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THE TWENTIETH 
 CENTURY CRUSADE 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 MBW YORK • BOSTON ■ CHICAGO • DALLAS 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE TWENTIETH 
 CENTURY CRUSADE 
 
 BY 
 
 LYMAN ABBOTT 
 
 
 A crusade to make this world 
 a home in which God's children 
 can live in peace and safety is more 
 Christian than a crusade to recover 
 from pagans the tomb in which 
 the body of Christ was buried. 
 
 Il3eto gotfe 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 
 A.U rights reserved 
 
Copyright. 1918 
 
 bt the macmillan company 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1918. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE THREE CROSSES 
 
 And when they came unto the place which is called 
 " The Skull," there they crucified him, and the male- 
 factors, one on the right hand and the other on the 
 left.^ 
 
 Three crosses; three sufferers, con- 
 demned to death by the courts of their coun- 
 try; suffering the same physical pains; the 
 same oriental sun beating on their naked 
 bodies; the same fever burning in their veins, 
 the same throbbing anguish in their limbs and 
 heads. 
 
 And the three all suffering spiritual pains; 
 but how different ! One of them a criminal 
 whose life had been spent In violation of law 
 and who to the end was defiant of God and 
 man, resentful, angry, with all the torment of 
 a defeated will and a remorseful but unrepent- 
 ant conscience. The second, looking back 
 on a worse than wasted life, longing to go 
 back and live that life over again, the ghosts 
 of his victims passing before him, the 
 panorama of his evil deeds unrolled before 
 
 ^ The Scripture references throughout this volume are 
 generally taken from the American Standard Version. 
 V 
 
vi Introduction 
 
 him, a glimmering hope somehow stirred In 
 his heart by the patient sufferer at his side. 
 The third, condemned for " Love to the love- 
 less shown," bearing the burdens of the whole 
 world, feeling the shame of the whole world, 
 suffering for the sins of the whole world, 
 wounded more by the hate of the malignant 
 priests than by the nails driven through his 
 hands and feet. 
 
 There are to-day in Europe three crosses, 
 and three groups of sufferers. There is the 
 brigand — brigand on the land and pirate on 
 the seas — unrepentant, self-satisfied, self- 
 willed, with all the bitterness of a defeated 
 will and a fiery wrath burning within him. 
 He has broken alike the laws of God and 
 man. " Thou shalt not steal." He has 
 robbed and plundered nations of their coal 
 and iron, banks of their money, houses of 
 their pictures and statues, and what he could 
 not carry off he has In mere wantonness de- 
 stroyed. " Thou shalt not kill." ^ He has 
 murdered innocent women and children by 
 the score. The score? by the thousand. 
 " Thou shalt not commit adultery." He has 
 sanctioned, if he did not direct, rape on a 
 magnitude never before known in the history 
 of the civilized world. 
 
 There Is another cross, the cross of those 
 who have sinned and have abandoned their 
 
Introduction vii 
 
 sins. For the Germans were not the only 
 people who have exploited the poor for their 
 own benefit. Warren Hastings and Lord 
 Clive wrote on the pages of India more than 
 a hundred years ago a history which England 
 would gladly tear out from her records if she 
 could. The late king of Belgium is crowned 
 with dishonor by the crimes committed in the 
 Congo which his noble nephew has done so 
 much to efface since by his self-sacrifice. Nor 
 can we claim in America to be wholly in- 
 nocent. It is true we have seized no man's 
 territory. We won Cuba from Spain and 
 gave it back to the Cubans; we won Porto 
 Rico from Spain and gave it back to the Porto 
 Ricans, making them our fellow-citizens and 
 returning to them what we received from 
 them in taxes; we won the Philippines from 
 Spain, paying Spain for all her own property 
 In the island, providing the money necessary 
 to recompense the friars for their lands, and 
 now we are giving the island back to the 
 Filipinos as fast as we can. But we are not 
 wholly innocent. The auction block has gone 
 from the South and no man wishes to bring 
 it back. The schoolhouse Is gradually re- 
 placing the wigwam, though far too slowly. 
 But the slums still remain in our great cities, 
 though, thank God, there are political reform- 
 ers and social settlement workers and de- 
 voted Christians who are doing what they 
 
viii Introduction 
 
 can, despite obstacles and opposition, to ban- 
 ish those crimes against humanity from our 
 civihzation. 
 
