded lips until the mountains all around me had flung the echo of his dreaded name afar, whilst ravished matrons and deflowered damsels, crouching in misery by dead men’s bodies amid the ashes of what had once been homes, sobbed curses on the name the echoes flaunted forth so proudly. Well may the peasants call it the path of blood, for every stone and sod and hoary shingle along its length could tell of slayings by the myriad, had the inanimate things been given tongues. Along that accursed highway Hannibal in all his power and pomp and pride had rolled like thunder, to sow the fairest fields of Europe with human skulls, and leave red ruin and smoking cities and fair fields trampled flat as the monuments of his march. As I gaze down from my high place and note how rampart on rampart the great mountains wall that valley in, I seem to see the ghosts of armies of outraged women and shambled children and famine-destroyed peasants and artisans, thronging every inch of space between the rock-ribbed ramparts, and the winds that sob and sigh from cleft to crag are filled with wailings and cursings and gnashing of teeth against the bloody fetich which men call glorious war. Glorious war — hell never coined a fouler phrase, nor devils mouthed it.1 II. That War is never Necessary. We have seen that there are two attitudes to this question of the necessity of War. The one is that war has always been and will always be. The other is that war need never have been and ought never to be again. We now look at the second. “ There is,” says Mr. F. Wood, “ no necessity for war. The idea of such necessity is just one of the illusions into which the stupidity of a so-called patriotism is so easily betrayed ; or rather it is one of the hollow hypocrisies under which the selfishness of 1 A. G. Hales, Where Angels Fear to Tread, 51. 214 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE the same plausible and pretentious sentiment seeks to hide its true character.” 1 1. Let us state the arguments. (1) The first argument is that war is simply murder on a large scale. You must not do as a nation what you may not do as an individual. If it is wrong for you to break into your neighbour’s house, rob his safe, and cut his throat, it is wrong for you and ten thousand others to inflict those same wrongs upon the Russians or the Zulus. Says Father Payne : “ I look upon war as a sort of pestilence, a contagion which spreads under certain conditions. But we disguise the evil of it from ourselves, if we allow ourselves to believe in its being intrinsically glorious. I can’t believe that highway robbery has only to be organized on a sufficiently large scale to make it glorious. A man who resists highway robbery, and runs the risk of death, because he wants to put a stop to it, seems to me a noble person — quite different from the man who sees a row going on and joins in it because he does not want to be out of a good thing ! Do you remember the story of the Irishman who saw a fight proceeding, and rushed into the fray wielding his shillelagh, and praying that it might fall on the right heads ? We have all of us uncivilized instincts, but it does not make them civilized to join with a million other people in indulging them. I think that a man who refuses to join from conviction, at the risk of being hooted as a coward, is probably doing a braver thing still.” 2 This argument is expressed in undisguised language by W. J. Fox : “ God has pronounced him guilty who sheds his fellow’s blood ; there may be an exception for self-defence ; but for the command of superiors there is no exception. Mr. Scargill, in his short but excellent essay on War, avows the same opinions : ‘ He who wantonly puts a fellow-creature to death is guilty of murder ; and he who puts a fellow-creature to death without knowing why is equally guilty ; the cause may be good, but if he knows it not, he is a murderer. No casuistry can save him from the guilt of it. He may conclude that they who lead him to slaughter know and are assured of the justice of the cause ; but unless he knows it also, he is in the sight of God guilty of violating 1 F. Wood, Suffering and Wrong , 67. 2 A. C. Benson, Father Payne, 125. WAR 2I5 the laws of heaven. A man may be honestly engaged in the service of a certain cause, in which circumstances may lead him to war — and if fighting may be justified at all, it may be right in certain circumstances — but he is not thereby bound to fight in every cause which his superiors may adopt.’ The plain question is, Does the command of a superior justify a violation of the laws of God ? If it does for the hired soldier, it does also for the hired assassin. Suppose a man were to go to Copenhagen, and shoot a person whom he never saw before ; then to Washington, and stab another, by whom he was never injured ; then to the coast of France, and burn a third in his own house : what would all this be but repeated and atrocious murder ? Would its moral character be changed by the command of a prince, minister, or general ? Certainly not ; any more than their command would justify perjury or forgery.” 1 (2) Another argument against war is that it never accom¬ plishes its end ; there may be gains but they are small in comparison with the losses, and that to the victor as well as to the vanquished. The following testimony is from a published letter from an officer at the Front. “ War I think morally futile, because I do not believe at all in the romantic view of it, i.e. in the good qualities which it is supposed to breed. It is true that it tests men, like plague, shipwreck, famine, or any other adversity, but in so doing it does not make the good qualities that come to light, it merely makes them apparent. No man in his senses would advocate the occasional sinking of a liner, or the inoculation of a disease, in order to promote heroism and self-sacrifice ; yet justification of war on such grounds is equally indefensible.” (3) Another argument is that hitherto war has been due to ignorance and brutality. The world is now leaving behind the ape and the tiger : why should we continue our rivalry into this illogical and brutal extremity ? The only excuse that can be made is that our ancestors did it. But our ancestors had no other way of competing ; practically they only came into contact with foreign nations for the sake of bloodshed and plunder. But engineering progress has made travel and international intercourse easy, and we can go abroad now with more facility than they could then travel across England. Language is still a barrier, and 1 The Collected Works of W. J. Fox, i. 250. 2 1 6 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE is responsible for many misunderstandings, but in all essentials it is easy now to be on friendly terms with every civilized nation. We trade together, we study the same problems and encounter the same natural difficulties. In thousands of ways we can help each other : in one way and one way alone can we do each other serious damage. Exertion is good, and fighting is strenuous exertion, but why not fight now solely by means of organization and enterprise and scientific skill and ingenuity ? Why not show emulation and high spirit in the various industries and arts of peace ? Why destroy and ravage the property of humanity ? Why should one section seek to destroy another, when all can co¬ operate together for the common good, and when all are members of a common brotherhood, so that if one is injured all suffer ? (4) But the great argument against the continuance of war for any purpose whatsoever is that it is contrary to the mind of Christ. Can we, it is asked, realize at all what war means and what Christ stood for without having the whole question settled for us of the impossibility of concord between Christ and Belial ? How can we speak of the Father who numbers our hairs and makes all things to work for our good, without whom not even a sparrow falls, if we compromise at all with a system for which human beings are mere masses to be hurled at each other’s throats, and which devises ingenious machinery and pours out endless treasure for ■“•their destruction ? And how can an order based upon respect for individual rights and mutual service and common good-will, an order of love based upon respect for the worth of the humblest moral personality, be promoted by the race hatreds and murderous passion bred by war ? Is it not better to tolerate any wrong than wrong our own consciences by implicating ourselves in such brutal and insensate slaughter ? What can murder by machinery have to do with the religion of One who taught us not to resist evil, to turn the other cheek, to love our enemies, to esteem it our chief perfection to be like our Father in Heaven who sends His rain upon the evil and the good alike ? Nor does the matter end with precepts, which might have their justification in the occasion, so that, while they might be absolute as against personal rancour, they might not be absolute as against moral indignation ; or, while they might be absolute against personal injury, they might not apply to the oppression of others, WAR 217 or to public resistance to an act which wrongs humanity. A more general and a more impressive consideration springs from the nature of the Kingdom of God as righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Such a combination of righteousness and peace and joy in spiritual blessings is presented as possible precisely because their security is not by might nor by power, but by God’s Spirit, because the strong thing in the world in the end is not violence, but the sacrifice and service of love. If, then, in spite of all that appears to the contrary, the meek shall inherit the earth, because they alone find the true uses even of this present life, what part can we have on any ground even of righteousness with this wholesale slaughter ? Let us concede that, so far as we can see, force will always be a necessary element in the education of the human race. Let us further allow that the time has not yet come, perhaps may not yet be even in sight, when the rough and irrational method which we call war shall disappear from among the nations of the earth. Let us even adopt the extreme view, that so long as humanity divides itself into states and countries, war must continue to be a normal condition of international relations. Nevertheless, war belongs to the secular process. It. has no place in the Kingdom of God. If “ there was war in heaven,” it was only till the devil was cast out. To suffer death is Christian. To inflict it, if not repugnant to the Christian appeal, has always been instinctively felt to be incompatible with it. “ I cannot read the New Testament now,” said a lady to me not long ago, “ for I find it very difficult to think Christianity. I must turn to the Old Testament — and only to parts of that.” 1 2. Now, the answer to all these arguments is the same. If war is the worst thing that is ever seen on earth, then it is never permissible to go to war. But if there are worse things than war, and if war may put an end to these things, war is not only permissible but necessary. The answer will be developed in the third part of this chapter. Here a word may be said on the last argument. The prevailing conception of Jesus Christ has been that of a passive sufferer, a submissive victim, a man of sorrows and 1 J. R. P. Sclater/yVie Eve of Battle, 19. 2 1 8 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE acquainted with grief ; and Christian art has transmitted this picture of an ascetic, resigned, non-combatant Christ. Very different from this was the Jesus of the Gospels. His dominating qualities were not weakness, submission, and resignation, but strength, mastery, and power. “ His word was with power,” it was written of Him. “ He taught as one having authority.” He scourged the traders ; he defied the Pharisees ; He rebuked Pilate at the judgment-seat ; He died for a cause that seemed lost, as a soldier leads a charge. When a captain of the guard, who had soldiers under him, sought the help of the new Teacher, Jesus saw in that soldierly discipline which said to one man, Go, and to another, Come, because it was itself under authority, the spirit of His own work and said : “I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.” When one turns from the Master to His most effective disciple, the same appreciation of soldierliness is seen. The best that Paul could ask for his young friend Timothy was that he should be “ a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” The best hope that anyone could cherish was that he “ might please him who had chosen him to be a soldier.” The apostolic command to a Christian was “ to war a good warfare.” In short, it is impossible to reckon either Jesus or Paul among teachers of peace-at-any-price. The blessing of Jesus is not for those who praise peace or even for those who pray for it, but for those who by efficiency and willing sacrifice make peace. Such are the true pacificists, the peacemakers who are the children of God. The praise of Paul is not for those who deplore fighting with arms, but for those who “ fight a good fight of faith ” ; not for those who passively await peace at the command of God, but for those who “ follow after the things that make for peace,” and achieve the peace that comes “ to every man that worketh good.” The conversion of militarism, the spiritualization of soldierliness, the Christianization of courage, the enlistment of good soldiers of Jesus Christ — that is the New Testament way of deliverance from the horrors of war. The conscience of the Reformed Churches has testified to the possibility of waging war in the interests of God’s cause and kingdom. The lawfulness of war was emphatically asserted by Calvin, and the matter was deemed of such moment that decla¬ rations in this sense were embodied in the public testimonies WAR 219 down to the Westminster Confession. The virile tradition of the Scottish Church, in particular, is utterly inconsistent with Quaker principles. The Scottish Reformation was carried through, humanly speaking, because of the steps taken at the crisis by John Knox to secure the intervention of an English fleet and the expulsion of a French army of occupation. With the hearty approval of the Church, Scotland sent an army into England to second the cause of the Parliament against Charles 1., and at a later date it as earnestly attempted to dispute the triumphal progress of Oliver Cromwell. When the Covenanters took to the moors, they carried with them the Bible in the one hand and the sword in the other. In the period following the Union with England, when Scotland took its share in the upbuilding and defence of the Empire, there was no greater misgiving as to the lawfulness of fighting. During the Napoleonic wars, in particular, there was a profound and enthusiastic conviction that resistance to the schemes of the mighty conqueror was a duty imposed by loyalty to the King of kings.1 III. When is War a Necessity ? 1. We cannot admit that war is part of God’s plan for this world, or that fighting is so inherent an instinct in mankind as to be ineradicable, and that therefore we shall have war so long as the world lasts. Nor, on the other hand, can we admit that war is the worst possible thing in the world, and that therefore we ought never to engage in war whatever happens. War is so evil that we shall do all in our power to avoid it. But it may come to pass that we cannot avoid it without suffering greater loss than even war can work. I have all my life been an advocate of Peace. I hate war not merely for its own cruelty and folly, but because it is the enemy of all the causes that I care for most, of social progress and good government and all friendliness and gentleness of life, as well as of art and learning and literature. I have spoken and presided at more meetings than I can remember for peace and arbitration and the promotion of international friendship. I opposed the policy of war in South Africa with all my energies, and have been either outspokenly hostile or inwardly unsympathetic towards almost every war that Great Britain has waged in my lifetime. If I may speak more personally, there is none of my own work into which 1 W. P. Paterson, In the Day of the Muster, 6. 220 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE I have put more intense feeling than into my translation of Euri¬ pides’ Trojan Women , the first great denunciation of war in European literature. I do not regret any word that I have spoken or written in the cause of Peace, nor have I changed, as far as I know, any opinion that I have previously held on this subject. Yet I believe firmly that we were right to declare war against Germany on August 4, 1914, and that to have remained neutral in that crisis would have been a failure in public duty.1 In his biography of John Hus, recently published, Count Liitzow quotes the opinion of the Hussite Wars of the Bohemian historian Palacky and approves it : “ One school of historians to which I have the honour to belong has maintained that the Hussite war is the first war in the world’s history that was fought, not for material interests, but for intellectual ones, that is to say5 for ideas. This ideal standpoint was so seriously and so sincerely maintained by the Bohemians that when victorious they never attempted to replace it by a more interested policy. It is true that during the war they forced foreign communities to pay taxes and an annual tribute to them ; but they never thought of subduing them, or of extending their dominion over foreign lands — a thing that under the circumstances of the time would not have been difficult. I know that among the modern school of German historians there are persons who attribute this attitude mainly to the incapacity of the ancient Bohemians, and who, with brutal derision, attempt to deduce from it their racial inferiority. I leave it to a more enlightened posterity to decide what conduct is nearer to barbarism — that of the disinterested victor, or that of the imperious and rapacious conqueror. Two centuries later the enemies, after one victory — that of the White Mountain — certainly acted differently, and endeavoured in every way to use their victory for the purpose of material gain. Was their conduct nobler and more Christian ? As to the Hussites, they never during their prolonged and heroic struggle ceased to consider it and to term it a struggle for the liberty of God’s word.” 2 Looking back upon those early, unforgettable days, when the British nation revealed itself at its highest and best, who does not still feel that to have lived through them was an experience to be counted amongst the richest of life ? It was a people’s rising in the fullest sense of the word. In the hour of their country’s need there was no asking, Where shall England’s armies be found ? Three million volunteers at once stood forth and said, “We are the 1 Professor Gilbert Murray, in Oxford Pamphlets. 2 Count Liitzow, The Life and Times of John Hus , 335. WAR 22 1 armies ! ” and braver armies never fought for a good cause. So long as history is written there will be told again and again the inspiring story of how the British people, taken suddenly and un¬ awares in the midst of the absorption of business, the palaver of politics, and the easy ways of pleasure, forsook these things and sternly bade them wait until a great wrong had been righted and their country had proved to all the world that its word was to be trusted. That, and no other, was the cause and the motive that sent men like Charles Lister and Rupert Brooke, W. G. Gladstone, T. M. Kettle, and Raymond Asquith to their deaths, and that drew from the factories and workshops of the North tens of thousands of gallant lads, without the culture of these men, maybe, but with all their glowing idealism and splendid chivalry. One of the most impressive war letters which I have read — a letter not written for the public eye — came from a young factory operative of a little town in my native Yorkshire, well known to me, one of two brothers who had enlisted in the first spontaneous rush to the colours. The younger of the two had been killed while rescuing a wounded com¬ rade. Writing to his mother to break the news of her loss, the surviving brother added, “ Arthur and I did not enlist because we loved war. We went because it was our duty.” How many of the millions of volunteers who flocked to the flag in 1914 and 1915 did it for the sheer love of fighting ? It is doubtful whether one in a hundred or a thousand of them could have told where Serajevo is, or had heard the name of Bethmann-Hollweg, but they knew of England’s obligation to Belgium, and her obligation was their own.1 Cleanse your hands , Britain ! Yea, cleanse them in blood if it must be ! For blood that is shed in the cause of right Has power, as of old, to wash souls white. Cleanse your hands , Britain ! 0 for the fiery grace of old, — The heart and the masterful hand ! But grace grows dim and the fire grows cold, We are heavy with greed and lust and gold, And life creeps low in the land. Break your bonds, Britain ! Stand up once again for the right ! We have stained our hands in the times that are past, Before God, we would wash them white.2 1 W. H. Dawson, Problems of the Peace , 29. 2 J. Oxenham, Bees in Amber, 32. 222 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE 3. One thing must be added. When we have judged as fairly as we can, setting aside as far as possible all selfish interests, we yet may judge wrongfully. Let war therefore, being so awful a scourge, be the last resort and the most reluctantly adopted. Like civil justice, it is a terrible remedy, and it behoves those who use it to have a clear conscience and clean hands. Yet, like all inflictions of pain, it may be salutary. But if it is used wantonly, or for wrong and selfish ends, it is abominable and unpardonable. And it has too often been used both wantonly and selfishly. Fighting was the chief business and amusement of the upper classes of Europe in the Middle Ages, and that Chivalry, which gave such romantic grace and dignity to noble life, had a very ugly side. The delicate consideration of knight for knight took little account of the churl. We read of Edward the Black Prince, that after Poitiers — “ When the French King was first brought to him, he offered, quite naturally and simply, to help him off with his armour. The King said with great dignity, ‘ Thank you, cousin, but after this it is not for you to serve me ; no Prince has ever won such honour in a single day.’ The Prince was touched to the quick, he cannot bear that his honour should be another’s misfortune. He said in a very low voice, ‘ God forgive me this victory.’ ” ^ In 1855 Lord Aberdeen wrote as follows on the Crimean War — a war of which Lord Salisbury said that we had put our money on the wrong horse : “ I have never entertained the least doubt of the justice of the war in which we are at present engaged. It is unquestionably just, and it is also strongly marked by a character of disinterestedness. But although just and disinterested, the policy and the necessity of this war may, perhaps, be less certain. It is possible that our posterity may form a different estimate on this head from that at which we have arrived.” The policy, or necessity, of any war must always be, more or less, the subject of doubt, and must vary according to a change of circumstances. This is not matter of immutable principle, but may be affected by an infinite variety of considerations. It is true that every necessary war must also really be a just war ; but it does not absolutely follow that every just war must also be a necessary war.1 1 A. Gordon, The Earl of A berdeen, 303. XIV. The Good of War. 233 Literature. Allen, J. W., The Danger of Peace (1915). Assheton, R. 0., The Kingdom and the Empire (1902). Boutroux, E., Philosophy and War (1916). Campbell, R. J., War and the Soul (1916). Clow, W. M., The Christian Menace in the Light of War (1918). Coulton, G. G., The Main Illusions of Pacivicism (1916). Davies, J. LI., Spiritual Apprehension (1898). Dawson, Coningsby, Living Bayonets (1919). De Quincey, T., Works , viii. Dickie, W., The Christian Ethics of Social Life (1903). Dougall, L., The Practice of Christianity (1913). Drummond, J., Pauline Meditations (1919). Fyfe, H. H., The Meaning of the World Revolution (1919). Gardner, C. S., The Ethics of Jesus and Social Progress (1914). Geddes, P., and Slater, G., Ideas at War (1917). Graham, S., A Private in the Guards (1919). Griffith- Jones, E., The Challenge of Christianity to a World at War (1915). Hart, R. C., A Vindication of War. Holland, H. S., Pleas and Claims (1892). „ „ So as by Fire, 1st Ser. (1915), 2nd Ser. (1916). Holmes, E., The Nemesis of Docility (1916). James, L. G., War and Progress. Jones, H., in Ethical and Religious Problems of the War (1916). Liddon, H. P., Sermons on Special Occasions (1897). Maude, E. N., War and the World's Life (1907). Mozley, J. B., University Sermons (1876). Miigge, M. A., The Parliament of Man (1916). Newbolt, W. C. E., Counsels of Faith and Practice (1894). Paterson, W. P., In the Day of the Muster (1914). Peile, J. H. F., The Reproach of the Gospel (1907). Perm, G. L., The Sunny Side of Life (1906). Powell, J. W., What is a Christian ? (1915). Rutherford, W. G., The Key of Knowledge (1901). Simpson, F. A., in War and Christianity (1904). Smith, G. A., in Sub Corona (1915). Snowden, J. H., Is the World Growing Better ? (1919). Solovyof, V., The Justification of the Good (1918). Strong, A. H., Miscellanies, i. (1912). Sumner, W. G., War and Other Essays (1912). Vinogradoff, P., Self-government in Russia (1915). Wood, H. G., in Friends and the War (1914). Wyatt, H. F., War as the Supreme Test of National Life . 