 There is a third cross. There are no sin- 
 less ones, but there are thousands, yes ! hun- 
 dreds of thousands of men and women who 
 are laying down their lives for crimes in 
 which they had no share and which never had 
 their approval, who have never exploited the 
 poor or been deaf to the cry of the needy, 
 who have found in this war simply a new op- 
 portunity^for the unselfish service of their fel- 
 low-men, who looking back on their past life 
 might say with Job : 
 
 I delivered the poor that cried, 
 
 The fatherless also, that had none to help him. 
 
 The blessing of him that was ready to perish came 
 
 upon me ; 
 And I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. 
 I was eyes to the blind, 
 And feet was I to the lame. 
 I was a father to the needy : 
 And the cause of him that I knew not I searched 
 
 out. 
 
 They are working in the hospitals at the peril 
 of their lives. They are sailing the sea and 
 defying the torpedo boats. They are serving 
 in the trenches. They are flying in the air- 
 planes. They are laying down their lives 
 for their fellow-men. 
 
Introduction ix 
 
 These are the three crosses: the cross of 
 the unrepentant, bitter, wrathful brigand; the 
 cross of the repentant sinner; the cross of the 
 men and women who are suffering for sins 
 they never committed — for sins for which 
 they have no responsibility. 
 
 Why? Why do Innocent men suffer for 
 the crimes of the guilty? 
 
 Because it Is eternally true, that without 
 the shedding of blood there Is no remission of 
 sins; because we live In a world which Is a 
 battlefield, in which righteousness and wick- 
 edness, truth and error, liberty and des- 
 potism, justice and injustice are in perpetual 
 battle one against the other. And there is 
 no way in which the falsehood, the despotism, 
 the injustice, can be overthrown, unless there 
 are men and women willing to suffer for the 
 sins they have never committed; to make sac- 
 rifices that by their sacrifice they may give the 
 life which others are destroying. 
 
 In paganism the gods are feared. In 
 paganism sacrifices are offered to the gods to 
 win from them a reluctant forgiveness, to ap- 
 pease their wrath, or to satisfy their law. 
 Jesus Christ teaches that man is not to offer 
 a sacrifice to God. God offers sacrifice to 
 man. The New Testament is radiant with 
 that message: ''God so loved the world 
 that he gave his only begotten son." He is 
 the author of the sacrifice. " Herein is love, 
 
X Introduction 
 
 not that we loved God, but that he loved us, 
 and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our 
 sins." He is the sacrifice. " He laid down 
 his life for us and we ought to lay down our 
 lives for the brethren." His sacrifice in- 
 spires us to a like sacrifice. 
 
 Jesus portrays God as a good shepherd. 
 He listens to the crying of the lambs and goes 
 out into the wilderness that he may bring the 
 wanderers back again and when he sees the 
 wolf coming imperils his life, fighting the wolf 
 that he may save the sheep. Jesus portrays 
 God as a father, bearing in his soul the sin 
 and shame of the wicked son, going forth to 
 greet him and bring him back to the home 
 again when the son's face is turned in pen- 
 itence toward him. God oflfers himself a 
 sacrifice to man. 
 
 And what the Bible teaches, life teaches. 
 The repentant thief did not suffer sacrifice 
 that he might win forgiveness from the 
 Savior. Jesus, by self-sacrifice inspired re- 
 pentance and the hope of a better life in the 
 brigand at his side. The child does not win 
 a reluctant forgiveness from the mother. 
 The tears, the prayers, the heart-breakings 
 of the mother win the child back from his evil 
 doings to his home once more. A pagan 
 community does not, by its sacrifice, win the 
 missionary. The missionary sacrifices wealth 
 and comfort and home that he may win the 
 
Introduction xi 
 
 pagans abroad or In our own land to a better 
 life. The sufferings of a country do not ap- 
 pease the wrath or win the love of the patriot, 
 but never in the history of mankind has a 
 country been saved from corruption unless 
 there were some patriots that were willing to 
 suffer for it. 
 
 This book is written for those who are 
 sharing In the great sacrifice in this world's 
 Golgotha. Whether they recognize Jesus 
 Christ as their leader or not, whether they 
 are Roman Catholics or Protestants, believ- 
 ers or agnostics. Christians or Jews, they have 
 taken up their cross and are following him; 
 they are laying down their lives for their un- 
 known kinsmen beyond the sea. It Is written 
 not only for the soldiers In the air. In the field, 
 or on the sea, not only for the wounded in the 
 hospitals, the maimed and handicapped re- 
 turning home, and the dying slipping away to 
 their long home through death's bright portal, 
 but for the fathers and mothers who have 
 caught the spirit of the All-Father and have 
 given a son or a daughter, perhaps more than 
 one, that the world may be saved by love's 
 greatest sacrifice. 
 
 I have some reason to believe that what I 
 have been saying during the last four years 
 In sermon and article has thrown some light 
 on the path through the strange confusions of 
 thought and perplexities of conscience which 
 
xii Introduction 
 
 have troubled noble spirits. I hope that this 
 little book, in which free use is made of these 
 previous utterances, may render a like serv- 
 ice to another and perhaps a larger circle of 
 readers. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction — The Three Crosses . . v 
 
 First Letter — Perplexities .... 3 
 
 Second Letter — The Battle of Life . 12 
 
 Third Letter — The Peacemakers . . 25 
 
 Fourth Letter — The Old Gospel . . 36 
 
 Fifth Letter — " We Glory in Tribula- 
 tions " 50 
 
 Sixth Letter — " The Republic of God " 61 
 
 Seventh Letter — Christ's Peace . . 76 
 
 Eighth Letter — " Show Me Thy Paths, 
 
 O Lord" 91 
 
 Ninth Letter — Coronation .... loi 
 
THE TWENTIETH 
 CENTURY CRUSADE 
 
The Twentieth Century 
 Crusade 
 
 FIRST LETTER 
 
 PERPLEXITIES 
 
 So your son has sailed from some port in 
 the United States to some port in France. 
 The last farewells have been given though 
 the last tears have not been shed. There 
 are some homesick hours before him. There 
 are many anxious hours before you. And 
 whether he will come back to be your com- 
 panion and perhaps your guardian and sup- 
 port, or come back a perpetual invalid to be 
 the object of your nursing solicitude, or never 
 come back, accounted for only among '' the 
 missing," you cannot know. Believe me that 
 I am fully conscious of what this sacrifice 
 means to you and to him. And yet I am writ- 
 ing this letter not to condole with you but to 
 congratulate you. 
 
 I remember that you have hanging in your 
 
4 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 hall a sword of which you are the proud pos- 
 sessor. It was worn by your great-grand- 
 father as a captain, If I recall aright, at the 
 battle of Bunker Hill. It entitles you to the 
 honorable title of Daughter of the Revolu- 
 tion — or Is it Daughter of the American 
 Revolution? I am afraid I have not a clear 
 idea of the difference between these sister 
 societies. 
 
 I think you are much more to be con- 
 gratulated on being the mother of your son 
 than on being the great-grand-daughter of 
 your great-grandfather; on being one of the 
 mothers of the present war to make the world 
 safe for democracy, than on being one of the 
 daughters of the American Revolution. For 
 you could not avoid being a daughter of the 
 American Revolution, but It is your clear 
 vision and your womanly courage which has 
 made you a mother of the war to make the 
 jvorld safe from the Hun. 
 
 If you could only be sure that you have 
 decided rightly and that your son has acted 
 rightly! But there Is no perplexity so hard 
 to bear as that of a perplexed conscience. 
 And in the tangle of contradictory reports 
 and conflicting opinions respecting this present 
 war you are not always sure. You would 
 accept my congratulations with a better heart 
 if you could only be as clear respecting the is- 
 
Perplexities 5 
 
 sues of 19 1 8 as you are of the issues of 1776. 
 Edwin Austin Abbey 2nd in the letters of "A 
 Gentleman Unafraid," published in the At- 
 lantic Monthly of April, 19 18, puts this per- 
 plexity with admirable clearness: *' Honor 
 demands that we enter the war, humanity that 
 we stay out." I think this perplexity has as- 
 sailed the mothers more than the sons. For 
 the maternal solicitude of the mother re- 
 enforces the claims of humanity, and the glory 
 of achievement in the son reenforces the 
 claims of honor. 
 
 But you are mistaken if you imagine that 
 the issue was clearer to the men and women 
 of 1776 than it is to the men and women of 
 19 1 8. It is always easy to determine the 
 path of duty when history has interpreted the 
 enigmatical events, but always difficult while 
 we are in the midst of these events; as it was 
 difficult for the early explorers to decide 
 whether the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf 
 of Mexico or into the Pacific Ocean, while 
 now we wonder at their doubts. 
 