224 The Good of War. War is a something which we desire to see take end ; and we must set our faces like flints against the views that it is a biological necessity, or that it is a necessary accompaniment of humanity organized into states. Christian men hold that it is an accompani¬ ment of a condition of society incompletely governed by Jesus Christ ; and that the kingdom for which we work is to be a kingdom not only of righteousness and joy, but also a kingdom of peace. At the same time, war does not produce evil only. Out of evil, sometimes, good does come. Occasionally men do gather grapes of thistles. Indeed, the fact that that can be done is one of the best reasons for believing in God. For we have evidence and to spare of a gracious power that takes our griefs and pains and follies — yes, and our sins — and transmutes them ; a power which can say : “ though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” So in the case of war. Evil as it is, if men face it rightly it gives them a chance of obtaining benefits. The first step which it behoves the “ pacifist ” to take, before he can reach a better theory, a clearer vision, and a more living hope, is to do far more justice to war than he has commonly yet done. Wars may be and have been ignoble ; but does he not commonly feel that wars have at least often been, like the god Janus, two-faced — unjustifiable, tyrannic or sordid on one side, but inevitable and even noble on the other 1 To a nation as to an individual, the crisis of fate may come, when it must “ put it to the touch, to win or lose it all.” Broadly speaking, all wars of independence have been of this nobler character. In the United Kingdom, for instance, the contrast between Scotland, on the whole unconquerable, and Ireland, too often overpowered and crushed, shows how much the victorious effort to assert independence is worth — in the first place to the threatened nationality, in the second place to humanity 15 226 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE generally, and in the third place even to the nation baulked in its efforts at forcible dominion. Similarly, England as well as France has reason to worship Joan of Arc : Spain as well as England to be grateful for the defeat of the Armada. What “ pacifist ” regrets Thermopylae and Marathon ? 1 No one has ever eulogized war so unreservedly as De Quincey. This is the conclusion of his Essay : Under circumstances that may exist, and have existed, war is a positive good ; not relative merely, or negative, but positive. A great truth it was which Wordsworth uttered, whatever might be the expansion which he allowed to it, when he said that “ God’s most perfect instrument In working out a pure intent Is man arrayed for mutual slaughter : Yea, Carnage is His daughter.” There is a mystery in approaching this aspect of the case which no man has read fully. War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered. To execute judgments of retribution upon outrages offered to human rights or to human dignity, to vindicate the sanctities of the altar and the sanctities of the hearth : these are functions of human greatness which war has many times assumed, and many times faithfully discharged. But, behind all these, there towers dimly a greater. The great phenomenon of war it is, this and this only, which keeps open in man a spiracle — an organ of respiration — for breathing a transcendent atmosphere, the dealing with an idea that else would perish : viz. the idea of mixed crusade and martyrdom, doing and suffering, that finds its realization in a battle such as that of Waterloo — viz. a battle fought for interests of the human race , felt even where they are not understood ; so that the tutelary Angel of Man, when he traverses such a dreadful field, when he reads the distorted features, counts the ghastly ruins, sums the hidden anguish, and the harvests, “ Oh horror breathing from the silent ground,” nevertheless, speaking as God’s messenger, “ blesses it, and calls it very good.” 2 The blessings that war is said to bring may be divided into three classes : 1. It is a means of civilization and social progress. 1 P. Geddes and G. Slater, The Making of the Future ; Ideas of War, 44, a De Quincey' s Works (Masson’s ed.), viii. 392, THE GOOD OF WAR 227 2. It is an instrument (some would add, in the hands of God) for purifying and strengthening the national life. 3. It is an opportunity for the discipline of character and the exercise of heroic virtues. I. Civilization and Social Progress. 1. “ The world,” says the Archbishop of Armagh, “ undoubtedly owes much to war. To take a few outstanding instances : the vast conquests of Alexander spread the influences of the Greek genius over the whole East : the march of the Roman legions con¬ solidated the ancient civilization and produced a great social order which became the foundation of the modern world : the shattering inroads of the white barbarians of the north brought into Europe a new vigour and prepared mankind for a new birth. These instances are so remote from our modern life that we can judge of their value with clear and unprejudiced vision. It is probable that if we could estimate with equal definiteness the value of more recent wars we should find that they performed functions of almost equal importance in the making of mankind. Certainly, the Napoleonic wars remodelled Europe and gave Great Britain her chance of world-wide empire, and the more recent Russo-Japanese war lifted the Far East to a new position in history and gave Japan the opportunity to shape her own destiny. Perhaps we are too near to these events to judge of their value : their importance cannot be questioned.” 1 “ We cannot forget,” says Maurice, “ that every nation now existing in Europe became a nation through war. Britain was a part of the Roman Empire ; a civilized province of that Empire ; growing in luxuries. It was christianized when the rest of the Empire was christianized ; it had its bishops as well as its prefects. It rebelled frequently against its masters ; it was fertile, the saying is, in tyrants. It was not free therefore from petty wars by sea or land. But it was no nation. By battles — to what degree ex¬ terminating or subversive of the previous civilization historians may dispute, but certainly by battles severe and bloody — the 1 C. F. D’Arcy, in The Irish Church Quarterly, viii. 1. 228 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE Saxons established their supremacy here. It seemed to the old inhabitants mere destruction, a relapse into barbarism and Pagan¬ ism. We say that a mighty blessing came out of this apparent relapse. First, a truer wholesome family life took the place of the corrupt family life which the Satirists of Rome describe and which passed from the capital into the provinces. Secondly, a people strong in the sense of neighbourhood, strong in the sense of personal existence, capable therefore of Law, of Government, bringing with them the roots of a vital native speech, overthrew colonists in whom there was a feeble sense of neighbourhood, a feeble feeling of personal responsibility, who merely received Laws, Government, Language, Religion, from Foreigners. The Saxon wars, destructive as they might be, yet were in the strictest sense the commencement of a new life in our island.” 1 H. F. Wyatt, in War as the Supreme Test of National Life , says : “ In the past history of man, war — so far from having been an unmixed evil as it has often been represented — has been the abso¬ lutely necessary condition of human advance. If, at any given period in the past, war could have been abolished (which was im¬ possible) social evolution must have been arrested, because the only practicable means of effecting change and movement among nations would have been removed. In other words, the then existing political conditions would have been stereotyped.” Ez fer the war, I go agin it, — I mean to say I kind o’ du, — Thet is, I mean thet, bein’ in it, The best way wuz to fight it thru ; Not but wut abstract war is horrid, I sign to thet with all my heart, — But civlyzation doos git forrid Sometimes upon a powder-cart.2 How came we to conquer India ? Was it not a direct con¬ sequence of trading with India ? And that is only the most con¬ spicuous illustration of a law which prevails throughout English history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — the law, namely, of the intimate interdependence of war and trade, so that throughout that period trade leads naturally to war and war fosters 1 F. D. Maurice, Social Morality , 174. 2 J. R. Lowell, Poems, 49. THE GOOD OF WAR 229 trade. I have pointed out already that the wars of the eighteenth century were incomparably greater and more burdensome than those of the Middle Ages. In a less degree those of the seventeenth century were also great. These are precisely the centuries in which England grew more and more a commercial country. England indeed grew ever more warlike at that time as she grew more com¬ mercial.1 2. But there is another side. The economic case against war has been emphasized so repeatedly in pacifist literature ever since the publication of Mr. Norman Angell’s epoch-making work, The Great Illusion , that one would be justified in assuming that the supreme cause of war has been its supposed promise of economic gain, and that once this theory has been permanently refuted, war will have lost its greatest incentive. President Butler of Columbia University puts this universally accepted theory in effective language. “ We have now reached a point,” he says, “ where unparalleled enthusiasm having been aroused for a rational and orderly develop¬ ment of civilization through the co-operation of the various nations of the earth, it remains to clinch that enthusiasm and to transform it into established policy by proving to all men that militarism does not pay, and that peace is profitable. Just so long as the great mass of mankind believe that military and naval rivalry between civilized nations creates and protects trade, develops and assures commerce, and gives prestige and power to people otherwise weak, just so long will the mass of mankind be unwilling to compel their governments to recede from militaristic policies whatever may be their vocal professions as to peace and arbitration and as to good¬ will and friendship between men of different tongues and of different blood.” What is the value of our institutions, our civilisations, if it leads only to the slaughter of millions, to suffering for all, to the reversal of every humane impulse, of all teaching founded in the Religion of Love ? “ If civilisation be not in men’s hearts, then it is nowhere, it does not exist.” So speaks a character in a book by a French doctor, marked by a note of fierce prophetic warning and by terrible clearness of sight. That is what the Coming Revolution will teach. 1 J. R. Seeley, The Ex-pansion of England, 127. 23o CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE “ I often think of civilisation, real civilisation. In my mind it is like a choir of tuneful voices singing, or a marble statue on a bare hill, or a man who says, 4 Love one another,’ or 4 Return good for evil.’ But men have done no more than repeat these things for two thousand years. The kings and priests have far too many interests in this world to think of others like them.” 1 II. National Life. 1. There is no doubt that war has sometimes been a cleansing and invigorating power to a nation. The Scottish nation would have been much poorer and less effective to-day had it not been for the invasions of earlier times, which left a rich deposit of various races ; while its later wars of independence prevented its spirit from being broken, and its individuality from being swamped, by the masterful personality of its English neighbour. We travelled in the print of olden wars ; Yet all the land was green ; And love we found, and peace, Where fire and war had been. They pass and smile, the children of the sword — No more the sword they wield ; And 0, how deep the corn Along the battlefield ! 2 Professor J. H. Snowden finds that certain gains have come from the European War. (1) One of these is the idealism of the war. This conflict was fought through by the Allies not for land or colonies or a larger place in the sun, but for justice and liberty. It was at bottom a battle between materialism and idealism, and idealism was the victor. (2) Another principle of the war that we should bring over into the new world is co-operation. When the Allies were forced by the alarming state of affairs in March 1918 to agree on a single supreme 1 H. H. Fyfe, The Meaning of the World Revolution , 28. 2 R. L. Stevenson, Underwoods. THE GOOD OF WAR 231 command and put all armies on all fronts under Foch, tlie tide immediately turned, and never went back until the enemy were beaten to their knees, begging for mercy. It was an instance of co-operation on the grandest scale the world has ever seen, and it won the greatest military victory of all time. (3) Another gain of the war is a vastly liberalized spirit of giving, the devotion of our means to our cause. The war has cost America about twenty billions of dollars, and the other Allies far greater sums. This amount of money obtained by borrowing and taxation from our people a few years ago would have been thought impos¬ sible and a wild dream or absurdity. Yet it was poured out with the greatest willingness and enthusiasm under the inspiration of the great cause. (4) Still another asset of the war is the spirit of service and sacrifice that won it. This was the fundamental means that achieved this victory : not munitions, but men and morale ; not shells, but souls. Men put their spirit and strength and skill, their patience and endurance and courage, their determination and devotion unto death into this conflict, and then the gates of hell could not stand against them.1 2. Is this purifying and strengthening due to war as war ? Professor Fugmann of Leipzig, in a book which has recently ap¬ peared called The Blessing of War , draws the following picture of Germany before the outbreak of the war : “ There was dissension on all sides. The people were engrossed in the pettiest interests of the day. The life lived by the bulk of Germans was indescrib¬ able, even though serious men lifted up their voices against the iniquity of it all. Fidelity and faith had disappeared. A man’s word had no value. Contracts were made only to be broken. Business in general assumed a shape resembling a huge organized deception. The corruptions of life grew apace in town and country, and there was no prophet, no preacher of morals, no apostle of nature, no seer capable of stemming the overwhelming stream of sexual and commercial immorality, decay and degeneration. Every man who professed an ideal was ridiculed. Such was Germany before the war.” But Mr. Edmond Holmes, who quotes that passage, writes a 1 J. H. Snowden, Is the World Growing Better ?, 120. 232 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE commentary on it. “ Professor Fugmann believes that the war will excise this moral cancer. But operations for cancer are seldom permanently successful ; and the stories of German cruelty and treachery in the field and of German criminality at home incline one to believe that the moral taint which has produced the “ decay and degeneration of which Professor Fugmann complains is still in the ‘ blood 5 of the German people.55 1 War is a curse, but God is able to change it, and often has changed it, into a blessing. It is not easy to understand — and indeed it may appear to some to be inconsistent to say — that war is a sin of colossal magnitude which is contrary to the will of God, while yet He has used it for the accomplishment of His own wise and holy purposes. But the fact is undeniable that He has so used it. He has made the wrath of man to praise Him. He has brought good out of the evil. Not only has He restricted the range and impeded the action of the wasting and destroying forces, but He has actually made them contribute to higher ends which did not fall within the view of the intention of those whose ambition or rapacity brought war upon the earth. ^ The Jewish wars were cruel, bloody, sinful, godless. We know all their vileness and savagery. Yet God did not fail Him¬ self for all that. He still took the material that man gave Him ; and in spite of man’s sin He steadily pushed forward through man His own Divine purpose. In this He does not excuse or justify the sin. But He refuses to be baffled or beaten by it, and forces it to yield Him a peaceable fruit of righteousness. So it is that we come to the greatest historic sin ever perpetrated by man : the Cross of Christ. It was wicked hands that nailed Him to the tree ; it was a revelation to man of his own sin that he could kill the Prince of Life. It was savage ; it was horrible ; it was damn¬ able. But, nevertheless, God’s Divine purpose drove its way even through that sin, and forced it to become the moment of His highest manifestation, the signal of His final victory. The Fire burned on in the furnace of the Divine purification ; and through that crime man was saved. The sin remains wholly unjustified and unexcused. Indeed, it was convicted as inexcusable by the very crime it had committed. We learn from the Cross of Christ to loathe the sin which slew Him. We could never have known how vile the sin was except through the Cross.2 1 E. Holmes, The Nemesis of Docility, 245. 2 H. Scott Holland, So as by Fire, 68. THE GOOD OF WAR 233 3. The Cross still holds the secret of what is happening ; and in and through Christ God is working out His Judgment. For it is a Judgment. It will sift and search ; and there will be much that this flame, as it purifies, will consume. Jerusalem, which in its sin crucified the Lord of Glory, perished in the flame that its sin had kindled. All the sin that has gone to the making of the crime of war should perish also in the heat of the burning. What is there, then, that will be consumed ? What is there in us that cannot live with this devouring Fire ? (1) First, there is an evil thing still in us which now stands condemned and must go — and that is, the assumption by the white man of the supremacy of his own civilization, and of his right to exploit men of another colour. The German Professors, in their answer to the Archbishops’ retort on their first attack, de¬ nounced England for having betrayed the white man’s cause, and having given away the white man’s supremacy by bringing up the Indians into the firing-line. That is their distinct challenge and accusation ; and our counter-challenge is to accept the accusation and glory in it. War has forced us to realize the principle which in peace we may have recognized with our lips but have always denied in action. The white man can make no claim to stand on a different level from other races, and to impose on them a civilization better than their own, simply because it is his. Any such claim is a denial of Pentecost, when it was declared that all nations had the right to hear in their own tongue the wonderful works of God. They may vary in capacity, in equipment, in education, in a thousand ways : and one may have many gifts and another few. But each is equally sacred ; and each has an equal right to be itself ; and each has a contribution to make to the whole of human¬ ity — contribution which none other can make, and which in every case is equally essential to the purpose which all exist to complete. This is the law which in the name of Christ we have been proclaiming all along ; and now that which was always true in the spirit is in¬ evitably to be applied in the letter to secular affairs and international politics. (2) There is some other matter that may pass into the flame. It is embodied in phrases familiar enough, such as “ Society rests on force.” “ The last word lies with force,” “ National necessity knows no law.” We have rolled these phrases round our tongues 234 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE often enough, and they have served to disguise from us much wrongdoing. It needed a desolated Belgium to reveal to us, in the light of its flaming cities, the cruel fallacies involved. We have found ourselves fighting these very fallacies to the death. We were compelled to face and denounce them when they were used to justify the breaking of the neutrality which we had guaranteed. Force, we saw, is never the last word, it can only act under direction, and that direction is given it by will and mind. A society can never claim sheer force as its authority, for it exists only through the right which justifies the force. The will to “ power,” if it means the will to be powerful without regard to the quality of the power, is a profession of immorality. Any nation that finds its sanction in this immoral law raises the whole world in antagonism against it as the enemy of mankind. The war, therefore, has at least done this second good deed for us. It has not only compelled us to recognize the equality of races, but also the iniquity of an appeal to force as the elementary basis of society. (3) Then, lastly, there are some things that had better be gathered in bundles and burnt at once ; and these are class jealousies, class antagonisms, class hatreds. The England that we knew was cloven by bitter and savage strife between men and women. It was drifting down to a Labour War, deliberate, organized, terrifying. Was it this divided England which could invoke the rally to the one flag ? The glorious Calls died off our tongue with shame, as we thought of what they assumed, and of what we were. Now that the War has shown us what England means to us all, we shall have, after the War, to make our assumptions good, to justify our appeals. We stand pledged to realize that very England which we assumed. It shall be what we supposed it to be. It shall be every man’s own England. There will be an un¬ paralleled opportunity. For out there in the trenches, officers and men discovered each other. Class distinctions broke down. They stood shoulder to shoulder in sodden bloody hours of stress and storm ; and they understood one another : their lives fused. They can never forget the brotherhood which a common peril sealed with blood. They cannot, now, fall apart into two camps ; or become unintelligible to one another as aliens. They will be ready to let the flame burn the barriers that hold classes apart — the stupid obstructions that block the channels of human inter- THE GOOD OF WAR 235 course. So, together, in the glow of recovered fellowship, we will set to work to build the city of our dreams — to create, in living actual flesh and blood, the real England, the true ideal England, the England for which we have dyed with our best blood the fields of Flanders. III. Character and Heroism. 