 In 1776 there were conscientious objectors 
 who believed that all war is wrong and who 
 affirmed their conviction that " the setting up 
 and putting down kings and governments is 
 God's peculiar prerogative for causes best 
 known to himself, and it is not our business 
 to have any hand or contrivance therein." 
 
6 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 There were English-Americans then as there 
 are German-Americans now: and they had an 
 excuse if not a justification for adhering to 
 the cause of their mother country then, while 
 German-Americans have neither justification 
 nor excuse for violating the oath abjuring 
 their loyalty to their Fatherland which they 
 took at the time of their naturalization as 
 American citizens. Other Americans, who 
 had no doubt that their allegiance was due to 
 the Colonies rather than to the Mother coun- 
 try, opposed the war for independence as a 
 foolish and fanatical venture sure to end in 
 disastrous failure. And Samuel Johnson, the 
 foremost Anglo-Saxon moralist of his time, 
 wrote a long and able paper to prove that 
 taxation without representation is not tyranny 
 and that the only remedy for the springing re- 
 volt in the Colonies would be found when the 
 Americans were " reduced to obedience," an 
 obedience " secured by stricter laws and 
 stronger obligations." 
 
 I honor your son as I honor your great- 
 grandfather, not merely because he had the 
 courage to offer his life in the service of a 
 world-wide liberty, but no less because in a 
 time of great perplexity he had the clearness 
 of vision to perceive in which direction the 
 path of duty lies. 
 
 Your father, I remember, was wounded at 
 
Perplexities 7 
 
 Gettysburg and never wholly recovered from 
 the effects of his campaigning. He had in- 
 herited from his grandfather the spirit of 
 vision and courage. The issue in 1850 when 
 the compromise measures were passed was 
 complicated and perplexing — insoluble to 
 one accustomed to judge the moral value of 
 action by the probable consequences. Samuel 
 J. Tilden was a man of high principle and re- 
 markably clear political intelligence. Up to 
 1850 he had been an anti-slavery man. He 
 never became a pro-slavery man. But he 
 foresaw that insistence on the Constitutional 
 right of the Nation to prohibit the extension 
 of slavery would inevitably bring on civil war, 
 and he was sure that civil war would result 
 either in a dissolution of the Union or in the 
 government of a defeated South by a victor- 
 ious North — a condition absolutely incom- 
 patible with either true liberty or a true union 
 of the States. Abraham Lincoln cut through 
 all such arguments of philosophers who meas- 
 ured moral principles by anticipated results. 
 If, he said in his Cooper Union speech, slav- 
 ery is right, we ought to do all that the South 
 asks of us. If slavery is wrong, we have no 
 right to fasten it upon territories for the gov- 
 ernment of which we are responsible. I am 
 quoting not his words, but interpreting his 
 spirit. From that position he never for a 
 
8 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 moment wavered and in his second Inaugural 
 address repeated it in one of the most elo- 
 quent sentences he ever uttered : "Fondly do 
 we hope, fervently do we pray, that this 
 mighty scourge of war may speedily pass 
 away. Yet if God wills that it continue until 
 all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two 
 hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall 
 be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn 
 with the lash shall be paid by another drawn 
 by the sword, as was said three thousand 
 years ago, so still it must be said, that the 
 judgments of the Lord are true and righteous 
 altogether." 
 
 I honor your boy as I honor your father 
 and as I honor Abraham Lincoln, not merely 
 because he has the courage of his convictions 
 and has sought the privilege of offering his 
 life for the life of the world, but because he 
 sees so clearly that compromise with murder, 
 robbery and rape would make the Nation ac- 
 cessory in those crimes and that honor and 
 humanity unite in demanding of the men of 
 America that they enter this war. To have 
 stayed out would have been to go down to 
 history with the inscription of Ephraim on 
 our tomb : 
 
 The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying 
 
 bows, 
 Turned back in the day of battle. 
 
Perplexities 9 
 
 Whether your son comes back, or is 
 brought back maimed, or is buried in an un- 
 known grave in a foreign land, I congratulate 
 you on having such a son with so clear a 
 vision and so steady a heart. The remem- 
 brance of a brave son is better than the com- 
 panionship of a cowardly one. And I con- 
 gratulate you that you have brought up your 
 boy to be such a soldier in such a war as this. 
 Louder than addresses, sermons, editorials, 
 or Presidential messages are the actions of 
 our brave young men summoning the Nation 
 to its solemn duty : 
 
 Be not deaf to the sound that warns, 
 Be not gull'd by a despot's plea! 
 Are figs of thistles? or grapes of thorns? 
 How can a despot feel with the Free? 
 Form, form, Riflemen, form! 
 Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen, form! 
 
 These lines were written by one of Eng^ 
 land's greatest poets. But it is greater to 
 live poetry than to write it; the heroic life is 
 more eloquent than the poet's summons to 
 heroism. It is a cause for profound grati- 
 tude that your heavenly Father has given you 
 a son who could not be deceived by the pleas 
 of a placid pacifism, who could not be per- 
 suaded that to acquiesce in monstrous crime 
 is to follow Jesus Christ. 
 
lo The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 As this war goes on and the American 
 casualties increase, the tragedy of It will be 
 more and more impressed upon us, and more 
 and more we shall realize the meaning of 
 Sherman's oft quoted sentence, " War is 
 hell." Against the temptation to seek peace 
 hy compromise with wickedness which this 
 y tragedy will bring with It, we need to fortify 
 ourselves by an unassailable conviction that 
 there are experiences which, If permitted, 
 would be worse than hell. If this were not 
 so, a just God would never allow hell to exist. 
 The Massacre of St. Bartholomew was worse 
 than the war bravely fought by the Nether- 
 landers to defend their country from Spanish 
 despotism. The massacre of the unresist- 
 ing Jews by the Russians was worse than the 
 Russo-Japanese War. The massacre of the 
 unresisting Armenians by the Turks was 
 worse than the Crimean War. Crime un- 
 punished, unrestrained, unprevented; crim- 
 inals uncured; greed, cruelty, malice, allowed 
 to riot unchecked ; purity and innocence unpro- 
 tected from rapacity and lust: these are infi- 
 nitely worse than the hell which Jonathan 
 Edwards, Milton, and Dante portrayed. 
 Your son has joined the noble army of patri- 
 ots who In all epochs have been found ready 
 to give their lives in the age-long campaign 
 
Perplexities 1 1 
 
 between right and wrong, as Jesus Christ 
 gave his life, for the salvation of their fellow 
 men. 
 
SECOND LETTER 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE 
 
 You are proud of your son; his loyalty, his 
 courage, his self-sacrifice. Your instinct ap- 
 plauds him and yet — you are perplexed. 
 You have read that war " is only splendid 
 murder "; that " there never was a good war 
 or a bad peace "; that " peace is the happy 
 state of man, war his corruption, his dis- 
 grace " ; that " war is wholly contrary to the 
 spirit of Jesus "; and these and kindred sen- 
 tences you have heard from the pulpit, and 
 read in books, one of which was written for 
 the very purpose of justifying America's part 
 in this war. No wonder you are perplexed. 
 No wonder that your conscience demands a 
 clear and definite answer to the question, Has 
 your son done right in entering this war? or 
 are his instincts and your instincts a survival 
 of a savagery which Christianity has not yet 
 entirely conquered? 
 
 The question. Is war right or wrong, is 
 like the question, Was the crucifixion the 
 greatest crime or the greatest glory of human 
 
 12 
 
The Battle of Life 13 
 
 history? The crucifixion Inflicted by Judas, 
 Calaphas and Pilate was an Infamous crime; 
 the crucifixion endured by Jesus Christ was 
 a divine glory. The battlefield In Europe is 
 to-day the scene of the greatest crime the 
 world has ever known; and the scene of the 
 world's greatest glory. On the lurid sky 
 above that field the flaming sword of Prussia 
 writes where all the world may see It, " Self- 
 will when it has conceived bringeth forth sin, 
 and sin when It Is finished bringeth forth 
 death," and by Its side the swords of Belgium 
 offering herself a sacrifice to save France, of 
 England coming to the rescue of both, and of 
 America crossing the sea to aid the three are 
 writing In letters of celestial light, '' Without 
 the shedding of blood there is no remission of 
 sin." This is what I wish to make clear to 
 you In this and the following letter. 
 