1. War is not simply the struggle of one force against another ; it brings into play every faculty possessed by man, compelling him to contract habits that will interest and influence his entire life. (1) There are, in the first place, 'physical habits : sobriety, endurance, flexibility, the capacity for extraordinary effort, a resolute resistance to fatigue and suffering of every kind. War enables us to set an altogether different value on the merits of the body. It makes us look upon physical qualities as necessary for all and on all occasions. It enables us to distinguish between qualities that are useful and substantial and a virtuosity devoid of object. It also gives us a keen sense of the intrinsic and absolute value of a healthy, vigorous, and beautiful body, the free and complete unfoldment of nature’s work. (2) Not only is war a physical education : it is also an intellectual education. The danger that threatens intellect, in schools and academies, is that it takes itself as an end — i.e., allows itself to be led astray by the evidence and the harmony of its conceptions or by the elegance of its reasonings and thus confuses its own ideas with reality. That intellect which feels responsible only to itself constantly risks plunging into one or other of these two shoals : dogmatism or dilettantism. In war, however, this dual danger is eliminated. Here, every conception is an action, and every action is immediately confronted with reality. In war, a false conception or a sophistical reasoning constitutes a defeat or a disaster ; we are compelled never to think except in terms of deeds, to entertain only such ideas and reasonings as are at the same time tangible realities. (3) And war is manifestly a moral education. From the very beginning, it teaches us to put earnestly into practice that duty 236 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE of tolerance as regards the opinions of others which we have so much trouble to carry out ourselves in times of peace. How abstract and superficial now appear those political, religious and social divisions which but recently we regarded as irremediable ! Differences of every kind deal more with words than with things, since the minds and hearts of all alike are now aware that they are united, that they think and feel the same regarding the primary conditions of our honour, even of our very existence. Who could persuade that they belong to different camps, those soldiers who met and embraced after a battle, conscious that a common trial had united them for ever ? In those times of patriotic anxiety, it was quite unnecessary to teach men of good-will and mutual affection to tolerate and bear with one another. They did more than tolerate one another, for they brought together all their strength and thought, heart and experience, to the performance of a common duty. 2. War is a discipline. What do we mean by “ discipline ” ? With the possible exception of the word “ character,” there is no word which has been the occasion of so much cant, of so much insincerity, both intellectual and sentimental. In Belgium and France, during the war, the highly disciplined German troops are said to have drunk to excess, outraged women, murdered peaceful citizens, looted property, and so forth. Are these among the fruits of “ iron discipline ” ? Whatever else their training might have done for the soldiers who did those things, it had not taught them to control their own lusts and passions, it had not taught them to discipline themselves. (1) The function of military discipline, of the discipline which is based on systematic drill, is to enable many men to obey, promptly, accurately, and at whatever cost, the orders of one man. This it does by substituting the blind force of habit for other and more genuinely human motives. Sustained by the force of habit, which has perhaps come within a little of making him an automaton, the well-drilled soldier will both execute complicated manoeuvres with speed and precision and advance steadily, in obedience to orders, into a zone of fire. As long as we have wars we must have trained armies ; and as long as we have trained armies we must have discipline of this type. THE GOOD OF WAR 237 But let us not delude ourselves with the belief that the disci¬ pline of drill, because it is good to make soldiers, is therefore good to make men. The more machine-like it makes the soldier, the more successful it is from its own point of view ; and though, when combined with other and more vitalizing influences, it may give a hardening alloy to a man’s character, and help him to pull himself together, and strengthen him to subdue self-will, if over¬ emphasized, if regarded as an end in itself, it will tend to atrophy will and conscience, and will thus become the most demoralizing influence to which a man’s life can be exposed. (2) But when discipline is a means and not an end, it has the makings in it of the finest natural character. And yet finer is the result when discipline is regarded as the obedience to Christ and becomes free and loyal self-control. The soldierly character at its best attracts our admiration in the very highest degree. We love it with a frank appreciation which we give to few things in this imperfect world. Such are our feelings just now when we think of Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener. Soldiers such as Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener were men who faced the grimmest facts of life and death with the utmost courage and simplicity of heart. We know perfectly well that there was no duplicity or unreality about them — imperfections that the world is apt to suspect in many prominent men, politicians and ecclesiastics especially. ^ Among Ruskin’s schoolfellows were the sons of Colonel Watson of Woolwich. They sometimes invited Ruskin to their home, and in the Colonel “ I saw,” he says, “ such calm type of truth, gentle¬ ness, and simplicity as I have myself found in soldiers and sailors only, and so admirable to me that I have never been able since those Woolwich times to gather myself up against the national guilt of war, seeing that such men were made by the discipline of it.” 1 3. But what makes war a blessing, if ever it is a blessing, is that it offers the opportunity for self-sacrifice. This side of the moral character of war is strikingly and unexpectedly in harmony with the Model of all Christianity. Mozley, in his sermon on war, brings this thought forward very forcibly. He says, “ There is a media¬ torial function which pervades the whole dispensation of God’s natural providence, by which men have to suffer for each other, 1 Sir E. T. Cook, The Life of Ruskin, i. 46. 238 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE and one member of the human body has to bear the burden and participate in the grief of another. It is this serious and sacred function which consecrates war.” (1) The spirit of self-sacrifice is inherent in the very idea of the individual encountering death for the sake of the body to which he belongs ; the regiment in the front line of attack is taking the pro¬ minent place, and is, thereby, in a measure, saving the whole army ; the soldier who falls in battle does so because he is placing himself in front of his family, his home, his country, and it is perfectly justifiable, in speaking of his action, to say that “ he gives his life a ransom for many.” It is this feature in war which can, and almost alone can, consecrate it. That the nation may rise in honour ; that the nation may reform a great abuse, work a great righteous¬ ness upon earth, deliver the oppressed with a great deliverance, and earn real glory and worship — that the nation may do this, the individual must sink, but he does so voluntarily ; he is willing, if it is God’s will, that he shall be taken if others mav be left. And if he does not murmur, and we do not murmur, it is because we know that it is by that sacrifice of himself which the individual makes that great States rise and become powerful ; and if those States again, in their turn, employ their influence, postpone their temporal advantage, repeating in their corporate state the sacrifice of the individual, to the wider and higher interests of the Greater Kingdom, well — and the individual empire, like the individual soldier, sinking its own interest in the higher and wider Kingdom of Heaven, through that action, or that policy of self-effacement, becomes immortal. It will be enough to quote a single example out of many reported in the newspapers during the War, of heroic endurance and self-sacrifice. It was reported in The Times of October 14, 1918. Very hard fighting has been going on along the line of the Selle River, and I think the determination with which our men have broken yet one more line of German defence here has been as fine as anything in all these battles. In my last dispatch I told how we were almost everywhere up to the line of the Selle, where the enemy held his formidable line of partly continuous trenches and partly shell-holes, all strongly wired, along the high ground on the farther side. No yard of the river was not covered by his machine-guns, and the river itself, which in places is upwards of 40 ft. wide and averages from 4 ft. to THE GOOD OF WAR 239 7 ft. deep, was before ns. At two points, just below and above Neuvilly, to the north of Le Cateau, we had already got a foothold on the farther bank. Neuvilly itself was still in enemy hands. We had fought our way into Briastre, and above here, in a big bend of the river by Solesmes, had reached as far as Au Tertre farm. Avesnes-les-Aubert and Aubert itself, upon the Ereclin, were ours, though St. Vaast remained a German stronghold, from which sweep¬ ing machine-gun fire made approach to the south of it very difficult. Between the Ereclin and the Selle the enemy were known to be in strength along the high ground before Avesnes-le-Sec and Villers- en-Cauchies. The German artillery fire had grown much heavier during the last few days, and everywhere there was evidence of the enemy’s intention to hold us back on the line as long as possible. It was not very long. The actual crossing of the river itself gave opportunities for a display of as dogged courage and fine heroism as any Army could show. There were places where the Germans had felled trees close beside the river, branches of which, as they fell, reached part of the way across the stream. By the aid of these, Scottish and English troops, who had already advanced 16 miles in this battle, fighting nearly all the way, dragged themselves, half swimming, half wading, across the water under heavy fire. On the south side of Neuvilly, between there and Montay, where we had one gallant outpost across the river, our engineers threw nearly a dozen single-plank bridges over the river, and here others crossed under cover of the rifles of the Worcesters on this bank, and fought their way up the opposite slope as far as Amerval, which crowns the highest ground, in face of a stout resistance. On the other side of Neuvilly, Lancashire troops and men of the East Yorks crossed the river by wading or swimming, fording their way through deep belts of wire on the lower slope, and stormed a camouflaged trench with the bayonet. They were exposed to heavy fire from the north, where the Germans were entrenched along the railway line, east of Briastre about Bellevue. Later in the day, heavy counter-attacks developed, and our men, exhausted with the long day’s fighting, after swimming and wading the river, were compelled to fall back again to the western bank. The same counter-attacks on the south side of Neuvilly forced us to abandon our foremost positions of Amerval, and to withdraw to this side of the railway where we still held the farther bank of the stream. On Saturday morning we re-attacked, and this time most of our infantry re-crossed the river fairly dry through the heroism of our engineers. Bridges were hastily made, but could not be moored at the farther bank, so sappers, wading into the stream, made them- 24o CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE selves into living piers, and stood waist-deep or chest-deep under heavy fire, while water splashed around them by machine-gun bullets, and some were wounded ; thus they stood supporting the bridge on their shoulders while the infantry crossed over. The Germans had by now re-occupied their old positions and the same camouflaged trench on the farther bank, and again Manchesters and men of the East Yorks cleared it with the bayonet, and worked their way, largely in hand-to-hand fighting, up to the high ground. The enemy counter-attacked, but was beaten back, and then our men set them¬ selves to clear the line northwards towards Briastre and south- eastwards behind Neuvilly.1 Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead ! There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. These laid the world away ; poured out the red Sweet wine of youth ; gave up the years to be Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene That men call age ; and those who would have been Their sons, they gave, their immortality. Blow, bugles, blow ! They brought us, for our dearth, Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain. Honour has come back, as a king, to earth, And paid his subjects with a royal wage ; And Nobleness walks in our ways again; And we have come into our heritage.2 (2) But again, is war the only opportunity of the exercise of self-sacrifice ? Says the Rev. R. J. Campbell, “ I utterly and entirely dissent from the view that there is something essentially uplifting in war as war. The late Mr. Lecky, in his History of European Morals, says : 4 That which invests war, in spite of all the evils that attend it, with a certain moral grandeur, is the heroic self-sacrifice it elicits. With perhaps the single exception of the Church, it is the sphere in which mercenary motives have least sway, in which performance is least weighed and measured by strict obligation, in which a disinterested enthusiasm has most scope. A battlefield is the scene of deeds of self-sacrifice so trans¬ cendent, and at the same time so dramatic, that, in spite of all its horrors and crimes, it awakens the most passionate moral en- 1 The Times, Oct. 14, 1918, p. 8. 2 Rupert Brooke. THE GOOD OF WAR 241 thusiasm.’ Is there no other way of arousing this moral enthusiasm, no other way of evoking to the same degree the spirit of self-sacrifice ? Yes, if civilization as a whole could rise to the moral level requisite for it. The late Professor William James of Harvard used to maintain that one great thing which modern civilization had yet to do was to find a moral substitute for war, an incentive to action that would bring out the grandest qualities of human nature without the accompaniment of slaughter and the suffering and anguish that follow in its train. Oh that we were sufficiently great of soul to do it, and to do it as one man ! Every normal human being must dread, loathe, and detest war, for if it reveals some things that savour of heaven it reveals more that reek of hell. See what the glorification of war has done for Germany. I have not the slightest hesitation in admitting that as a people the Germans are intellectually better trained and more efficient than we, their resources better organized and developed, their manhood better disciplined and equipped for the business of life in its material aspects. But look at the temper of mind that goes with it — hard, arrogant, domineering, unable to appreciate the rights of others or even to understand others’ point of view. As sure as you get a nation mastered by the monster of militarism, a nation in which everything else in administration is subordinated to militar¬ istic ideals, you get a Government without sentiment, without humanity, without respect for the ordinary obligations of truth and honour.” 1 1 R. J. Campbell, The War and the Soul, 65. l6 XV. The Evil of War. 243 Literature. Allen, J. W., The Danger of Peace (1915). Angell, N., The Great Illusion (1900). „ „ The Foundations of International Polity (1914). Benson, A. C., Along the Road (1912). Boreham, F. W., The Golden Milestone (1915). Boutroux, E., Philosophy and War (1916). Burns, C. D., The Morality of Nations (1915). Christensen, A., Politics and Crowd Morality (1915). Clifford, J., The Secret of Jesus (1904). Coulton, G. G., The Main Illusions of Pacivicism (1916). Dawson, Coningsby, Living Bayonets (1919). Dole, C. F., The Ethics of Progress (1909). Gibbs, P., The Soul of the War (1915). Green, P., in The War and the Kingdom of God (1915). Griffith- Jones, E., The Challenge of Christianity to a World at War (1915). Hankey, D., A Student in Arms , 2nd Ser. (1917). Hirst, F. W., The Political Economy of War (1915). Holland, H. S., So as by Fire , 1st Ser. (1915). Holmes, E., The Nemesis of Docility (1916). Inge, W. R., Faith and Knowledge (1904). Lacey, T. A., Conscience of Sin (1916). Lecky, W. E. H., The Map of Life (1901). Macnutt, F. B., The Reproach of War (1914). Mugge, M. A., The Parliament of Man (1916). Murray, G., in Ethical and Religious Problems of the War (1916). Paterson, W. P., In the Day of the Muster (1914). Peile, J. H. F., The Reproach of the Gospel (1907). Simpson, F. A., in War and Christianity (1914). Sullivan, W. R. W., Morality as a Religion (1898). Woods, H. G., Christianity and War (1916). 244 The Evil of War. v \ 1. We ought to thank Germany for the ruthlessness with which she fought. She made us realize, if we had never done so before, what war means and what it ultimately involves. Having taught us that patriotism, when divorced from love of Humanity, de¬ generates into national ego-mania of a peculiarly malignant type, she next taught us that war is, in the last resort, a brutal, barbarous, and insane method of settling international disputes. For centuries we have been trying in various ways to mitigate the horrors of war. Germany has opened our eyes to the fact that the real horror of war is war itself. For war is an attempt to settle disputes by an appeal to force instead of to justice, and in the present stage of our social development the appeal to force, whatever form it may take, is in itself so profoundly immoral, so gross an outrage on truth and right, that our attempts to refine and humanize it are as futile as would be the attempt of a legislator to secure humanity in the commission of murder or decency in the commission of rape. By taking war quite seriously, by going into it with the full intention of winning at whatever cost and by whatever means, Germany has torn asunder the flimsy veil of respectability with which our conventions had invested it, and has shown us in all its naked hideousness the murderous madness which we had tried to regulate and control. If It is easy enough for a poet to adorn his tale, as Tennyson did in Maud, with the thought of a nation, sunk in commercial materialism, being set all aglow by the pleasure of tearing invaders limb from limb. But it seems to me that war is, after all, but a barbarous and horrible convention, which in spite of all that Christianity and civilization can do, stands out a bloodstained and a cruel evil among our wiser and more temperate designs. 245 246 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE To glorify war seems to me but the unchaining and bounding on of the ferocious beast that lies below the surface in most of us. To condone it is like defending the institution of slavery on the ground that cruel treatment may develop a noble endurance in the downtrodden slave, like encouraging bullying in schools, that the bullied may learn hardness and courage.1 War, indeed, has the property of exciting much generous and noble feeling on a large scale ; but with this special recom¬ mendation it has, in its modern forms especially, peculiar and unequalled evils. As it has a wider sweep of desolating power than the rest, so it has the peculiar quality that it is more susceptible of being decked in gaudy trappings, and of fascinating the imagina¬ tion of those whose proud and angry passions it inflames. But it is, on this very account, a perilous delusion to teach that war is a cure for moral evil, in any other sense than as the sister tribula¬ tions are. The eulogies of the frantic hero in Maud , however, deviate into grosser folly. It is natural that such vagaries should overlook the fixed laws of Providence. Under these laws the mass of mankind is composed of men, women, and children who can but just ward off hunger, cold, nakedness ; whose whole ideas of Mammon-worship are compromised in the search for their daily food, clothing, shelter, fuel ; whom any casualty reduces to positive want ; and whose already low estate is yet further lowered and ground down, when “ the blood-red blossom of war flames with its heart of fire.” 2 n in the course of a sermon preached last Sunday at St. Margaret’s, Oxford, the Rev. C. B. Mortlock, who has recently been invalided out of the Army after serving as a chaplain to the forces, made a vigorous protest against the “ extravagant nonsense ” that is uttered by popular preachers and others at home in regard to the war, and the men who are engaged in it. Talk of this kind, he declared, often made soldiers resolve never to enter a church. A vast amount of harm has been done, he said, by the utterly unreal and extravagant nonsense that has been talked and written about soldiers. War is a foul mixture of brutality and ugliness, and bad smells, and a hundred horrors that cannot be named or described. To pretend, if not to believe, that soldiers exult in it is to go a long way towards brutalizing the national character by investing the horrors of warfare with a romantic glamour. To read as I did the other day — the writer was probably a woman — of the soldier hero waiting “ with eager heart and starry eyes ” to 1 A. C. Benson, Along the Road, 358. 2 W. E. Gladstone, in Morley’s Life of Gladstone, iii. 547. THE EVIL OF WAR 247 go over the top is as sickening as it is silly. Soldiers hate it. They recognize it for the hysterical tosh it is, and if some of our “ popular ” preachers and speakers had heard, as I have, the soldiers’ comments on this sort of gush they would be astounded. It is stupid, false, dishonouring and wicked, and I know that many soldiers stay away from church because they are afraid of hearing more of it. No, the splendour and wonder of our men in France and Belgium, and no praise can possibly be too high, lies not so much in the dash and glory of it all, but in their grimly doing their duty : sticking to a hateful task amid conditions that every right-minded man must hate and loathe with fierce intensity. When I first went to France and expressed horror at the pitiful waste and desolation, I was told I should “ soon get used to it.” My retort was that I hoped that I should never get used to it. It is just in this getting used to it that the danger lies. Insensibly we are all of us getting brutalized — and we at home not the least. The first thing to do is to cut out all the cant talk that has gone on too long, and accord to our men the honour that is really theirs — the honour due to men who endure without talk or swagger horrors we shall never know of.1 War I abhor, And yet how sweet The sound along the marching street Of drum and fife ! And I forget Wet eyes of widows, and forget Broken old mothers, and the whole Dark butchery without a soul. Without a soul — save this bright drink Of heady music, sweet as death ; And e’en my peace-abiding feet Go marching with the marching street, For yonder, yonder goes the fife, And what care I for human life ? The tears fill my astonished eyes, And my full heart is like to break ; And yet ’tis all embannered lies, A dream those little drummers make. Oh, it is wickedness to clothe Yon hideous, grinning thing, that stalks Hidden in music, like a queen That in a garden of glory walks, 1 The Church Times, Aug. 17, 1917, p. 1-5. 248 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE Till good men love the thing they loathe ! Art, thou hast many infamies, But not an infamy like this. Oh, snap the fife and still the drum, And show the monster as she is ! 1 2. It is from those who have seen it that we receive the most unsparing denunciation of war. Mr. A. G. Hales, the newspaper correspondent, says : “ It is one of the most ruthless, bitter things on God’s earth. I am not sentimental, but I would like to see the men in Parliament who shriek and yell for war compelled by the laws of their country to take up arms and fight in the front rank. Why are men so willing to shed other people’s blood, and so loth to shed their own ? I think statesmen rarely realise the fearful responsibility that rests upon the men who make war. It is awful. If the men who bring war about by their reckless talking, the men who talk war, and the men who write war, could be sent to the front lines to get some of the butchery and put up with the misery and hardship of it, we should have less shrieking and less fighting.” In concluding his great book The Soul of the War , Mr. Philip Gibbs says : “In this book I have set down simply the scenes and character of this war as they have come before my own eyes and as I have studied them for nearly a year of history. If there is any purpose in what I have written beyond mere record it is to reveal the soul of war so nakedly that it cannot be glossed over by the glamour of false sentiment and false heroics. More passion¬ ate than any other emotion that has stirred me through life, is my conviction that any man who has seen these things must, if he has any gift of expression, and any human pity, dedicate his brain and heart to the sacred duty of preventing another war like this. A man with a pen in his hand, however feeble it may be, must use it to tell the truth about the monstrous horror, to etch its images of cruelty into the brains of his readers, and to tear down the veils by which the leaders of the peoples try to conceal its obscenities. The conscience of Europe must not be lulled to sleep again by the narcotics of old phrases about ‘ the ennobling influence of war,’ and its 4 purging fires.’ It must be shocked by the stark reality of this crime in which all humanity is involved, 1 Richard Le Gallienne. THE EVIL OF WAR 249 so that from all the peoples of the civilized world there will be a great cry of rage and horror if the spirit of militarism raises its head again and demands new sacrifices of blood and life’s beauty. The Germans have revealed the meaning of war, the devilish soul of it, in a full and complete way, with a most ruthless logic. The chiefs of their great soldier caste have been more honest than ourselves in the business, with the honesty of men who, knowing that war is murder, have adopted the methods of murderers, whole¬ heartedly, with all the force of their intellect and genius, not weakened by any fear of public opinion, by any prick of con¬ science, or by any sentiment of compassion. Their logic seems to me flawless, though it is diabolical. If it is permissible to hurl millions of men against each other with machinery which makes a wholesale massacre of life, tearing up trenches, blowing great bodies of men to bits with the single shot of a great gun, strewing battlefields with death, and destroying defended towns so that nothing may live in their ruins, then it is foolish to make dis¬ tinctions between one way of death and another, or to analyse degrees of horror. Asphyxiating gas is no worse than a storm of shells, or if worse then the more effective. ” i ^ a review of “ Georgian Poetry ” published in The Cambridge Magazine , Professor Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch has a few refreshingly vigorous sentences which deserve reproduction : “ Our new poets scarcely touch on this beastly war ; as it seems to me, for the sufficient reason that it is beastly. I don’t know if readers of The Cambridge Magazine will agree, but I for one have no use at all for patriotic lyricism in this business. When it is over, indeed, no words shall be too solemn, as no thoughts can be too sad and holy, for the young who so blithely accepted their fate and went out to suffer and die for us all. Their re¬ collected laughter is the noblest song we shall hear in our time. But the lads known to me, of all ranks, went off nursing no such pretty romantic bloodthirsty illusions about war as seem to be clung to by some of their elders at home. I only know That as he turned to go, And waved his hand, In his young eyes a sudden glory shone. — Yes : but it was the glory of gay sacrifice, not of gay ambition. In fact (pace Professor Ridgeway) the youth of France and England 250 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE had found War out even before this inferno started. They have had to accept it as the alternative to the ruination of better things : but I shall be surprised if they come back with any high opinion of War for War’s sake — War as a “ purifier,” “ degeneracy’s antiseptic,” “ toughener of the moral fibre ” — or indeed are not impatient of all the maudlin disguises under which our pulpiteers and journalists present it. The stuffing had oozed out of that idol some while before August 1914 ; and, since poetry is not concerned with rubbish, I respect these younger poets for spurning it and occupying themselves with things of permanent value.” 1 Only when you see it Will you dare to think you know it. And the more you see, the more you’ll know That no man e’er can know it. It’s only when you sense it in each fibre of your being ; — It’s only when it smites the very life-chords of your being ; — It’s only when its thunders strike like death-drums on your soul, That you confess that mortal man can never know the whole ; — That though he sees, and sees, and sees, — in spite of all his seeing, — No mortal man shall know the whole, Is God’s all-wise decreeing. For at the most ’tis but the crust That you can see, — the surface things, — The upper, outside face of things, Not the horrors down below it. No mortal man shall ever know In fullest full what lies below ; The awful whole would crush his soul, And so no man may know it. God only knows in full the woes That fester down below it.2 I. The Cost of War. 1. The immediate effects are destruction and massacre, ruin and death, the negation of all the elementary and essential blessings of life. In addition to the lives directly destroyed on the field of battle, there are the multitudes who perish from wounds, disease, or other inevitable hardships and privations of war, or are irre- 1 A. Quiller- Couch, in Goodwill, vol. ii. No. 1, p. 22. 2 J. Oxenham, Hearts Courageous, 53. THE EVIL OF WAR 25r parably unfitted thereby for the useful toils of life, and there are the further multitudes linked with these by social or family ties who are indirectly but cruelly smitten by this terrible scourge. Even for the conquerors war is a tremendous misfortune. There must be included also in the reckoning the immense economic loss which it occasions. It means the destruction of crops and homesteads, the devastation of town and country, the loss of historic treasures and monuments that cannot be replaced, the disturbance of industry, the drying up of the very springs of wealth. And the preparation for war, the burden of armaments, the with¬ drawal of priceless human faculties from fruitful use, the direction of large masses of labour into essentially barren toils — all this is an alarming waste of energy and an immense obstacle to progress. The economic aspect of the evil is not only that we suffer in¬ calculable loss through the cessation and crippling of industry, but that wealth, represented by hundreds of millions of pounds, which would otherwise be devoted to productive uses, is as com¬ pletely wasted as if the wealth had been destroyed by fire or flung into the sea. It has been powerfully argued by Mr. Norman Angell that even the victor in a great European war, though he may inflict untold damage upon others, cannot hope to make a profit out of the adventure which will even compensate himself for his own losses in wealth and credit. It is impossible to estimate the material damage caused by war. In Belgium over 43,000 houses were destroyed. In France 46,000 buildings, and 331 churches were brought to ruins. The cost of the damage done to buildings, agriculture and industry in France and Belgium alone would run into hundreds of millions of pounds. The world’s losses in shipping were also enormous. It has been estimated that over twelve million tons were sent to the bottom of the sea, exclusive of German ships. The loss in production by the diversion of men from the workshops, factories, and the land to the battlefields, and the economic value of the lives that have been lost or rendered incapable of any useful work must also be taken into consideration when reckoning up the losses of the war. Here, again, it is utterly impossible to add it all up in pounds, shillings and pence.1 2. But the cost of war is not only in money, it is also in men. We live in an age when the utmost reverence is shown for man 1 Daily Express, June 30, 1919. 252 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE as man, and every effort is made by public authorities and by medical skill to preserve and prolong life. All the resources of science and of applied science are applied, by the best brains and hands, to compass the mutilation and death of hundreds of thousands of victims. And what heightens the tragedy is that those who are carried off by war are picked men in their prime. A pestilence sweeps away the weak and the unfit, and sometimes leaves the winnowed mass healthier and sounder than before, but war takes the strong and leaves the weaker to make good the blanks. If Some years after the Franco-German war I had a talk with an old man in Bavaria : “ The worst of it,” he said, as a tear coursed down his cheek, “ is that it is the flower of the youth that perish.” A distinguished American has been lecturing on this aspect of the subject, and has said that it is almost impossible to exaggerate the loss to the higher life of the United States that resulted from their civil war, in which so many who were the hope of their generation were stricken down before their time.1 If I had an interview in the sad days of the Boer War with a widow who had given two sons to the service of the country. They were young men of the finest promise — strong, kindly, fair-minded, honourable. One had died, after horrible suffering, of wounds received in action ; one had died of enteric in a field-hospital. The mother was full of noble and unmurmuring resignation ; but it made me shudder to think that these two young men, who might have lived long and valued lives, the kindly fathers of strong children, should thus, and for such ends as these, have been lost to the earth.2 ^f “ Under the sky is no uglier spectacle than two men with clenched teeth, and hell-fire eyes, hacking one another’s flesh ; converting precious living bodies, and priceless living souls, into nameless masses of putrescence, useful only for turnip manure.” 3 3. To men’s lives as the cost of war add the sufferings of women and children. Listen to the tramping ! Oh, God of pity, listen ! Can we kneel at prayer, sleep all unmolested, While the echo thunders 1 — God of pity, listen ! Can we think of prayer — or sleep — so arrested ? 1 W. P. Paterson, In the Day of the Muster, 37. 2 A. C. Benson, Along the Road, 360. 3 Carlyle, Past and Present, 163. THE EVIL OF WAR 253 Million upon million fleeing feet in passing Trample down our prayers — trample down our sleeping ; How the patient roads groan beneath the massing Of the feet in going, bleeding, running, creeping ! Clank of iron shoe, unshod hooves of cattle, Pad of roaming hound, creak of wheel in turning, Clank of dragging chain, harness ring and rattle, Groan of breaking beam, crash of roof-tree burning. Listen to the tramping ! — God of love and pity ! Million upon million fleeing feet in passing Driven by the war out of field and city, How the sullen road echoes to the massing ! Little feet of children, running, leaping, lagging, Toiling feet of women, wounded, weary guiding, Slow feet of the aged, stumbling, halting, flagging, Strong feet of the men loud in passion striding. Hear the lost feet straying, from the roadway slipping, They will walk no longer in this march appalling ; Hear the sound of rain dripping, dripping, dripping, Is it rain or tears ? What, 0 God, is falling ? Hear the flying feet ! Lord of love and pity ! Crushing down our prayers, tramping down our sleeping, Driven by the war out of field and city, Million upon million, running, bleeding, creeping.1 *[[ There is, perhaps, no woman, whether she have borne children, or be merely potentially a child-bearer, who could look down upon a battlefield covered with slain, but the thought would rise in her, “ So many mothers’ sons ! So many bodies brought into the world to lie there ! So many months of weariness and pain while bones and muscles were shaped within ; so many hours of anguish and struggle that breath might be ; so many baby mouths drawing life at women’s breasts ; — all this, that men might lie with glazed eyeballs, and swollen bodies, and fixed, blue, unclosed mouths, and great limbs tossed — this, that an acre of ground might be manured with human flesh, that next year’s grass or poppies or karoo bushes may spring up greener and redder, where they have 1 Dora Sigerson, The Sad Years, 12. 254 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE lain, or that the sand of a plain may have a glint of white bones ! And we cry, “ Without an inexorable cause, this should not be ! ” No woman who is a woman says of a human body, “It is nothing ! ” 1 If Only a few days ago I saw an old white-haired woman gathering sticks in a wood. We chatted with her, and after a little while she said : “ Fourteen years ago I had a stroke. It was at the time of the Boer War, when I heard that my son had been killed in battle.” She asked us to come into her cottage, and then from a little box she drew out a blue piece of paper, headed with the crest of the War Office, and it told us that her son “ had been killed in action on March 18, 1900, at the battle of Paardeberg Drift.” She said : “ When I heard that news I thought I should go mad. A little after I had a stroke. I have kept that paper ever since, and it will lie with me in my coffin.” “ Good God,” I said to myself, “ this War is that sorrow multiplied by — well, Thou alone knowest the number, 0 God.” That day the Cotswolds seemed to have lost their beauty. My dreams were shattered. I thought of the War raging on the Continent, and of that fiercer battle which rages unceasingly in the hearts of so many anxious ones in the homes of the nations.2 Here in this leafy place Quiet he lies Cold, with his sightless face Turned to the skies. ’Tis but another dead ; All you can say is said. Carry his body hence, — Kings must have slaves ; Kings climb to eminence Over men’s graves ; So this man’s eye is dim ; — Throw the earth over him. What was the white you touched There by his side ? Paper his hand had clutched Tight, ere he died ; — Message, or wish may be ; — Smooth the folds out and see. 1 0. Schreiner, Women and Labour, 170. 2 W. B. Brash, Peace in the Time of War, 20. THE EVIL OF WAR 255 Hardly the worst of us Here could have smiled ! — Only the tremulous Words of a child ; — Prattle that has for stops Just a few ruddy drops. Look. She is sad to miss, Morning and night, His — her dead father’s — kiss ; Tries to be bright, Good to mamma, and sweet That is all. “ Marguerite.” Ah, if beside the dead Slumbered the pain ! Ah, if the hearts that bled Slept with the slain ! If the grief died ; — But no ; — Death will not have it so.1 II. The Horrors of War. Allowing for the numbers engaged and the effectiveness of the instruments employed, it is clear that in recent wars the pain has been much increased, in spite of all our conventions and all our kindness to the wounded. That pain, more even than the deaths of many, is a legacy of warfare such that it is infinitely multiplied among our more sensitive populations. The numberless and subtle terrors which may attend on all — not merely on soldiers — from the air, from bombardment at fantastic distances, from chemical poisons, from skilfully manipulated disease — all this the future holds in store for us, unless perhaps the restricting sentiment which has so ineffectively limped behind our intellectual ability gains some new strength. That only can keep us from the use of nameless deeds : but it is a delicate growth, and can easily become callous to the death and maiming of millions. That sentiment, 1 Austin Dobson, in The Fiery Cross, 78. 256 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE however, has already done something ; and it is difficult to explain why it has not done more. ^ At the end of Under Fire , a group of soldiers, after being through almost unthinkable horrors, horrors of war, horrors of mud and flood, are discussing war : Waking, Paradis and I look at each other, and remember. We return to life and daylight as in a nightmare. In front of us the calamitous plain is resurrected, where hummocks vaguely appear from their immersion, the steel-like plain that is rusty in places and shines with lines and pools of water, while bodies are strewn here and there in the vastness like foul rubbish, prone bodies that breathe or rot. Paradis says to me, “ That’s war.” “ Yes, that’s it,” he repeated in a far-away voice, “ that’s war. It’s not anything else.” He means — and I am with him in his meaning — “ More than attacks that are like ceremonial reviews, more than visible battles unfurled like banners, more even than the hand-to-hand encounters of shouting strife, War is frightful and unnatural weariness, water up to the belly, mud and dung and infamous filth. It is befouled faces and tattered flesh, it is the corpses that are no longer like corpses even, floating on the ravenous earth. It is that, that endless monotony of misery, broken by poignant tragedies ; it is that, and not the bayonet glittering like silver, nor the bugle’s chanticleer call to the sun ! ” “ It’ll be no good telling about it, eh ? They wouldn’t believe you ; not out of malice or through liking to pull your leg, but because they couldn’t. When you say to ’em later, if you live to say it, 4 We were on a night job, and we got shelled, and we were very nearly drowned in mud,’ they’ll say, 4 Ah ! ’ and p’raps they’ll say, 4 You didn’t have a very spicy time on the job.’ And that’s all. No one can know it. Only us.” 44 No, not even us, not even us ! ” some one cried. 44 That’s what I say, too. We shall forget — we’re forgetting already, my boy ! ” 44 We’ve seen too much to remember.” 44 And everything we’ve seen was too much. We’re not made to hold it all. It takes its damned hook in all directions. We’re too little to hold it.” . . . 44 Ah, if one did remember ! ” cried some one. 44 If we remembered,” said another, 44 there wouldn’t be any more war.” 1 1 E. E. Unwin, “ As a Man Thinketh . . 78. THE EVIL OF WAR 257 Have you forgotten yet ? . . . For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days, Like traffic checked awhile at the crossing of city- ways : And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow Like clouds in the lit heavens of life ; and you’re a man reprieved to go, Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare. But the past is just the same — and War’s a bloody game . . . Have you forgotten yet ? . . . Look down , and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget. Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz — The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sand-bags on parapets ? Do you remember the rats ; and the stench Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench — And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain ? Do you ever stop and ask, “ Is it all going to happen again ? ” Do you remember that hour of din before the attack — And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men ? Do you remember the stretcher cases lurching back With dying eyes and lolling heads — those ashen-grey Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay ? Have you forgotten yet ? . . . Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget.1 II In 1813 the Earl of Aberdeen travelled with Metternich from Teplitz to Frankfort. His biographer says : “ Such a journey in such company, and at such a time, doubtless had its charms, but the impression which was most deeply fixed on Lord Aberdeen’s mind by the scenes around him was that of the calamities which war entails. Only two days after his arrival at Teplitz he wrote to Lady Maria : “ The near approach of war and its effects are horrible beyond what you can conceive. The whole road from Prague to this place was covered with waggons full of wounded, dead, and dying. The shock and disgust and pity produced by 1 Siegfried Sassoon, in The Cambridge Magazine, Nov. 8, 1919, p. 80 1 7 258 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE such scenes are beyond what I could have supposed possible at a distance. There are near two hundred thousand men round this town. There is much splendour and much animation in the sight, but the scenes of distress and misery have sunk deeper in my mind. I have been quite haunted by them.” 1 Nicholson’s funeral was taking place as we marched out of Delhi, at daybreak on the morning of the 24th September. It was a matter of regret to me that I was unable to pay a last tribute of respect to my loved and honoured friend and Commander by following his body to the grave, but I could not leave the column. That march through Delhi in the early morning light was a gruesome proceeding. Our way from the Lahore gate by the Chandni Chauk led through a veritable city of the dead ; not a sound was to be heard but the falling of our own footsteps ; not a living creature was to be seen. Dead bodies were strewn about in all directions, in every attitude that the death-struggle had caused them to assume, and in every stage of decomposition. We marched in silence, or involuntarily spoke in whispers, as though fearing to disturb those ghastly remains of humanity. The sights we en¬ countered were horrible and sickening to the last degree. Here a dog gnawed at an uncovered limb ; there a vulture, disturbed by our approach from its loathsome meal, but too completely gorged to fly, fluttered away to a safer distance. In many instances the positions of the bodies were appallingly life-like. Some lay with their arms uplifted as if beckoning, and, indeed, the whole scene was weird and terrible beyond description. Our horses seemed to feel the horror of it as much as we did, for they shook and snorted in evident terror. The atmosphere was unimaginably disgusting, laden as it was with the most noxious and sickening odours.2 If General Sheridan said to Bismarck : First deal as hard blows at the enemy’s soldiers as possible, and then cause so much suffering to the inhabitants of the country that they will long for peace, and press their Government to make it. Nothing should be left to the people but eyes, to lament the war ! 3 The sombre clouds rolled slowly over the low plain Rutted with level plough lines and lit with pools of rain Till the enormous silence filled only by the humming blast Was rent by a cruel cry, and the wild geese winging fast 1 Sir A. Gordon, The Earl of Aberdeen, 30. 2 Lord Roberts, Forty-one Years in India, 142, 3 C. Lowe, Prince Bismarck, i. 590, THE EVIL OF WAR 259 Onward and onward through the currents of clouded air Craned down through the misty chasms to see what thing lay there. By a ditch of Flanders beside an arrowy road, Which stretched to the horizon where a fired farmstead glowed Exhaling a tremulous light and winding a murky tress Of billowy smoke over the wilderness, A wounded soldier lay watching the birds overhead. . . . They vanished and into his eyes came knowledge of death and the dead. So feeble was he that scarcely he felt the blood ’twixt his lips Well up and flow down darkly. Upon him had gloamed eclipse When at his ear he heard a strange and terrible cry Such as had shaken the marsh birds winging the dreary sky : “ 0 God, God, God ! I am tormented, I sink. 0 water, water, I burn. Give me to drink ! ” And there was no further sound under all the sky Nor in the earth save one sharp sweet reply From the ditch by his feet : a trickle of water was calling, Swoln by rain it carolled and tinkled in falling. But he could not move hand or foot and a noise Of groaning reached him and a dreamy voice Sing-songed of water while he lay perfectly still And cracked his sinews with the heat of his will, Willing himself to arise but he had not the strength To move hand or foot a foot or hand’s length. And when he found he could not stir to arise Two warm tears welled and rolled out of his eyes, And he began to pray, saying unto God Brokenly and in stupid words how he lay on the sod And could not move, and would God look down and give Just one minute of boyish strength that he might strive To succour somebody — friend or foe — near him. But God would not, And he complained endlessly till the cramp of the shot In his side tied and untied within like a knot. And he fainted. And the sombre clouds flocked slowly over the slaughterous plain Above the glimmering road that divided the slain from the slain ; And the spent neighbour rolling his eyes at the sky far and wide Gurgled, his mouth floating blood, and cursed God and died. And the water in the ditch cried happily and increased till it soaked The thirsty dead’s feet and the sweeping wind stroked Softly the matted fair hair of the soldier until he lay, 26o CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE Save for this, stiller than the clotted thick clay That in acres of ruts stretched silently To the deserted dykes and the desolate sea. The sombre clouds rolled slowly over the low plain Rutted with level plough lines and lit with pools of rain, In whose shallow mirrors the majesty of the sky Figuring the funeral of heroes filed slowly by.1 III. The Moral Mischief caused by War. 1. A nation engaged in a bloody war can seldom escape the Nemesis of spiritual deterioration. To become accustomed to acts of bloodshed, to read daily of scenes of carnage, to be obliged to rejoice in the news of sinking ships, of the blowing up of troop- trains, and the intercepting of communications — all this must tend to blunt the moral sense and to make callous the spirit of compassion. We begin to hate our enemies and all that pertains to them. War necessarily involves a complete suspension of great portions of the moral law. This is not merely the case in unjust wars ; it applies also, though in a less degree, to those which are most necessary and most righteous. War is not, and never can be, a mere passionless discharge of a painful duty. It is in its essence, and it is a main condition of its success, to kindle into fierce exercise among great masses of men the destructive and combative passions — passions as fierce and as malevolent as that with which the hound hunts the fox to its death, or the tiger springs upon its prey. Destruction is one of its chief ends. Decep¬ tion is one of its means, and one of the great arts of skilful general¬ ship is to deceive in order to destroy. Whatever other elements may mingle with and dignify war, this at least is never absent ; and however reluctantly men may enter into war, however con¬ scientiously they may endeavour to avoid it, they must know that when the scene of carnage has once opened these things must be not only accepted and condoned, but stimulated, encouraged and applauded. It would be difficult to conceive a disposition more remote from the morals of ordinary life, not to speak of Christian ideals, than that with which the soldiers most animated 1 II. Nichols, Invocation , 38. THE EVIL OF WAR 261 with the fire and passion that lead to victory rush forward to bayonet the foe.1 I am shocked to recognize myself approving acts that I should normally detest. I loathe bombs, until I succeed in throw¬ ing them. A submarine seems to me a piece of devilish craftiness when it sends our poor fellows in the cruisers to the bottom : but it seems to me the symbol of the most glorious courage and skill, when it strikes a German destroyer under the guns of Emden. The natural conscience is dislocated. I read quite calmly, and with gentle satisfaction, the assurances of the Press that the losses of the enemy were most gratifying. This is the war-temper. Such a temper is an outrage against man, a sin against God. It is under the curse of Christ. It puts His Cross to an open shame.2 Mr. Wilson McNair witnessed the hunting of spies in Brussels on the declaration of war. If you lingered, he says, “ by a shop door the passer-by viewed you with quick suspicion ; if you lingered long they gathered about you. In a moment you might be the centre of one of those furious crowds which have neither reason nor pity. The poison corrupted wherever it spread as fear and hatred corrupt. Like an evil presence, War spread her black wings over this city. At night you might see fierce mobs destroying the shops of the enemy or chasing suspects through the street ; men but yesterday turned soldier paced the streets and demanded proof of identity at the bayonet point. This transformation is one of the most hideous of the features of war. It is like the process of a soul’s damnation made universal to all souls and quickened within the space of a few days. Damnation comes too by force ; there is no escape from it. As you look upon their faces, men are debased, brutalised — out of the very nobility of their spirits, out of their heroism and out of their self-sacrifice is wrought the abomination.3 That is the worst of war ; it ostracises, demoralises, brutalises reason. Even Nelson, our glorious and most lovable of heroes, swore that he would like to hang every Frenchman who came near him, Royalist and Republican alike. Hate takes root as a tradition, and lasts.4 2. If the whole nation suffers moral deterioration, most of all 1 W. E. H. Lecky, The Map of Life, 92. 