 We are accustomed to think that peace is 
 the normal condition of life; that conflicts, 
 struggles, wars are regrettable episodes. In 
 fact conflict Is the normal condition of life, 
 and times of peace are simply preparations 
 for a renewed conflict, as sleep is simply a 
 preparation for renewed activity In the morn- 
 ing. The best wish we can have for our chil- 
 dren Is that they may so live that looking back 
 over their life they can say, *' I have fought 
 a good fight." 
 
14 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 We are all born on a field of battle. Life 
 and Death warred against each other In the 
 mother who gave us birth and who went down 
 to that door which Is both entrance and exit, 
 not knowing whether she would go out Into 
 the light or whether out of the darkness a new 
 life would be given into her keeping. For 
 every true mother Is a heroine, who In the 
 very beginning of motherhood lays down her 
 life for her child. 
 
 In the cradle our battle begins. In every 
 one of us are microbes of life and microbes 
 of disease. They are lined up against each 
 other and no one can tell when active battle 
 may break out between them. When the 
 healthy microbes are In the mastery we are 
 well, when they are attacked we are sick, 
 when they are defeated we are in peril of our 
 lives. When we are sick we call a doctor; 
 but all that the doctor can do is to reenforce 
 the healthy microbes. He and his medicines 
 are but the reserve which every competent 
 general keeps ready for the critical hour In 
 battle. 
 
 We need for our life food, clothing, 
 shelter. These are not given, they are 
 won by struggle. Douglass Jerold said, 
 " Tickle the earth with a hoe and she 
 laughs with a harvest"; but any one who 
 has tickled the cornfield with a hoe on a 
 
The Battle of Life 15 
 
 hot August afternoon knows that it Is no 
 laughing matter for him then, whatever it 
 may prove to be in the harvest afterward. 
 Nature gives us nothing that we do not earn 
 by our labors. We wrest our supplies from 
 her; our food, our shelter, our clothing are 
 the spoils of battle. We pray for bread, and 
 God gives us a prairie; for clothing, and he 
 gives us wild beasts which we may hunt, or 
 sheep which we may tend, or cotton fields 
 which we may cultivate; for shelter, and he 
 gives us trees which the woodsman's ax must 
 fell. The comforts of civilization are fruits 
 of victory, crowning a patient, persistent 
 struggle to overcome insistent and continued 
 hostile forces. 
 
 As our physical life and the supplies which 
 are essential to it are the fruit of warfare, so 
 is our education. We hear of self-educated 
 men. All educated men are self-educated. 
 The mind is not a vessel Into which the 
 teacher pours learning as the milkman pours 
 milk into the bottle we have left at our door. 
 The mind is a seed bed and the teacher a sun 
 who bids the seed come forth. But If the 
 seed does not burst its prison walls, the sun 
 shines upon the earth in vain. The office 
 of the school and college Is not to think for 
 their pupils, but to furnish them with the 
 ability to do their own thinking. The object 
 
1 6 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 of education Is to give the pupil power, and 
 power comes only by struggle. A man can 
 no more become a scholar by accepting other 
 men's thought than he can become an athlete 
 by looking on while other men exercise. 
 
 This is the test by which we can distinguish 
 between a real and a sham education. Sham 
 education gives learning; real education gives 
 wisdom. What is the difference? This. 
 You can speak of a learned fool, but you 
 cannot speak of a wise fool. Sham educa- 
 tion puts learning on the student; real edu- 
 cation puts power in the student. The one 
 student is a parrot who repeats what he has 
 learned. The other student Is a man who 
 says what he has thought. The teacher who 
 asks his pupils to recite correctly what the 
 text book has told them, the minister who 
 asks his congregation to believe the doctrine 
 which his sermon contains because his sermon 
 contains It, the church which asks Its mem- 
 bership to affirm the creed which the church 
 has framed for them, are not equipping men 
 for life. Equipment for life comes only by 
 living. It Is only when the pupil has wrestled 
 with the problems of his text book and the 
 hearer with the theology of his preacher and 
 the member with the creed of his church, that 
 they possess either wisdom or intelligent 
 piety. Wisdom Is not minted and put into 
 
The Battle of Life 17 
 
 circulation for us. We must mine it our- 
 selves. " If thou search for her as for hid- 
 den treasures," said the wise man. He was 
 a wise man and in so far as certain schemes of 
 education are based upon a notion that wis- 
 dom can be given without compelling the stu- 
 dent to search for it, such schemes are the 
 reverse of wise. 
 