2 H. Scott Holland, So as by Fire, i. 22. * W. McNair, Blood and Iron, 36. 4 Viscount Morley, Recollections, ii. 88. 262 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE do the men suffer who are engaged in fighting. For the time being men put behind them the principles, the habits, and the customs of civilized humanity, and relapse into the elemental stage of savagery, in which they face one another with murder in their eyes, and know no law save the necessity which makes them seek their own safety and the destruction of their enemy. We read of outrages which shock every feeling of humanity — and who are the men that do these things, or look on without protest ? For the most part they were to be met with a few weeks before pursuing their peaceful avocations as peasants and shopkeepers, as factory-workers and clerks, as business men and professional men — they were industrious, well-living citizens, upright and kindly as the average among whom we do our daily work ; and as if by the touch of a magic wand of the diabolic kind, some of them have been transformed into savage creatures lusting for blood and hunting for loot. Is it possible that ordinary men can pass through experiences like these, can be transplanted for a season into a world in which the ordinary maxims of conduct are turned upside down, without some damage from the kind of work which they have to do, and the quality of the atmosphere which they have to breathe ? And if we follow them further into the heart of the battle, where men are falling dead or dying amid shot and shell, and the hand- to-hand struggle is raging round the guns or in the trenches ; if we can take away our thoughts from the suffering that claims our human sympathy, and think of the spiritual conditions under which men are there facing death — how different seem the conditions from those in which one would desire to bid farewell to the world, how different is that place of rage and violence and blasphemy from the sanctuary of prayer and silence in which we feel it meet that the soul should prepare to meet its God. % War brings all the fantastic idiosyncrasies of human nature to the surface. Men will rob and pillage and rape and burn in war who would have lived very passable and decent lives in peace. Many of them think that it is part of the business ; and, of course, the meaner and more sordid the war is, the more that part of the programme becomes possible. I have seen, even at a peaceful railway station in England, a plethoric captain of Volunteers, proceeding to his summer camp in uniform, begin to leer and ogle at the passing female sex generally, who, had he been in his usual THE EVIL OF WAR 263 dress and at his daily business vocations, would have been the picture of decorous provincial family respectability.1 • Here’s a scene I shall remember always : A misty summer morning — I went along a sap-head running towards the German line at right-angles to our own. Looking out over the country, flat and uninteresting in peace, I beheld what at first would seem to be a land ploughed by the ploughs of giants. In England you read of concealed trenches — here we do not trouble about that. Trenches rise up, grey clay, 3 or 4 feet above the ground. Save for one or two men — snipers — at the sap-head, the country was deserted. No sign of humanity — a dead land. And yet thousands of men were there, like rabbits concealed. The artillery was quiet ; there was no sound but a cuckoo in a shell-torn poplar. Then, as a rabbit in the early morning comes out to crop grass, a German stepped over the enemy trench — the only living thing in sight. “ I’ll take him,” says the man near me. And like a rabbit the German falls. And again complete silence and desolation.2 3 I remember a characteristic case in the first advance. A German machine-gun post had been holding up the British advance and inflicting murderous casualties. The machine was enveloped and rushed, and the Germans held up their hands and surrendered. An old-time sergeant goes up to his officer, who, by the bye, was a poet, and wrote some very charming lyrics and had a taste in Art, and salutes : “ Leave to shoot the prisoners, sir ? ” “ What do you want to shoot them for ? ” says the poet. “ To avenge my brother’s death,” says the sergeant. I suppose the poet tells him to carry on. He pinks the Germans one after one, and some of our fellows say “ Bravo ! ” and in others the blood runs cold. I remember the disgust of one of our American volunteers at this episode. For a few days it caused a reaction in him, and made him quite warm-hearted toward Germans. But when he had been in one or two more frays he also caught the regimental point of view, and was ready to kill “ Huns ad libitum .” 3 3. The atrocious cruelties that are perpetrated in war may not be worse in themselves than those which have been committed in peace, but they are done on a different scale and with a most startling indifference. These acts are possible only when war 1 Sir William Butler : an Autobiography, 199. 3 Ivar Campbell, in E. B. Osborn, The New Elizabethans, 20(5. 3 Stephen Graham, A Private in the Guards, 218. 264 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE has blunted the moral sense. No doubt war must involve suffering, but it need not involve wanton cruelty. There is perhaps no needless cruelty in shooting down the enemy in fair fight, or in driving country folk from their homes within the battle area. Miserable and terrible as such things are, they are the inevitable consequences of war. Cruelty in warfare begins only when suffer¬ ing is inflicted in illegitimate ways, and without any strategical necessity. When the rules which civilized nations have laid down for the conduct of war are disregarded. When poison is used as a weapon. When non-combatants are shot on the mere suspicion of resistance. When women and children are ill-treated or driven in front of troops, or murdered. When wounded men are killed as they lie helpless on the field. When no attempt is made to save life after a fight at sea ; or when unarmed merchantmen are torpedoed without due notice being given to the crews. These and similar acts are the cruelties of war. I do not want to go into a long list of German atrocities ; much less do I want to denounce the enemy. As Mr. Balfour put it in his whimsical way : “ We take our enemy as we find him.” But it has been the method throughout this war — the method the enemy has followed — to go at each step outside the old conventions. We have sometimes followed. Sometimes we have had to follow. But the whole history of the war is a history of that process. The peoples fought according to certain rules, but one people got outside the rules right from the beginning. The broken treaty, the calculated ferocity in Belgium and Northern France, the killing of women and non-combatants by sea and land and air, the shelling of hospitals, the treatment of wounded prisoners in ways they had never expected ; all the doctoring of weapons with a view to torture ; the explosive bullets ; the projectiles doctored with substances which would produce a gangrenous wound ; the poisoned gases ; the infected wells. It is the same method throughout. The old conventions of humanity, the old arrangements which admitted that beneath our cruelties, beneath our hatreds, there was some common humanity and friendliness between us, these have been systematically broken one after another. Now observe ; these things were done not recklessly but to gain a specific advantage ; they were done as Mr. Secretary Zimmermann put it in the case of Miss Cavell, “ to inspire fear.” And observe that in many places they have been successful. They have inspired fear. Only look at what has happened and what is THE EVIL OF WAR 265 happening now in the Balkans. Every one of these Balkan States has looked at Belgium. The German agents have told them to look at Belgium. They have looked at Belgium and their courage has failed them. Is that the way in which we wish the govern¬ ment of the world to be conducted in future ? It is the way it will be conducted unless we and our Allies stand firm to the end.1 There was no sound at all, no crying in the village, Nothing you would count as sound, that is, after the shells ; Only behind a wall the low sobbing of women, The creaking of a door, a lost dog — nothing else. Silence which might be felt, no pity in the silence, Horrible, soft like blood, down all the blood-stained ways ; In the middle of the street two corpses lie unburied, And a bayoneted woman stares in the market-place. Humble and ruined folk — for these no pride of conquest, Their only prayer : “ 0 ! Lord, give us our daily bread ! ” Not by the battle fires, the shrapnel are we haunted ; Who shall deliver us from the memory of these dead ? 2 IV. Conclusion. In the world as it now is — shot through with sin — progress can be bought only by conflict. And to a materialist the one big-scale form of conflict is war. But war has not proved to be a teacher of idealism. It has indeed brought much good to light, and apparently for the time being checked some kinds of evil. But in any honest balancing of accounts the evil would surely vastly preponderate. Even setting aside the spiritual and physical misery entailed both on combatants and on non-combatants, and ignoring the huge economic waste, one may doubt if, even where it does seem to have done good, that good is more than partial and transient. For the good that it draws out of one part of a man it draws much evil out of another. For the inspiration it 1 Professor Gilbert Murray, in Ethical and Religious Problems of the War , 9. 2 M. Sackville, The Pageant of War, 32. 266 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE may bring and has brought to some, it has meant a parching of soul to many. And it will be found that, where the effects do seem to be good, one of them is invariably a horror of that which is supposed to have produced them. The men who have come out of the ordeal spiritually ennobled are the first to repudiate the logic of Bernhardi. “ If you want to find real pacifists,” said a wounded officer, “go to the army in the trenches.” One knows how many are buoyed up in the performance of a hateful duty by the trust that this is “ the war against war.” And, of course, from the standpoint of merely physical effects, it has long since been obvious that war is not the best, but the very worst eugenics. What then emerges ? What is the half truth conveyed in the phrase, “ the biological necessity of war ” ? What is the whole truth of which a fragment is revealed to us by the way in which war has left some men better and nobler ? Surely just the truth that, for fallen man, true life must be conflict, hut spiritual conflict, the “ good fight ” of creative faith. For though walking in the flesh, it is not along the lines of the flesh that we make war : “for the weapons of our warfare are not material, but powerful through God for the pulling down of strongholds, casting down [merely human] calculations, and every erection that rears itself against the knowledge of God.” XVI. The End of War. 4 267 Literature. Anderson, H. R., Larger than the Cloud (1915). Armstrong, F. W., in The Ministry of Reconciliation (1916). Church, R. W., The Message of Peace (1895). Cunningham, W., Christianity and Politics (1916). Dougall, L., The Practice of Christianity (1913). Dresser, H. W., The Religion of the Spirit in Modern Life (1914). Enelow, H. G., The War and the Bible (1918). Foster, J., Lectures, ii. (1853). Froude, J. A., Short Studies on Great Subjects, ii. (1903). Hare, J. C., Sermons Preacht in Herstmonceux Church (1841). Holland, H. S., in The Commonwealth, vol. xx. Jowett, B., Sermons Biblical and Miscellaneous (1899). Lynch, F., The Peace Problem (1911). McFadyen, J. E., in The Expositor (March 1916). Masterman, J. H. B., The Challenge of Christ (1913). Mead, L. A., Swords and Ploughshares (1912). Moulton, J. H., From Egyptian Rubbish-Heaps (1916). Newbolt, W. C. E., Counsels of Faith and Practice (1894). Oldham, J. H., The World and the Gospel (1916). Oman, J., The War and its Issues (1915). Ponsonby, A., in The International Journal of Ethics, xxv. (1915). Redgrove, H. S., The Indictment of War (1919). Sadler, G. T., The Origin and Meaning of Christianity (1916). Simons, A. M., The Vision for which we Fought (1919). Strong, T. B., in Oxford Pamphlets, No. 51. Temple, W., in Papers for War Time, No. 1 (1914). Vaughan, B., What of To-day ? (1914). Webb, C., In Time of War (1918). 26» The End of War. 1. Are we bound to believe that war will never come to an end ? Bernhardi says we are. He says that war is, and always will be, a necessity, and that it is our duty and wisdom to recognize this, and give it its due place and honour in all our thoughts. But we are not bound to believe Bernhardi. For in all his calculations, and they are clever enough, he has forgotten one fact. He has forgotten God. If there exist “ One whom we describe least imperfectly when we call Him Personal,” we cannot but ascribe to Him the noblest marks of Personality, Justice, Mercy, and Truth ; and if this be true of Him who is the only enduring Reality and Power, He must have something to say in this debate. The acknowledgment of God of itself at once universalizes human rights. He must deal righteously with all men, so there must be a moral order of the world ; and if there be such an order, then the whole of Bernhardi’s book is a madman’s dream, from which soon or late there must be an appalling awakening, an awakening to the reality of the Righteous God. Dr. J. Llewellyn Davies was one of the most uncompromising believers in the virtue of war for the strengthening of national and individual life. So strongly did he state the case for war that he felt compelled to say : “ Some of my hearers may think that I am making myself an apologist for war ; but I am conscious of no other desire than to do justice to the good I have known.” Yet Dr. Davies held that we may look forward to the end of war, and said : “ I would echo the doctrine of the Quakers, that where duty is clear, the results of doing it are to be left in God’s hands. God knows better than we do how His world is to be governed. He must have ways, whether we can imagine them or not, of governing the world without war.” 1 1 J. Ll. Davies, Spiritual Apprehension, 284. 269 270 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE ^ During a three months’ trip, in the summer of 1918, made especially to ascertain the morale and opinions of the people of England, France, Belgium and Italy, the writer found that out of all the welter and confusion of thought that is always present in vast multitudes of human beings there was one common idea, one least common denominator of all the varieties of minds. He talked with soldiers upon the transports, in the hospitals, restaurants, trains, Y.M.C.A. huts and up to the very fighting line. He in¬ quired of all sorts of people who had a special opportunity to learn the mind of the soldiers — with officers, surgeons, chaplains, “ Y ” men, Salvation Army workers and Red Cross officials. From all these diverse sources a mass of apparently conflicting opinions was received. But one statement was included in nearly every answer. All declared that this war must end war. The soldiers of the Allies fought that peace might come.1 2. There are those, however, who hold that war will go on for ever. De Quincey is a good representative. “ Fighting will go on,” he says, “ for millions of years yet to come ; and, in pure sympathy with the grander interests of human nature, every person who reads what lies written a little below the surface, will say (as I say), God forbid that it should not. In that day when war should be prohibited, or made nearly impossible, man will commence his degeneration.” But De Quincey was a rhetorical writer and not always con¬ sistent. In another essay he limits the duration of war to “ several centuries ” and looks forward to the end of it. “ The final step,” he says, “ for its extinction will be taken by a new and Christian code of international law. This cannot be consummated until Christian philosophy shall have traversed the earth and reorganized the structure of society.” 2 *[[ At the Peace Congress held in Paris in 1849 VictoivHugo, its President, said : “A day will come when a cannon-ball will be exhibited in public museums, just as an instrument of torture is now, and people will be amazed that such a thing could ever have been. A day will come when these two immense groups, the United States of America and the United States of Europe, will be seen placed in the presence of each other, extending the hand of fellowship across the ocean, exchanging their produce, 1 A. M. Simons, The Vision for which we Fought, 14. 2 De Quincey' s Works (Masson’s ed.), ix. 409, viii. 230. THE END OF WAR 271 their industries, their arts, their genius, clearing the earth, peopling the desert, improving creation under the eye of the Creator, and uniting, for the good of all, these two irresistible and infinite powers, the fraternity of men and the power of God.” 1 For this small hand in mine I take Shall never grow to grasp a sword ; But build the house we could not make Fit for the living Lord. And where we dared not follow Truth But paltered with the word and pen, The sudden lightning of your youth Shall blaze a path for men. 0 heart of hope, 0 little child, Fulfilment of the grace we lack, Lift up the trust we have defiled, Give us our glory back.2 3. That war will end is the testimony of Prophecy. Among the blessings to which Israel looks forward in the Messianic time none is more emphasized than peace. The covenant which God made with the fathers at the first, and for the fulfilment of which the prophets confidently look, is a covenant of peace. The messenger who brings tidings of the coming salvation is one who publishes peace. The Messiah Himself is the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end. In His days the righteous shall flourish, and abundance of peace till the moon be no more. Psalmist and prophet alike are full of pictures of the time when Jahweh shall bless His people with peace ; when the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in the abundance of peace ; when peace shall be within the walls of Jerusalem ; in the temple ; when men shall go in with joy and be led forth with peace ; when the very officers shall be peace and the exactors righteousness ; when peace shall extend to Jerusalem like a river and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream ; nay, when God shall speak peace to the 1 F. Lynch, The Peace Problem, 51. 2 Jl. Hagel, in The Peace Training of our Children, 5. 272 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE very Gentiles. Even Jeremiah, bitter in his denunciations of those who cry peace when there is no peace, and prophesy before the time, is firm in his belief that a time is coming when God will reveal to His people abundance of peace and truth. The prophets recognized a divine purpose in the wars of the nations but they also believed that when God should truly reign wars will cease, that “ the work of righteousness shall be peace and the effect of righteousness, quietness and confidence for ever.” Dominated by faith in the final triumph of God’s justice, the desire for peace, not only in Israel but also among the nations, became the dream of their life and created a passion for bringing about peaceful relations among men. The vision of universal peace was ever before them, even in days of darkest despair. While they looked forward to it as something to be fully consummated in the future, yet this ideal also had a practical bearing upon their mission and gave to it aim and direction. The prophets are full of compassion for the suffering masses, upon whom the crushing weight of war always falls heaviest. The misery, distress, and ruin left in the path of the invading hordes are often the theme of their bitter lament (Jer. ix. 20). They denounce vehemently the atrocities of war and the horrors attending a siege or an invasion (Amos i. 2). They burn with righteous indignation as they reflect upon the social evils, the petty oppres¬ sions, the selfish, sordid ambitions, that stir human hatred and beget the spirit of strife. Where moral rottenness has eaten into the inner core of society there can be no true brotherhood, and without fraternal relations there can be no peace. A licentious court, a corrupt government, a reign of brutal force in the place of right, the reckless greed for gain, sensuality in religion — these inevitably breed war. Because of their passion for peace the prophets had such a keen eye for the evils of their time and opposed them with such unsparing severity. Their passion for social righteousness was inseparable from their intense yearning for the establishment of God’s Kingdom of Peace. It was Isaiah, the prophet of faith, that gave to the world the lofty vision of universal peace, a vision which was repeated by Micah and was destined never to die. It is a vision clothed in the language of an agricultural and pastoral people, but its meaning is clear. THE END OF WAR 273 And it shall come to pass in the end of days, That the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the top of the mountains, And shall be exalted above the hills ; And all nations shall flow unto it. And many peoples shall go and say*: “ Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain" of the Lord, To the house of the God of Jacob ; And He will teach us of His ways, And we will walk in His paths. ”| For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge between the nations, And shall decide for many peoples ; And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning-hooks ; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war any more. This ideal of peace never died out of the hearts of Israel. It deepened in meaning with the years. It expanded with the events of the centuries. Echoes of it we find in all subsequent Jewish writings. It finally took the form of the great messianic hope of the Jewish people — of the golden age — a hope which has had a tremendous influence on human life. But one is wholly mistaken if one thinks that this radiant ideal cherished by the Prophets blinded them to the difficulties of its attainment or to the conditions which must precede its ultimate realization. On the contrary, it was they who knew how much the world would have to fight and how much it would have to learn before peace became a possibility. Is peace so easy ? Nay, the names That are most dear and most divine To men, are like the heavenly flames That farthest from possession shine. Peace, love, truth, freedom, unto these The way is through the storming seas. At the very dawn of its history, Israel had to pass through the storming sea for the sake of freedom. The Prophets dreamed of peace, but they ceaselessly emphasized the conditions essential to its attainment. (1) Among these conditions we might name, first of all, the 18 274 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE recognition of the law of Righteousness and its application in the conduct of human affairs. The Prophets leave no doubt on this point. There can be no peace in the world as long as righteousness does not rule. Iniquity is the enemy of peace. Violence destroys it. There is no peace for the wicked, nor for a world dominated by wickedness. For wickedness burneth as the fire ; It devoureth the briers and thorns ; Yea, it kindleth in the thickets of the forest, And they roll upward in thick clouds of smoke. Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts is the land burnt up, The people also are as the fuel of fire ; No man spareth his brother. Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, And to the writers that write iniquity ; To turn aside the needy from judgment, And to take away the right of the poor of my people, That widows may be their spoil, And that they may make the fatherless their prey. And what will ye do in the day of visitation, And in the ruin which shall come from far ? To whom will ye flee for help ? And where will ye leave your glory ? They can do nought except crouch under the captives, And fall under the slain. (2) Moreover, the Prophets believe that peace will result from a growing sense of the unity of mankind and the unity of God. This belief is expressed by them in different ways, and put forth in the language of their times. But the underlying thought is unmistakable. When the Prophets speak of many nations going up to the house of the God of Jacob, when they speak of God’s house becoming a house of prayer for all peoples, when they speak of the day when the Lord shall be one and His name one — this is what they have in mind. The full significance of such utter¬ ances we can grasp only if we judge them by the standards of those days. They belong to a time when most people believed in national gods and national sanctuaries. That was the normal religion of the times, the general outlook. Every people had its own God, and every God cared for his own people only. When the Prophets wiped out national boundaries in religious conceptions — in prayer and worship — when they opened the possibility of diverse peoples praying to One and the same God — that in itself was a wonderful THE END OF WAR 275 expansion of existent spiritual limitations. It inaugurated the idea of human brotherhood as a preliminary to perpetual peace. “ Many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord. In those days it shall come to pass that ten men shall take hold, out of all languages of the nations, shall even take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying : “ We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you ! ” In this regard, nothing in the Bible surpasses the nineteenth chapter of Isaiah, where the Prophet forecasts the union — fraternal and religious — of Egypt, Assyria, and Israel. “ In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord. And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt ; for they shall cry unto the Lord because of the oppressors, and He will send them a Saviour, and a Defender who will deliver them. And the Lord shall make Himself known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day ; yea, they shall worship with sacrifice and offering, and shall vow a vow unto the Lord, and shall perform it. And the Lord will smite Egypt, smiting and healing ; and they shall return unto the Lord, and He will be entreated of them, and will heal them. “ In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria ; and the Egyptians shall worship with the Assyrians. “ In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth ; for that the Lord of hosts hath blessed him, saying, 4 Blessed be Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel Mine inheritance.’ ” Here are the two mightiest and most iniquitous conquerors of the ancient Orient ; here is one of them whom the Prophet has just denounced for lust and violence ; and here is Israel, the traditional victim of both, repeatedly crushed between the upper and the nether millstone of their military ambitions : yet all three some day are to form one brotherhood through the recognition of the same God. 4 4 In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth ; for that the Lord of hosts hath blessed him, saying : 4 Blessed be Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel Mine inheritance.’ ” Such a growing sense of human brotherhood, the Prophets felt, would increase the likelihood of universal peace. (3) And, finally, the Prophets depended on the increasing spiritual ennoblement of humanity. The time would come when 276 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE the Spirit of God shall be poured forth on all alike, when the Divine Law shall be put into human hearts, when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, when princes shall rule in righteous¬ ness and faithfulness, when men shall learn God’s ways — when genuine spiritual nobility shall have become universal. Then peace also will become a universal reality. “ The effect of righteous¬ ness shall be peace, quietness, and security for ever.” Rise up, ye women that are at ease, and hear my voice ; Ye confident daughters, give ear unto my speech. After a year and days shall ye be troubled, ye confident women ; For the vintage shall fail, the ingathering shall not come. Tremble, ye women that are at ease ; Be troubled, ye confident ones ; Strip you, and make you bare, And gird sackcloth upon your loins, Smiting upon the breasts For the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine ; For the land of my people Whereon thorns and briers come up ; Yea, for all the houses of joy And the joyous city. For the palace shall be forsaken ; The city with its stir shall be deserted ; The mound and the tower shall be for dens for ever, A joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks ; Until the spirit be poured upon us from on high, And the wilderness become a fruitful field, And the fruitful field be counted for a forest. Then justice shall dwell in the wilderness, And righteousness shall abide in the fruitful field. And the work of righteousness shall be peace ; And the effect of righteousness quietness and confidence for ever. And my people shall abide in a peaceable habitation, And in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting-places.1 ^ The Prince of the latter days, whose second name is Hero of Superhuman Might , bears as His final name The Prince of Peace. The true patriot longs for the day when no more war-horses and chariots will be seen in the land he loves, but when from end to end it will be filled with the knowledge of Jahweh as the waters cover the seas. One of the dearest wishes of his heart is to see the cruel and bloody accoutrements of war flung once and for ever 1 H. G. Enelow, The War and the Bible, 108. THE END OF WAR 2 77 into the devouring flames. He looks for and believingly works for the day when Every boot of the warrior that thundered along, And every garment rolled in blood, Shall be doomed to the burning, And fuel for the fire.1 4. There is much more about war in the Old Testament than in the New. The whole atmosphere of the Psalms is a warlike atmosphere. It is full of the terror of the enemy’s onslaught, of the anticipations of victory, of mourning over defeat, of exul¬ tation in success. But when we turn to the New Testament we are in another world. Setting aside the Book of Revelation, and an allusion here and there to soldiers and their profession, often by way of metaphor, there is nothing that speaks of war. The life of Christ and His Apostles was a life of struggle and sorrow ; all around there is cruelty, persecution, martyrdom ; but there is not war. The call to fight for one’s country is not heard. Force is all on one side ; the people of God resist not evil ; they obey the constituted authorities where their conscience permits obedience ; where they do not, they patiently suffer the conse¬ quences and rejoice that they are counted worthy so to do. The functions of the soldier, so far as he comes into the story at all, are what we should call police functions ; he keeps order, he secures unpopular persons from the mob that would tear them in pieces, he acts guard over persons under sentence of law. We know that he is a soldier, and so personally ready to fight when called upon ; but for the present he is not, as we should say, on active service. The question of soldiering or not scarcely arises for the New Testament Christian ; it lies outside his horizon ; his weapons are of a different order, and it is hard to conceive the soldier’s weapons as compatible with his position as a citizen of the kingdom whose laws were laid down in the Sermon on the Mount. If In his book — Das Ewige Licht — the poet Rosegger relates a dream. He dreamed that he saw the Almighty upon His throne and the rulers of the earth passing by. He addressed Moses : “ What did you bring to your people ? ” He answered : “ The 1 J. E, McFadyen, in The Expositor, March 1916, p. 174. 278 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE Law.” “ And what did they make of it ? ” “ Sin ! ” Then He asked Charlemagne : “ And what did you give to your people ? ” “ The Altar.” “ And what did they make of it ? ” “ The stake ! ” Thus He asked one after another, and always the sad reply was that men perverted God’s gifts. Then the Eternal One turned to His only-begotten Son : “ Sly Son, what did you bring to men ? ” “ Peace ! ” “ And what did they make of it ? ” Jesus covered His face with His pierced hands and sobbed : “ War ! ” When we come to consider by what means war is to be brought to an end, we see, first of all, that it is not to be by progress in civilization alone. The only method is the method of Christ. But the method of Christ must be applied. Christianity must get a chance. I. Civilization. 1. The end of war is not to come through culture or progress in civilization. That hope has been too often disappointed. When the Exhibition of 1851 was opened in Hyde Park, “ we were supposed,” says Eroude, “ to be standing on the threshold of a new era. Commerce and free trade were to work a revolution which Christianity had tried to produce, and failed. War was to be at an end for ever, and the inhabitants of the earth were to compete thenceforward only in the arts of peace. The world smiled kindly on our enthusiasm, or seemed to share our expecta¬ tions. When the first successful cable was laid across the Atlantic the single message which it bore from Washington to England was ‘ Peace on earth, and good-will towards men.’ The peace proved a cycle of storms which in one quarter or another have raged since scarcely with intermission, and, though at home our streak of sea has stood our friend, we have borne our share already in the East, and danger may very easily come to seek us at our own doors without our going out of the way to look for it.” 1 In July 1914 there was a general belief in England and America that war had become an anachronism ; that, though it might survive among half-civilized and decadent peoples, it could no 1 J. A. Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects, ii. 480. THE END OF WAR 279 longer occur amongst the most highly developed nations. It seemed impossible that there should be such an outrage on civilization. On the one side, humanitarian sentiment was likely to prevent an outbreak of war, with all the misery it entails ; on the other, the interests of the nations of the world were so interdependent that it seemed unlikely that any could gain by means of war. But events have proved that the hopes which were so generally entertained were baseless ; a nation distinguished for scientific culture and for effective organization forced on a war, and horrors which were looked upon as a thing of the past were let loose on a larger scale than ever before. Pacificism, which professed to be the last result of scientific sociology, has been discredited as im¬ practicable in Europe, since events have proved the ineffective¬ ness of humanitarian sentiment and prudential calculation to prevent an appeal to arms. The experiences through which we have since passed have revealed the insecurity of the foundations on which Western civiliza¬ tion rests. That civilization is wider in extent, far more complex and closely knit, than any that history has to show. Its ramifica¬ tions are so far-reaching and the interdependence of its parts so complete that its dissolution would cause untold suffering and loss. Yet it is doubtful whether it has enough moral strength to hold together. Its cohesion is gravely endangered. The war is a reminder that a civilization based on materialism and selfishness must in the end compass its own destruction. The awful sufferings through which Europe has had to pass are evidence that the world is a moral order. They proclaim anew the law which the Christian Scriptures assert from beginning to end, that “ Sin, when it is full- grown, bringeth forth death.” Whom do you blame, brothers ? Bow your heads down ! The sin has been yours and ours. The heat growing in the heart of God for ages — The cowardice of the weak, the arrogance of the strong, the greed of fat prosperity, the rancour of the deprived, pride of race, and insult to man — Has burst God’s peace, raging in storm. *[{ Nothing will operate efficaciously to this grand effect that does not go deep into the constitution of men’s souls, and change 2 8o CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE their temper ; so as to quell, internally, those fatal passions, which have perpetuated external war. And that is what cannot be done by any civilization, national refinement, science, or even an en¬ lightened theoretical policy. All these may be but like fair struc¬ tures and gardens, extended over a ground where volcanic fires are in a temporary slumber below. All these may be shattered and exploded by some mighty impulse of ambition, or some blast of revengeful anger. These exterior improvements may leave those passions in full existence there ; — and if they be existing, they will prove it is not for nothing. No polish, cultivation, or intelligence in a nation, would be any security against its being possessed by a spirit of haughty and imperious pride, which would impel it to resent and revenge some insult, at whatever cost of blood and destruction ; — or any security against ambition, when tempted by some opportune juncture for making a splendid con¬ quest ; — or against a nation’s running mad for martial glory, at the will and under the direction of some great national champion ; — or against the pernicious delusion of an extravagant Patriotism. No ; there must be a greater, nobler power brought into prevalence among mankind, and that is plainly Christianity. It is in no other way, assuredly, that prophecy gives the pledge for the realization of our hope on this subject. And on any other ground we should agree with those speculators who scorn the notion of mankind being ever estranged from war. Nothing springing merely from the action of the human mind can suffice. It must be something coming from Heaven. And this is the appointed and qualified agent.1 2. The European War, far from representing the bankruptcy of Christianity, really represents a great advance in its conquest of the world ; for it is the first war of which many people have said that it marks the collapse of our religion. In other words, it is only now that Europe has found out again that if nations were Christian there would be no war. That was known well enough to Athanasius and Tertullian and the primitive Church ; but from the time of Constantine till now it has been forgotten. When the world took the Church under its protection, and largely under its control, in the event known as Constantine’s conversion, many of the principles of the Gospel were obscured. For centuries the Church was ready to bless armies and armadas. Shakespeare finds it appropriate to make bishops prominent among those who 1 John Foster, Lectures , ii. 20 THE END OE WAR 281 advise Henry v. to declare war on France. But in our day a Pope, when besought to bless arms, is reported to have answered, “ I give my benediction to peace ” ; and an Archbishop solemnly declares all war to be “ devil’s work.” We have at least found out — believers and unbelievers alike — that all war is contrary to the mind and spirit of Christ. That is a real gain. Indeed, it is not Christianity that has broken down, for Christianity has never been applied to international relations. What has broken down is a civilization which was not Christian. II. Christianity. Bishop Butler wondered whether a whole nation could go mad. Well, a whole civilization can go mad if we set the forces of madness moving. We know that now to our cost. And to save civilization from any such disaster we must have a foothold outside and beyond it. We cannot afford to leave it alone, or to be indifferent to its drift. We must lay strong hands upon it and compel it to take its spiritual temper by our standards, and from out of our reserves. We must impose upon it its true purpose ; we must fashion it by the pattern seen in the mount. And for this we must have been up in the mount ourselves. Far away above all the social platitudes about growth and progress, we must have seen for ourselves the vision by which all growth is to be determined, and from which all progress receives its dominant value. Only through the Spirit brooding over the waters can the world take form and substance, so that God can pronounce it very good. Back behind civilization lies civilization’s secret. Back behind man is the divine righteousness into the likeness of which he may be fashioned by the increase of the years. In God, by God, through God, man becomes sufficient to control the work of his hands, and to guide his own advance. The national conduct that is governed by this life’s expediencies and interests is doomed. The civilization that takes power as its inspiration hands itself over to the devil. This earth is never understood as self-sufficient. The salt that keeps her pure is not her own. It is brought to her 282 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE only through the fire of sacrifice. God, after all, means so much. We must begin with Him or we are lost. We want God. We seek Jesus Christ. For nothing else really counts. We had always heard of this with the hearing of the ear. We had often said it in a formula, and subscribed to it by our signatures. But, in the present moral welter, with all former platitudes gone by the board, we must at all costs say it for ourselves, out of a living heart, in the force of a vital conviction, as men who see the Invisible, and name the unutterable Name. 1. The Christian Church has all the time had in its keeping the truth which can vitalize and give health to the social order. The Christian social ideal is the very antithesis of those rivalries and self-seeking aims which are now bearing their harvest of death. We believe in God the Father. And because God, revealed in Christ, is Father, we know that His purpose is to create a human family, in which men will live with one another as brothers, and no man will “ seek his own, but each his neighbour’s good.” We have been taught to think of men united in a body, which has many members and yet is one, so that if one member suffers all the members suffer with it. Rooted deep in our fundamental religious beliefs are those conceptions of human fellowship, of co-operation and mutual helpfulness, of the subordination of the interests of an individual or of a class to the good of the whole community, which are the foundation of social health and the bonds that keep society from disruption. When we trace our present troubles to their roots, we find that what is wrong is that individuals, classes and nations have been more concerned about asserting their rights than about fulfilling their duties. But Christianity plainly teaches that men should attach greater importance to their duties than to their rights ; that they should be less concerned with what they can get out of life than with what they can put into it. 2. The abolition of war is an ideal. It is part of that ideal which we call the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is never fully come but is for ever coming. One part of it has come, or nearly so, already — the abolition of slavery. It is our business to work now for the abolition of war. Far off as it may be, it is an ideal which is to be realized. THE END OF WAR 283 And we have some encouragement in seeking to realize it. In spite of the disregard of international law in the European War, the nations of the earth do not look upon war as once they did. Wars of conquest, wars arising out of the ambition of princes, wars of religion, have almost or altogether disappeared. And commerce has been a great peacemaker, working through men’s interests, which are apt to be more profound than their principles : for the whole commercial world is in a league against war, though the passions of men also on a sudden impulse not infrequently get the better of their interests. Neither could it be at all true to say that moral considerations are wholly left out of sight in the politics of Europe. It is an old vaunt that no one “ can preach immorality without being pelted ” ; and in a similar vein of reflec¬ tion it may be observed that a nation cannot publicly defy justice in its dealings with another nation, but sooner or later there will be a retribution, and the world will rise up against it. Great as have been the atrocities perpetrated in this war, which have caused the civilized world to shudder, greater atrocities were committed in ancient wars and without a shudder or a protest. Dr. Hope Moulton has recalled one example. “ The first century b.c. was one of the most evil centuries in all the history of the world. It was a century of civil war, and its cruelty was utterly unbelievable. I will mention one fact which gets at one’s imagination more vividly than anything else I know. There was one class of slaves in the Roman world who were perhaps more pitiable than any. These were the gladiators, of whom that famous line was written, “ Butchered to make a Roman holiday.” They were brave, strong men, trained to the use of arms, and the only reason for their existence was that on great ceremonial days the bloodthirsty populace expected their officials to give them exhibitions of real fighting. Then the gladiators were thrown into the arena, and there they had to fight, not because they hated one another, or had the slightest grievance against one another, but simply because they were slaves, and as slaves they had to fight. As long as the arena ran red with blood, the thirst of the populace was appeased for the time. At last there came a time when these gladiators revolted. They had a strong right arm. They could fight. Why should they not fight for themselves instead of simply among the savage 284 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE mob ? The only difficulty was to get together. But finally they found a leader, a man of military genius, Spartacus. Presently Italy was in a flame, and the gladiator host was spreading terror everywhere. The Romans were at their very wits’ end. At last they succeeded in defeating these desperate men, and they took six thousand of them captive. What did they do with them ? The road from Rome to Capua was one hundred and fifty miles long. Along that road, at intervals of fifty yards or so, they set up crosses, and they crucified these six thousand men along that road. All who travelled from Rome to Capua had to pass down that ghastly avenue. I do not think one could imagine a more typical example of the fury and blood-lust and panic of those days.” 1 Even De Quincey with all his pessimism admits that the attitude to war of the nations of the world has been profoundly modified by Christianity. “ The nations,” he says, “or at least the great leading nations, are beginning to set their faces against it. War, it is felt, comes under the denunciation of Christianity, by the havoc which it causes amongst those who bear God’s image ; of Political Economy, by its destruction of property and human labour ; of rational logic, by the frequent absurdity of its pretexts. The wrong which is put forth as the ostensible ground of the