 As health and wisdom, so character can be 
 won only on the battlefield. The mother 
 who wishes to keep her child innocent is pre- 
 paring her child for failure and herself for 
 disappointment. Life conducts the child 
 from the innocence of babyhood through the 
 struggles of experience to the virtue of man- 
 hood and womanhood. The apostle thus de- 
 scribes the building of character: "Giving 
 all diligence, add to your faith valor; and to 
 valor knowledge ; and to knowledge self-con- 
 trol; and to self-control patience; and to pa- 
 tience godliness; and to godliness brotherly 
 kindness; and to brotherly kindness love." 
 
 We cannot acquire valor without meeting 
 danger. For valor is not the absence of fear, 
 it is victory over fear. Marshal Ney, con- 
 sulting with his staff on a knoll overlooking 
 the battlefield, was addressed by one of the 
 men with the sentence, " Marshal, see how 
 your knees are trembling." " Yes," was his 
 reply, " and they would tremble more if they 
 
1 8 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 knew where In a few moments I am going to 
 take them." Not carelessness of danger, but 
 this realization of danger and sturdy resolve 
 to meet It Is valor. We cannot acquire self- 
 xontrol without a battle between the higher 
 and the lower self, between the spirit and the 
 flesh. Temperance is not absence of ap- 
 petites and passions. God has endowed us 
 with appetites and passions, and they are nec- 
 essary for our existence. Temperance Is self- 
 mastery, the control of the appetites and pas- 
 sions by the reason, the conscience and the 
 will. We cannot acquire patience without 
 bearing burdens and burdens that are hard 
 to be borne. To be thick-skinned Is not to be 
 patient. The rhinoceros Is not a patient 
 beast. The Greek word rendered patience 
 means etymologically, to remain under, or 
 waiting for, as a pastor remains under a bur- 
 den or a soldier awaits an expected assault. 
 Patience remains under the burden or calmly 
 awaits threatening peril from which Im- 
 patience strives to escape. We cannot ac- 
 quire godliness without spiritual struggle. 
 Walking humbly with God Is possible only 
 to him who has learned how to look upon 
 the things that are Invisible and are eter- 
 nal, and we look upon the things that are in- 
 visible and eternal only by pushing our way 
 through the veil of sense toward the invisible 
 
The Battle of Life 19 
 
 reality. This even with the most saintly and 
 self-denying involves a life-long struggle. No 
 saint in the calendar of the church better de- 
 served canonization than Dr. Edward Living- 
 ston Trudeau, and at the close of his auto- 
 biography he sums up his life as " full of the 
 aspirations and ceaseless strivings of the 
 spirit for expression in worship, ever groping 
 to know God and ever sustained by too 
 swiftly fading glimpses of the Heavenly 
 vision." 
 
 We are all emerging from the animal con- 
 dition. Whether the race has been de- 
 veloped from a lower race or not, biology has 
 made it Indisputably clear that every indi- 
 vidual has passed through a lower animal 
 condition before he came forth a full-formed 
 man child. We all have something of the 
 animal In us. Every one of us is a zoological 
 garden. Nor can we get rid of the animal; 
 it is an essential part of our earthly life. 
 How to domesticate the animal, how to make 
 it our servant, not our master, this is the 
 individual problem of every human soul. 
 There Is no one so saintly that he has not at 
 times a struggle in order to realize his ideal, 
 and there is no one so blind to spiritual values 
 that his conscience does not sometimes rebuke 
 him for shameful thoughts or deeds, or his 
 faith sometimes put before him a higher ideal 
 
20 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 than he has ever attained and Inspire within 
 him an aspiration to do better and to be bet- 
 ter. There is no one of us whose soul does 
 not sometimes respond to Tennyson's prayer : 
 
 " Oh, for a man to rise In me, 
 
 That the man that I am may cease to be." 
 
 Paul has put this eternal conflict between the 
 flesh and the spirit very clearly in his letters, 
 nowhere more clearly than in his letter to the 
 Galatians: 
 
 For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, -^nd the 
 Spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary the 
 one to the other; that ye may not do the things 
 that ye would. . . . Now the works of the flesh 
 are manifest, which are these: fornication, unclean- 
 ness, lasciviousness. Idolatry, sorcery, enmities, 
 strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, parties, 
 envylngs, drunkenness, revelings, and such like; of 
 which I forewarn you, even as I did forewarn 
 you, that they who practise such things shall not 
 inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the 
 Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuflFering, kindness, 
 goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control ; against 
 such there is no law. 
 