particular war is oftentimes not of a nature to be redressed by war, or is even forgotten in the course of the war ; and, secondly, the war prevents another course which might have redressed the wrong — namely, temperate negotiation, or neutral arbitration. These things were always true, and indeed, heretofore, more flagrantly true : but the difference in favour of our own times is that they are now felt to be true. Formerly, the truths were seen, but not felt : they were inoperative truths, lifeless, and unvalued. Now, . on the other hand, in England, America, France, societies are rising for making war upon war.” Sometimes a great reform seems to come suddenly. It was so with the abolition of slavery. It may be so with the abolition of war. Olive Schreiner believes that the extension of the franchise to women will be the death-blow to war. “ On that day, when the woman takes her place beside the man in the government and arrangement of external affairs of her race, will also be that day that heralds the death of war as a means of arranging human 1 J. H. Moulton, From Egyptian Rubbish- Heaps, 116. THE END OF WAR 285 differences. No tinsel of trumpets and flags will ultimately seduce women into the insanity of recklessly destroying life, or gild the wilful taking of life with any other name than that of murder, whether it be the slaughter of the million or of one by one.” How will this be ? “Not,” she says, “ because with the sexual function of maternity necessarily goes in the human creature a deeper moral insight, or a loftier type of social instinct than that which accompanies the paternal. Men have in all ages led as nobly as women in many paths of heroic virtue, and toward the higher social sympathies ; in certain ages, being freer and more widely cultured, they have led further and better. Nor will women shrink from war because they lack courage. Earth’s women of every generation have faced suffering and death with an equanimity that no soldier on a battlefield has ever surpassed and few have equalled ; and where war has been to preserve life, or land, or freedom, unparasitized and labouring women have in all ages known how to bear an active part, and die.” It is because she knows the value of human life. “ The twenty thousand men prematurely slain on a field of battle, mean, to the women of their race, twenty thousand human creatures to be borne within them for months, given birth to in anguish, fed from their breasts and reared with toil, if the numbers of the tribe and the strength of the nation are to be maintained. The man and the woman alike, who with Isaiah on the hills of Palestine, or the Indian Buddha under his bo-tree, have seen the essential unity of all sentient life ; and who therefore see in war but a symptom of that crude disco-ordination of life on earth, not yet at one with itself, which affects humanity in these early stages of its growth ; and who are compelled to regard as the ultimate goal of the race, though yet perhaps far distant across the ridges of innumerable coming ages, that harmony between all forms of conscious life, metaphorically prefigured by the ancient Hebrew, when he cried, ‘ The wolf shall dwell with the lamb ; and the leopard shall lie down with the kid ; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them ! ’ — to that individual, whether man or woman, who has reached this standpoint, there is no need for enlightenment from the instincts of the childbearers of society as such ; their condemnation of war, rising not so much from the fact that it is a wasteful destruction of human flesh as 286 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE that it is an indication of the non-existence of that co-ordination, the harmony which is summed up in the cry, ‘ My little children, love one another.’ But for the vast bulk of humanity, probably for generations to come, the instinctive antagonism of the human childbearer to reckless destruction of that which she has at so much cost pro¬ duced, will be necessary to educate the race to any clear conception of the bestiality and insanity of war.” 1 If Write this thought on your hearts, sear it on your brains, let it be etched into your souls, all ye sons of men and daughters of women, for it is easily within the range of practical events, it is within the scope of human power to-day, now. Police the land and the seas against war for the future ; let all peoples combine in the formation of that international police force, and sweep off the face of God’s good world every fortress, every factory for the manufacture of weapons and inventions of slaughter, every arsenal and dockyard where warships are built, and if one stiff-necked nation will not obey the universal law, then give that nation root and branch to the sword of the world’s police, that mankind may not live again through the hell of to-day. Let a people that will persist in plunging humanity in a welter of blood be wiped out as if they had never been, for such a nation is accursed ; mankind will not tolerate one murderer in its midst — why tolerate a whole tribe % The mad, bad old days must not be reborn ; translate this saying into every tongue ; let it be framed and hung on every wall, for it is worthy of humanity’s acceptation : The time is rife for a league of the nations for the preservation of the world's peace.2 These things shall be : a loftier race Than e’er the world hath known shall rise, With flame of freedom in their souls And light of knowledge in their eyes. They shall be gentle, brave, and strong To spill no drop of blood, but dare All that may plant man’s lordship firm On earth, and fire, and sea, and air. Nation with nation, land with land, Unarmed shall live as comrades free ; In every heart and brain shall throb The pulse of one fraternity.3 1 Olive Schreiner, Woman and Labour, 175, 176. 2 A. G. Hales, Where Angels Fear to Tread, 67. 3 J. A. Symonds. XVII. What are We to Do? 287 Literature. Brailsford, H. N., in Towards a Lasting Settlement (1915). Bryce, Viscount, and Others, Proposals for the Prevention of Future Wars (1917). Cairns, D. S., in Papers for War Time , No. xii. (1914). Church, R. W., The Gifts of Civilisation (1880). „ ,, The Message of Peace (1895). Connell, A., in The Free Church Year Boole (1916). Davies, J. LI., Spiritual Apprehension (1898). Gardner, C. S., The Ethics of Jesus and Social Progress (1913). Glazebrook, W. M., in The Faith and the War (1915). Grane, W. L., in The Contemporary Review (Sept. 1913). Henson, H. H., Notes of my Ministry (1913). Hill, A. C., The Sword of the Lord (1914). Holland, H. S., Pleas and Claims (1892). „ „ in English Church Review (Aug. 1915). Hugel, F. von, in The Quest (April 1915). Hughes, H. M., Faith and Progress (1919). Johnson, E. W., Suffering, Punishment and Atonement (1919). Kettle, T. M., The Ways of War (1917). Lacey, T. A., Conscience of Sin (1916). Liddon, H. P., Advent in St. Paul’s (1891). Lynch, F., The Peace Problem (1911). Mathews, S., The Social Gospel (1910). Mead, G. R. S., in The Quest (April 1915). Mellone, S. H., in Ethical and Religious Problems of the War (1916). Merrill, W. P., in Goodwill, ii. (1916). RashdalJ, H., Conscience and Christ (1916). Rimington, A. W., The Conscience of Europe (1917). Roberts, R., in Christ and Peace (1915). Robson, G. B., The Way to Personality (1916). Rowntree, A. S., in Friends and the War (1914). Samuel, H., The War and Liberty (1917). Slater, T. E., Missions and Sociology (1908). Vaughan, D. J., Questions of the Day (1894). Westcott, B. F., Lessons from Work (1901). 288 What are We to Do? The abolition of war is with the follower of Christ. All true progress is by the way of the Cross. To all sons of men sounds the call of the Son of Man who came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. What shall we do then ? Shall we leave our frontiers un¬ guarded, our young men untrained ? Shall we live as though the Christian ideal were already supreme in a world that has hardly yet begun to understand it ? No ; but we can keep the Christian ideal before us as the master light of all our seeing. We can check the foolish word that ministers to international distrust ; we can try to understand the point of view of nations whose national characteristics! differ from ours ; we can bring the intrigues of diplomacy into the daylight. And most of all, we can realize anew the significance of the Incarnation. Tu ad liberandum, suscepturus hominem, non horruisti Virginis uterum. In the womb of the Virgin He took upon Him humanity that He might set it free — free to be its true self. For just in proportion as we surrender ourselves to the control of the brute instincts in us, in just that proportion we abrogate our freedom. The gospel of blood and iron is a gospel of slavery. We are called to a new loyalty to the Christian ideal not only by the desperate need of the world, but also by the revelation of unsuspected capacities for sacrifice, which, as the war has shown, lie buried in human nature until some great occasion makes them spring to life. A new spirit has been born among us. Multitudes who had hitherto lived selfish lives have learned the joy of helping to bear the burdens of others. Women have eagerly sought new forms of service and leaped forward to undertake responsibilities hitherto borne by men. The manhood of the nation has freely *9 29o CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE offered itself to meet hardship, pain and death. Men have died in their thousands, not for national gain or hate of their foes, but for the sake of liberty and humanity. By their sacrifice we who still live are consecrated to the service of the ideal ends for which they unselfishly gave their lives. We are dedicated to the building up of that better and fairer world which they died to secure for their fellows. When we remember the price they paid, we cannot wish that our service should be less costly. Human society never seemed more worth saving than it does now ; nor were the hearts of men ever more prepared for a great adventure. I. Christian Influence. 1. If the principles of Jesus mean anything, they apply to universal humanity. And there can be no insular or national or imperial limitations to the duties we owe to our common humanity. In Christianity, at any rate, there are no aliens or foreigners : “ neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, no male and female : for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus.” And so we welcome the truth that the religion of Christ is the pioneer of new national careers, by creating a new type of individual character, and a new public opinion. It was Horace Bushnell’s great saying that “ the soul of all improvement is the improvement of the soul.” A regenerate man becomes a new and living force in unregenerate society. Christianity first plants itself in the individual soul, and then works from the centre to the circumference, from the person to the State ; creating purer homes, a higher and finer social temper, a sounder and truer type of civilization. And a new public opinion is created. A perverted social conscience, moulding public sentiment, and dominated by traditional prejudices and invincible habits of centuries of superstition, is a rigid and uncompromising factor of amazing force, and a gigantic hindrance to the work of Christ. The individual conditions and ideals of men need to be changed ; and the spiritual energies of Christianity represent the only power that can grapple with them and overcome them. WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 291 If The effects of the war upon the character of women, and the influence of women upon public opinion, must be taken seriously into account by those who see the urgent need for moral recon¬ struction. The majority of men are far more influenced by the character and the ideals of the women with whom they are in contact than they either realize or are ready to admit. One of the great reconstructive forces after the European convulsions of the past has been the influence of the surviving women. It is difficult to overrate what France owed to them after the Napoleonic wars and the Franco-German conflict of 1870. It is to women above all that the world ought to be able to look with hope for keeping alive the traditions of civilization and the ideals of Christianity and for revitalizing the conscience of Europe ; and it would be disastrous for the future if the fine moral characteristics and religious instincts of women have been or are being seriously stunted and withered by the poisonous atmosphere of a prolonged war such as the present one, so different from and so far more demoralizing than any other of modern times.1 2. There are two great arguments against war. The one is economic, the other moral. Both are sound, and they may well be worked together. But the more powerful argument is the moral or spiritual one. And that for two reasons. First, because the ethical and spiritual aspects of the paramount claim of peace carry that claim into deeper currents of our nature, and bring it closer to the innermost springs of human volition ; secondly, because by far the most commanding of the argumentative strong¬ holds of the enemy are quite beyond the range of even the most skilfully directed economic fire. The loftiest ideal, before it can be realized on this earth, must encounter material problems, and utilitarian argument has its own proper part to play. Neverthe¬ less, “ an ideal which the imagination may clothe with a divine nimbus ” will often prove of greater effect in influencing conduct than the clearest motives of expediency enunciated by the reason. Therefore, let us draw upon the forces of religion to drive home the lessons of philosophy, since after our brains have been con¬ vinced of what is wise and right, we shall still need a motive to dispose us to pursue it. And until the true conclusion has become “ operative in the minds and conduct of nations,” the most lucid and cogent logic in the world will be exercised in vain. 1 A. W. Rimington, The Conscience of Europe, 98. 292 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE Set up what League of Nations you choose, establish what system you like of limitation of armaments and arbitration of disputes, unless there is widespread among the peoples “ a will to peace,” and not a “ will to war,” they will all be as ineffective as building walls to shut out lightning. The truest word was spoken by Gold win Smith long ago, “ The only sure guarantee of peace is morality.” 1 II. The Influence of the Individual. 1. The man who is to be an influence on public opinion in favour of peace must himself be peaceable. Some of us can recall vividly the unpleasant shock we received when we came upon the new version of the angels’ song. “ On earth peace among men in whom he is well-pleased.” It seemed to substitute for a simple, flowing song a clumsy bit of prose. Yet it is in the new rendering that we find the real sense of what the angels proclaimed as the meaning of the coming of Christ. It was a great gift which had come to the world ; but it was not an outright gift of peace and goodwill, “ born in heaven and radiant here.” The song of the angels, and the Gospel of the Christ whose birth they sang, made clear the way of peace, how it could be gained and kept here on earth. It could come only among “ men of good pleasure,” men whose lives were pleasing to God, and men whose hearts were full of goodwill toward other men. “ Peace through goodwill ” — that is what the angels sang. Not peace the gift of God ; rather peace the fruit of God’s Spirit in the hearts of men ; peace the product of goodwill between man and man, and between man and God. The hearts of men must be purified, their minds enlarged, their wills changed ; love must be made the dominating force throughout the world’s life. There must be goodwill, with all which that implies, love in place of hate, patience instead of hasty resentment, confidence instead of suspicion, justice in place of exploitation ; the fear of being unjust must be stronger than the fear of being unjustly treated. Goodwill must become not merely an amiable sentiment, but an operative force, in the life of the world. If “ The Prince of Peace ” works, as at the first, through those 1 Sir Herbert Samuel, The War and Liberty, 125. WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 293 souls whom He has made His own. Through them He reaches and leavens the mass around. Any of us can contribute something to His work, or can refuse the contribution. And each soul that is at peace with itself and with God, works thereby for the cause of universal peace ; works for the harmony of the Church and of the world ; works for the credit and glory of the “ Prince of Peace.” 1 2. Whilst, then, the lovers of peace will do all that they can to promote the international use of every means offered for the maintenance of peace, and especially the League of Nations, yet the direct concern of our faith in Christ is not so much with expedients as with tempers and affections. And the properly Christian spirit, if it responds to the heavenly voice which is bidding it claim public affairs as one sphere of its duty, cannot fail to be a powerful influence in the promotion of international peace. In so far as his abilities and influence are of any value, the Christian man will throw them all, and on every occasion, on the side of peace, not because he is of necessity a peace-at-any-price man, but because he knows that the war passion is so strong in the world, and has such an immense backing amongst those who live by it and for it, that the help of every believer in peace is needed to produce anything like a balance of power between these forms of faith. Sane, reasonable, intelligent, the Christian will know that in opposing war he is opposing one of the strongest lusts of the human heart — the lust to kill. And he will expect no easy victory. All turns finally on the measure of justice and mercy which individuals acknowledge, and on the number of just and merciful men within the governing democracies of the civilized world ; and so Christianity, the religion of individual redemption, remains the sure hope of humanity, and the pledge of ultimate peace. Only where the Prince of Peace sets up His invisible but all- embracing Kingdom are the fierce and selfish rivalries of secular Powers held in check, and the fair potencies of human life dis¬ closed. Justly, then, did the Evangelist picture the coming of Jesus as the bringing of peace to the world. 3. What does this demand of us ? 1 H. P. Liddon, Advent in St. Paul’s, 2C9. 294 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE (1) First of all, Faith. We know how swiftly the prophets of world-peace have been compelled to bow to the inevitable. Facts have forced them regretfully to acknowledge that the war spirit is not dead. The Crystal Palace, that fragile monument to splendid hopes, had scarcely been erected when the spectre of war was abroad again in Europe and soldiers were being starved and poisoned to glut the greed of venal contractors. Kings, princes, and statesmen welcomed the conference at The Hague. It was to herald the dawning of a new era for the human race. And the cannon began to thunder over the African veldt and slaughter was abroad once more. Need we be surprised if this experience, so frequently repeated, should make men dubious of the time ever coming when the spear shall become the pruning- hook ? All honour, then, to the men who, amidst these repeated dis¬ couragements, have yet maintained unimpaired their faith in the ultimate victory of peace. True it is that Moltke spoke of their inspiration as a dream, and an ignoble dream. But those who have realized how deep is the need for peace are not at all ashamed of their cause, even in the presence of military statesmen. They know it to be indispensable for the solution of our vexed problems, the necessary prelude to that enfranchisement of the multitude which has become the day-star of the new democracy. If it be a dream that some day the masses of the world’s workers may live in concord with each other, at least it is not an ignoble dream. (2) It demands Education. We must educate public opinion, and especially in the knowledge of true glory and honour. We hear much of the glory to be obtained by the soldier who has learned how to scorn his life and seek for death. When we come to investigate it more closely the glory is apt to pale and become something much less alluring. Following in the track of Napoleon’s eagles across the Niemen, Chuquet puts it down as his deliberate opinion that soldiering is a convict’s trade. “ There is no admin¬ istration, as usual, and the army must live by plunder.” The peasants’ farms must bear the burden of this mighty mass of hungry men. Women and children must starve that the legions of an immortal robber may advance with full stomachs. These are the incidentals of war, the daily commonplaces to which the military man must accommodate himself as the robber of graves must WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 295 habituate himself to the contact with putrefying corpses. We do good service to humanity when we help men to understand what this ghastly trade really means, when we strip it of all its cheap gewgaws, its stupid flouncings, and show it forth to men as a hateful brigandage. (3) And above all Prayer. Pray always for Peace, as for the one and only life worth living. War tempts us horribly to accept it, to be preoccupied with its anxieties, to be dulled to its shame. We commit ourselves to it so rapidly : and then we become excited by its strange heroism, by its rare glories. This amazing outcome of self-sacrifice seems to us to justify it. We are fired by the ancient primitive passions. Peace has no such victories as these, we soon cry. After all, this is the old noble life. 4 4 Sound the trumpet ! blow the fife ! ” This temper rushes over us. And it is all wrong. Peace is life, not war. We witness to our own degradation, if we are unable to recognize or obey the law of sacrifice in any other form but that of War. It shows on how low a level we are living, if we cannot understand how to give our life for our brothers except at the cost of taking the life of someone else. If 44 War is Hell.” So all true soldiers tell us. So Sherman said, as Walt Whitman reminds us : 44 The people who like the wars should be compelled to fight the wars. They are hellish business — wars — all wars. I was in the midst of it — saw war where war is worst — not in the battlefield, but in the hospital.” 44 War is Hell.” We ought all to keep saying that to ourselves, deep down in our heart of hearts. 44 War is Hell.” Christ is the King of Peace. We stand with Christ, for peace and goodwill to all mankind. Goodwill towards Germany ! Peace with the good German people ! We look for nothing but that as our goal. God grant it swiftly ! 1 III. The Influence of the Church. 1. One of the purposes for which our Lord instituted the Christian Church was that it might exercise a distinct moral in¬ fluence on the society round it. Separate in idea from the world, 1 H. Scott Holland, So as by Fire , i. 120. 296 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE and at first separate from it in a great measure in fact, it was to be in tlie world, to touch the world, and to make great changes in it ; to attract and win and renew. It was to be a principle of health and freshness, the antagonist of corruption and decay. And it was to work, not at a distance, but by contact, by subtle and insensible forces, which combined with what they acted on and modified. The Kingdom of Heaven was to be like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. 2. Now Christianity stands for peace. It proclaims peace to be the natural and normal life of man. He is only fully himself when he is at peace. His inner being is social, and fulfils itself in brotherhood. Christ, the Prince of Peace, comes to consummate this brotherhood by making us all members one of another in the one Body, in which He has broken down all that separates and divides, and has constituted us all one organic unity in His perfect Humanity. All virtue, all excellence, all moral character, is determined by this condition. It issues out of the law by which the brotherhood coheres. It is governed by the one dominant standard rule, “ Be at peace with one another.” Whatever “ edifies,” whatever, that is, makes for the unity of the Body in peace with itself, is ethically good. Whatever divides the members from one another is for that reason stamped as evil. All conduct is to be framed on these lines of peace. All joy is to be sought in the unity of the Spirit. All strength is derived from the correlated co-operation of the functions by which the active Body is fed from a single source from whence, by joints and bands having nourish¬ ment ministered, it maketh “ increase to the edifying of itself in love.” Peace, then, is what Christ’s religion exists to create. It has always before it the vision of a life out of which all fear and wrath and hatred have passed away ; a life in which “ they do not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord ” ; a life in which every man at peace with his fellows shall live out his own peace, in his own way, under his own vine and his own fig tree, unmolested by tyranny or wrong, a life on which the hills would be for ever dropping the blessings of peace, and over all would bang the brooding peace of heaven. WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 297 If There is a Body represented in all the nations, yet in its essence supra-national, which ought to be able to lead the world in to the paths of peace. It is essentially catholic, a body of persons of all races and colours who are bound together in a brotherhood which should be more binding than any other link between human spirits. It stands for the supreme worth of the individual, and, therefore, for an ideal of society in which no supposed interest of nation or of group can be built upon the surrender of the freedom and inherent rights of the individual soul. It exists to bring in a Kingdom of Love by means which are wholly consistent with the spirit of love, and, therefore, to refuse to use any method which involves a denial of love. These three principles carry with them a condemnation of war and the war spirit. They cannot be uttered without our becoming conscious of the challenge to Chris¬ tianity which is inherent in war. It is by consistently main¬ taining these principles that the Church may yet lead the world into the Promised Land. Her watchword should be, in the words of Romain Holland, “ Above the Battlefield.” To his challenge we are bound to seek an answer. “ Can we not,” he says, “ sacrifice ourselves without sacrificing our neighbours as well % ” If, how¬ ever, for some supposed national interest, the Church is now silent in regard to those very principles which may help us to find the way to true peace, if, in giving them forth, she is unwilling to accept the full implications of loyalty to them, or if she urges a course of action which actually involves a denial of them, is it not clear that she thereby surrenders her right to utter them when the war is over, as the fundamental principles of a new world order ? 1 3. It is a truism that Christianity is a religion of peace. It is also a truism that Christians have often made it a religion of quarrels, persecutions, and bloodshed, and that custom makes us strangely insensible to the anomaly of a religion of peace com¬ patible with strife, tolerant of litigation, patient of war. The Church — not the world only, but the Church and Christian society — seems to have disappointed the hopes of Apostles, seems to have persisted in the path which the Prince of Peace came to lead it from. But, however God may allow His purposes to be crossed by the weakness and disobedience and perverseness of man, what we individually have to consider is, whether we will associate ourselves with what we know to be His voice, or whether we will 1 H. T. Hodgkin, in Christ and Peace, 14. 298 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE ignore it, neglect it, prefer to it ideals of our own, measures of right which are not His. 4. We have to consider then what it means to the Church that it is the custodian of this treasure, the body through which the Son of Man speaks His message of redemption. It is not as isolated individuals, but as members of a group organically con¬ nected with Christ Himself, through which circulates the sap of the living Vine, that we shall find as a people the answers that He would give us to the world’s pressing problems. It is only so that we shall make our best contribution to the work of the Universal Church. Are we preparing our young people with this conception of what Church membership means, and are we providing oppor¬ tunity for them to put their very best into this supreme task that lies before us ? Do our meetings for discipline face their duties in the light of this task, and devote as much time to the solution of these problems in the various localities as the urgency of the situation demands ? We must remember that to those outside who are moved by such aspirations it is organized Christianity, as seen in the life of the Churches, which seems to be unsympathetic or antagonistic. Individual Christians may be acknowledged to be exceptions. But the Church, which ought, in her corporate life, to embody and express the sympathy of her Lord for all man¬ kind, which ought to bring His message of comfort and hope, which ought to be filled to overflowing with His redeeming life — the Church it is which is weighed and found wanting. 5. To make its influence felt, against the mighty forces that are on the side of war, the Church must be united, both in will and in act. It must be true to itself. For the Church by its very nature transcends differences of nationality and race. Its members are united to one another not by natural bonds but by participation in a common Divine life. Sharing in this common life, they are members of one Body. This unity is more real and more funda¬ mental than ties of race or blood or political obligation. The tragedy is that the Church has failed to express, in the world of actual fact and experience, this essential unity of those who are in Christ. Because of this failure the Church had not the power to avert the recent catastrophe. WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 299 At this time, above all others, when the real meaning and calamity of the failure of the Church is patent to all, it is incumbent on Christians to return with a new conviction to the foundation principle of the Christian society. “ One is your teacher, and all ye are brethren.” “We, who are many, are one body in Christ.” It has been admitted that, in consequence of the failure of the Church in the past, it may be that, in the service of a cause which Christian men recognize to be binding on them, those who are brethren in Christ should have been compelled to shoot and stab one another. But this awful necessity must compel us to grasp more passionately the unity thus violated. Now, more than ever, the Church must affirm the truth on which its existence depends. And this it may do in two ways. (1) It may hold steadily before the minds of Christian people the fact that the unity which binds together those who are in Christ is a more fundamental and more important thing — something more deeply rooted in the heart of reality — than the national antagonisms that are now finding violent expression. They will pass ; it remains. As this conviction deepens within us, we shall seek for opportunities to give practical expression to the unity which is fundamental in our consciousness, but which everything around us appears to deny. The help that missionaries of the warring nationalities have been able to give to one another in the mission field is a notable illustration of what is meant. (2) Again, it is the duty of the Church to hold before the eyes of men the higher conception of nationality that it derives from its own ideal for human society. At no time has there been greater need for a voice speaking with the authority of God to remind men that all nations have their part to play in His plan — that all are needed for the building up of the body of Christ. The Church will be false to its own nature and genius, if in this crisis it allows its aims to become identified with an exclusively national cause. I remember an angry interview with an ecclesiastic in Berlin, a personal friend of the Kaiser, though for many years an ardent admirer of England. paced up and down the room with noiseless footsteps on a soft carpet. “It is no time for bland words ! ” he said. “ England has 3oo CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PEACE insulted us. Such acts are not to be tolerated by a great nation like ours. There is only one answer to them, and it is the answer of the sword ! ” I ventured to speak of Christian influences which should hold men back from the brutality of war. “ Surely the Church must always preach the gospel of peace ? Otherwise it is false to the spirit of Christ.” He believed that I intended to insult him, and in a little while he rang the bell for my dismissal.1 1 Philip Gibbs, The Soul of the War , 9. PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LTD EDINBURGH T. & T. CLARK’S PUBLICATIONS Sir W. ROBERTSON NICOLL says: ‘V/e cannot praise too highly the unper - turbed courage with which Dr. Hastings pursues his mighty task. The ability and knowledge which have gone to the making of these Dictionaries are astounding .’ TWELVE VOLUMES NOW PUBLISHED. (An Index Volume is in preparation.) Encyclopaedia o! Religion and Ethics EDITED BY Dr. JAMES HASTINGS. THE purpose of this Encyclopaedia is to give a complete account of Religion and Ethics so far as they are known. It contains articles on every separate religious belief and practice, and on every ethical or philosophical idea and custom. Persons and places that have contributed to the Plistory of religion and morals are also described. The Encyclopaedia covers a distinct department of knowledge. It is the department which has always exercised the greatest influence over men’s lives, and its interest at least, if not its influence, is probably greater at the present time than ever. Within the scope of ‘ Religion and Ethics ’ come all the questions that are most keenly debated in Psychology and in Socialism, while the title is used to embrace the whole of Theology and Philosophy. Ethics and Morality are handled as thoroughly as Religion. Vol. I. A — Art. ,, II. Arthur — Bunyan. ,, III. Burial — Confessions. ,, IV. Confirmation — Drama. ,, V. Dravidians — Fichte. ,, VI. Fiction — Hyksos. Vol. VII. Hymns — Liberty. „ VIII. Life— Mulla. ,, IX. Mundas— Phrygians. ,, X. Piets — Sacraments. ,, XI. Sacrifice— Sudra. ,, XII. Suffering — Zwingli. In Half- Morocco Binding (price on application). In Cloth, per volume, 35s* Each Volume contains over 900 pages, double columns. Size ii£" X 9". A clergyman who recently received a gift of this Work writes as follows : — ‘ I really do not know how to express what I feel with regard to this simply magnificent gift. It is a perfect treasure — an inexhaustible gold mine. I find it much wider in its scope and more masterly than I had expected. It is the most adequate thing which I have on my shelves, and it ought really to have been there before now.' ‘ The general result of our examination enables us to say that the editor has risen to the height of his great undertaking. The work deserves the fullest and best encouragement which the world of readers and investigators can give it.’ — Athenctum. ‘ A superb achievement . . . bound to occupy a unique position in the scholarly world for many a long day to come. For all relating to comparative religion there is absolutely no other publication that even attempts to cover the ground as this does, and no serious student, in this department especially, can afford to be without these volumes. There is no other work that can compare with it, in any language.’ — Scotsman. A full Prospectus may be had on application. T. & T. CLARK’S PUBLICATIONS Edited by JAMES HASTINGS, M.A., D.D. With the assistance of Prof. JOHN A. SELBIE, M.A., D.D. Complete, IN FIVE VOLUMES, with full Indexes. 'In its five volumes we possess a splendid — nay, an unsurpassed — thesaurus of biblical learning.’— Record. Dictionary of the Bible Dealing with 3ts language, literature, ant) Contents, Including the Biblical Theology . WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. Price per Volume- In Cloth, 26s. net. In Half- Morocco («) Dark Purple- Original Issue. Price on application. Complete Sets may also be had in other Halt-Morocco Bindings as detailed opposite. Size of Volumes, 11 by inches; Total Number of Pages = 4630 Other styles of Half-Morocco Bindings are— (6) Maroon Levant Marbled Edges (c) Light Brown Marbled Edges (d) Olive-Green Polished Gilt Top (e) Maroon Polished Gilt Edges Prices for same may be had on application. This great work has taken its place, as 'The Times' says, as ‘the standard authority for biblical students of the present generation.’ In this country and America, in the Colonies, and even among people of other languages and of various creeds, it is in constant demand. The Guardian says : ‘ We have no hesitation in recommending Hastings’ Dictionary to students of the Bible as the best work of its kind which exists in English.’ The Methodist Recorder says : ‘ It is far away in advance of any other Bible Dictionary that has ever been published, in real usefulness for preachers, Bible students, and teachers.’ The Bookman says : ‘ This Dictionary sprang into fame with its first volume, and its reputation has been growing ever since. For scholarship, temper, and judgment combined, we have nothing else equal to it in English.’ * » Full Prospectus, with Specimen Pages, free on application. T. & T. CLARK’S PUBLICATIONS Edited by Dr. JAMES HASTINGS. A Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels In Two Vols. Price per Vol., in cloth binding, 26s, In half-morocco, gilt top ( Price on application ). The purpose of this Dictionary is to give an account of everything that relates to Christ — His Person, Life, Work, and Teaching. ‘A triumphant and unqualified success. Indispensable to ministers and Bible students.’ — Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, LL.D. * The preacher’s purpose is better served than it has ever been before.’ — Times. ‘ No more useful present could be made to a young clergyman than a copy of this admirable work. The articles are by competent and scholarly writers, and are full of information and suggestiveness.’ — Guardian. A Dictionary of The Apostolic Church In Two Volumes. Price per volume, 26s., in cloth binding. In half-morocco ( Price on application). It has often been said that the ‘ Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels’ is of more practical value than a Dictionary of the Bible. And from all parts of the world has come the request that what that Dictionary has done for the Gospels another should do for the rest of the New Testament. The ‘Dictionary of the Apostolic Church’ is the answer. It carries the history of the Church as far as the end of the first century. Together with the ‘ Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels’ it forms a complete and independent Dictionary of the New Testament. Dictionary of the Bible COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME Crown quarto, 1008 Pages, with Four Maps, price 24s. In half-leather binding ( Price on application ). This Dictionary is entirely distinct from the Five-Volume Dictionary, it brings the contents of the Bible, in accordance with present scholarship, within reach of those who have not the means to buy or the knowledge to use the larger Work. It contains no Hebrew or Greek except in transliteration. 1 A very fine achievement, worthy to stand beside his larger Dictionaries, and by far the most scholarly yet produced in one volume, in English-speaking countries, perhaps it may be said in the world.’ — Christian World. 1 For presentation and library purposes the book outstrips all its rivals, and its closely packed pages are a perfect mine for teachers and ministers.’ — Sunday School Chronicle. Detailed Prospectus, with Specimen Pages, of the above Works free. % T T. & T. CLARK’S PUBLICATIONS ‘The Scholar as Preacher’ Series These volumes are carefully chosen. They are chosen because their authors are scholars as well as preachers , for the suggestiveness of their thought, and because they are saturated with the most promising ideas of the present day. ‘ SUB CORONA.’ Sermons by Principals Sir G. A. Smith, Denney, Iverach, Stewart ; Professors W. P. Paterson, Stalker, Cooper, Curtis, Cairns, MacEwen, McFadyen, Mackintosh, Milligan, Selbie, Reid, Nicol, Kay, Gilroy, and the Bishop of Aberdeen. 7s. THE EYE FOR SPIRITUAL THINGS. Prof. H. M. Gwatkin, D.D. 7s. THE SACRIFICE OF THANKFULNESS. Prof. H. M. Gwatkin| D.D. 7s. THE GOSPEL OF GLADNESS. John Clifford, D.D. 7s. THE SEER’S HOUSE. James Rutherford, D.D. 7s. FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE. Dean W. R. Inge, D.D. 7s. CHRISTUS IN ECCLESIA. Hastings Rashdall, D.C.L. 7s. JESUS CHRIST THE SON OF GOD. Prof. W. M. Macgregor, D.D. 7s. SOME OF GOD’S MINISTRIES. Prof. W. M. Macgregor, D.D. 7s! CHRIST AND CHRIST’S RELIGION. F. Homes Dudden, D.D. 7s. THE PROGRESS OF REVELATION. Canon G. A. Cooke, D.D. 7s. AT THE TEMPLE CHURCH. H. G. Woods, D.D. 7s. A DISCIPLE’S RELIGION. Archdeacon W. H. Hutton, B.D. 7s. BREAD AND SALT FROM THE WORD OF GOD. Prof. Th. Zahn. 7s. IN THE DAY OF THE ORDEAL. By Prof. W. P. Paterson, D.D. 7s*. THE MASTER’S COMFORT AND HOPE. By Principal A. E. Garvie, D.D. 7s. New Series — THE GOSPEL IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. Canon C. F. Burney, D.D. 12s. The Expository Times Edited by James Hastings, M.A., D.D., The purpose of THE EXPOSITORY TIMES Is to record the results of the best study of the Bible in the present day, in an interesting and practically useful form ; and to stimulate and guide both Ministers and Laymen towards a fuller, more accurate, more fruitful study of the same Inexhaustibly precious library. MONTHLY, PRICE 10d. ANNUAL PREPAID SUBSCRIPTION (postage included), 11/6. (The Volume begins with the October Number each year.) Complete Yolumes, In cloth binding:, 12s. net. INDEX Volume (covering: Vols. I. to XX.— 1889 to 1909). 6s. Prof. J. M. Shaw says : ‘ The Expository Times is a periodical which, from the stimulating suggestiveness of its editorial, expository, and critical notes, its contribu¬ tions from the pen of foremost writers in different countries, and its reviews of current religious and theological literature, soon established itself as the most up-to-date and helpful preacher’s magazine in the English language.’ ‘Dr. Hastings has made The Expository Times the best preacher’s monthly magazine we have. . . . The scholar and the ordinary pastor will find rich material here.’ — London Quarterly Review. *#* A Specimen Copy of the Magazine will be sent free on application to the Publishers. T. & T. CLARK’S PUBLICATIONS Edited by JAMES HASTINGS, D.D. The Great Texts of the Bible Complete in Twenty Volumes. GENESIS to NUMBERS DEUTERONOMY to ESTHER JOB to PSALM 23 PSALMS 24 to 1 19 PSALM 1 19 to SONG OP SONGS ISAIAH JEREMIAH to MALACH1 ST. MATTHEW ST. MARK ST. LUKE. Index Volume, 6s. extra. Any Four Volumes (no duplicates) for 28s. (Inland postage, is. 3d. extra; Foreign postage, 2s. extra). If less than four Volumes are desired, the price is IOS. per Volume. The Preacher who uses this invaluable homiletic production has at command materials and suggestions for an endless Series of Sermons and Discourses. Price (without Index Vol.), £7. ST. JOHN 1 to 12 ST. JOHN 13 to 21 ACTS and ROMANS i to 8 ROMANS 8 to 1 6 I. CORINTHIANS II. CORINTHIANS and GALATIANS EPHESIANS and COLOSSIANS THESSALONIANS to HEBREWS JAMES to JUDE REVELATION The Greater Men and Women of the Bible Complete in Six Volumes. Vol. I. ADAM to JOSEPH Vol. II. MOSES to SAMSON Vol. HI. RUTH to NAAMAN Vol. IV. HEZEKIAH to MALACHI Vol. V. MARY to SIMON Vol. VI. LUKE to TITUS Price for the Complete Work, 42s. (Foreign postage, 4s. extra). *** If the complete Series is not subscribed, for, the Volumes can only be had at the rate of IOS. each. The Series deals with all the Greater Men and Women of the Bible. The character of each individual is carefully drawn, the leading events in their lives described, and every feature and event illustrated from modern literature. The Children’s Great Texts of the Bible Complete in Six Volumes. Price 9s. per volume. The immediate and continued success which attended the publication of Dr. Hastings’ Series ‘ The Great Texts of the Bible ’ and the repeated demands for a similar series to meet the requirements of work for the young have induced the Publishers to issue this new Series. They are confident that it will be found as indispensable as its predecessors, and that it will appeal to even a wider circle, as it will be of value to parents and teachers, and a guide to children. Vol. I. GENESIS to JOSHUA Vol. II. JUDGES to JOB Vol. III. PSALMS to ISAIAH Vol. IY. JEREMIAH to MATTHEW Vol. Y. MARK to JOHN Vol. YI. ACTS to REVELATION Full Prospectuses of these Series free on application T. & T. CLARK’S PUBLICATIONS The International Theological Library ‘ A Series which has won a distinct place in theological literature by precision of workmanship and quite remarkable completeness of treatment.’ — Literary World . VOLUMES NOW PUBLISHED. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. Prof. S. R. Driver, D.D. 15s. CHRISTIAN ETHICS. Newman Smyth, D.D. 14s. APOLOGETICS; OR, CHRISTIANITY DEFENSIVELY STATED. Prof. A. B. Bruce, D.D. 12s. HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. Prof. G. P. Fisher, D.D., LL.D. 14s. A HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE. Prof. A. C. McGiffert, Ph.D., D.D. 14s. CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. Prof. A. V. G. Allen, D.D. 14s. THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR AND THE WORKING CHURCH. Washington Gladden, D.D., LL.D. 12s. CANON AND TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Prof. Caspar Rene Gregory, D.D., LL.D. 14s. THE THEOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Prof. G. B. Stevens, D.D. 14s. THE ANCIENT CATHOLIC CHURCH (A.D. 98-451). Principal R. Rainy, D.D. 14s. THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES. Principal W. F. Adeney, D.D. 14s. OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. Prof. H. P. Smith, D.D. 14s. THE THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. Prof. A. B. Davidson, D.D., LL.D. 14s. THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SALVATION. Prof. G. B. Stevens, D.D. 14s. HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. Principal T. M. Lindsay, D.D. Vol. I. The Reformation in Germany. 12s. Vol. II. In Lands beyond Germany. 12s. THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF GOD. Prof. W. N. Clarke, D.D. 12s. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Prof. James Moffatt, D.D. 15s. THE DOCTRINE OF THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. Prof. H. R. Mackintosh, D.Phil., D.D. 14s. THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. Principal George Galloway, D.Phil., D.D. 15s. THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS. Two Volumes. Prof. George F. Moore, D.D. each 14s. THEOLOGICAL SYMBOLICS. Prof. C. A. Briggs, D.D. 12s. THE LATIN CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES. Andr£ Lagarde. 14s. A HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. Canon C. H. Robinson, D.D. 12s. THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. Principal A. E. Garvie, D.D. 18s. T. & T. CLARK’S PUBLICATIONS The International Critical Commentary * Scarcely higher praise can be afforded to a volume than by the statement that it is well worthy of the “ International Critical Commentary ” Series.’ — Church Quarterly Review. IPMFQIQ VOLUMES NOW PUBLISHED. Principal John Skinner, D.D. 14s. NUMBERS. Prof. G. Buchanan Gray, D.D. 14s. DEUTERONOMY. Prof. S. R. Driver, D.D. Third Edition. 14s. JUDGES. Prof. G. F. Moore, D.D. Second Edition. 14s. SAMUEL I. and II. Prof. H. P. Smith, D.D. 14s. CHRONICLES I. and II. Prof. E. L. Curtis, D.D. 14s. EZRA AND NEHEMIAH. Prof. L. W. Batten, D.D. 12s. ESTHER, Prof. L. B. Paton, Ph.D. 12s. JOB, Prof. S. R. Driver, D.D., and Prof. G. Buchanan Gray, D.D. 35s. PSALMS. Prof. C. A. Briggs, D.D. Two Vols. each 12s. PROVERBS. Prof. C. H. Toy, D.D. 14s. ECCLESIASTES. Prof. G. A. Barton, Ph.D. 12s. ISAIAH. Vol. 1 (Ch. i.-xxvii.). Prof. G. Buchanan Gray, D.D., D.Litt. 14s. AMOS AND HOSEA. President W. R. Harper, Ph.D. 14s. MICAH, ZEPHANIAH, AND NAHUM, Prof. J. M. P. Smith; HABAKKUK, Prof. W. H. Ward; and OBADIAH AND JOEL, Prof. J. A. Bewer. One Vol. 14s. HAGGAI, ZECHARIAH, Prof. H. G. Mitchell ; MALACHI, Prof. J. M. P. Smith ; and JONAH, Prof. J. A. Bewer. 14s. ST. MATTHEW. Principal W. C. Allen, M.A. Third Edition. 14s. ST. MARK. Prof. E. P. Gould, D.D. 12s. ST. LUKE. Alfred Plummer, D.D. Fourth Edition. 14s. ROMANS. Prof. W. Sanday, D.D., and A. C. Headlam, D.D. Fifth Ed. 14s. I. CORINTHIANS. The Bishop of Exeter and Dr. A. Plummer. Second Ed. 14s. II. CORINTHIANS. Alfred Plummer, D.D. 14s* GALATIANS, Prof. E. D. Burton. 35s- EPHESIANS AND COLOSSIANS. Prof. T. K. Abbott, D.Litt. 12s. PHILIPPIANS AND PHILEMON. Prof. M. R. Vincent, D.D. I2S. THESSALONIANS. Prof. J. E. Frame, M.A. I2s. ST. PETER AND ST. JUDE. Prof. Chas. Bigg, D.D. Second Edition. I2S* ST. JAMES Prof. J. H. Ropes, D.D. 12s. THE JOHANNINE EPISTLES. A. E. Brooke, D.D. I2S- REVELATION. Archdeacon R, H. Charles, D.Litt., D.D. 2 Vols. each 20s. Date Due ) r 2 6 ’40 * iMawtawK te 5 ’4c i _ ~TET FE 4 ’5: ! JA 1 1 '<54 JAN 2 1 ’8§ ' m- i fm ■ Wt« . . Jvnv a raa. w f^c-h- — - -■.fii.tfti- — - * JUL _: J~'. A. "'^^SWiBBBPWPI <$> .'I * <} " 1 * . 4. ■ ' ; * •* ' » / ft