 This battle between Good and Evil is not 
 only an individual battle; the battle Is not 
 only in the soul of the individual. The 
 forces of Good and the forces of Evil are 
 
The Battle of Life 21 
 
 organized and the war Is carried on upon an 
 awful scale in the history of the human race. 
 In life are two armies confronting each other. 
 On the one side are the organized forces for 
 virtue: the home, the school, the reform or- 
 ganizations, the philanthropic societies and 
 the church. On the other side are the or- 
 ganized forces for Evil: the houses of prosti- 
 tution, the gambling hells, the liquor shops 
 and the vices which they represent, embodied 
 In forms sometimes masquerading in the 
 habiliments of virtue — In reputable society 
 inciting the animal passions, In reputable 
 banquets stimulating gluttony and drunken- 
 ness. Not least among the organized forces 
 for good is the State. It Is a self-protective 
 society. Its function is to protect the indi- 
 vidual not only against crimes of violence but 
 also against the more seductive enticements 
 of organized vice. 
 
 But there are times when these forces for 
 virtue become corrupted or controlled by the 
 spirit of Evil — the church becomes an in- 
 strument of superstition, the State an instru- 
 ment of oppression. Then it becomes the 
 duty of those who have consecrated them- 
 selves to the cause of righteousness to do 
 battle against the church and the State be- 
 
22 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 cause they have become the weapons of false- 
 hood and Injustice. One phase of this truth 
 is stated with great clearness in ou** American 
 Declaration of Independence : 
 
 We hold these truths to be self-evident — that 
 all men are created equal; that they are endowed 
 by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; 
 that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
 happiness. That to secure these rights, governments 
 are instituted among men, deriving their just powers 
 from the consent of the governed; that whenever 
 any form of government becomes destructive of these 
 ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abol- 
 ish it, and to institute a new government, laying its 
 foundation on such principles, and organizing its 
 powers in such form, as to them shall seem most 
 likely to effect their safety and happiness. 
 
 Such was the case in the sixteenth century 
 when Philip II and his henchman the Duke 
 of Alva attempted to force upon the north of 
 Europe the Spanish Inquisition, and William 
 of Orange by his vision and his courage saved 
 the Netherlands from becoming a second 
 Spain. Such was the condition in the seven- 
 teenth century when Charles I attempted to 
 force upon England an absolutism like that 
 of the Bourbon kings which throttled France, 
 and Oliver Cromwell and his Ironsides by 
 their valor made England and all English 
 lands forever safe for democracy. Such was 
 
The Battle of Life 13 
 
 the condition when in 1776 George III of 
 England, who had inherited from his German 
 ancestry a German temperament and German 
 autocratic principles, endeavored to govern 
 the American colonies in the interest and for 
 the benefit of England's feudal lords, and 
 Washington and his compatriots by their 
 swords made the colonies free and independ- 
 ent States and " brought forth upon this con- 
 tinent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and 
 dedicated to the proposition that all men are 
 created equal." 
 
 When this condition arises, when the State 
 or the church becomes an Instrument of evil, 
 he who has enlisted for life as a soldier for 
 righteousness must either betray the cause to 
 which he has dedicated himself, surrender to 
 the powers of evil, and become a passive If 
 not an active partner In their crimes, or he 
 must give battle to them whatever may be the 
 cost of that battle to himself and to those 
 whom he loves. There Is for him no other 
 choice. If William of Orange and his com- 
 patriots had submitted to the rule of Philip 
 II, Northern Europe would have lapsed into 
 the condition of Spain. If Cromwell and his 
 compatriots had submitted to the rule of 
 Charles I, England would have recovered 
 her liberties, if at all, only by a revolution 
 rivaling In its horrors that of France. If 
 
24 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 the colonies had submitted to George III, it 
 may be doubted whether the British Empire 
 would ever have been born, for England 
 would not have learned the lesson that only 
 just government Is stable government and 
 that just government Is always administered 
 for the benefit of the governed. 
 
 That our boys In France are fighting In this 
 age-long conflict, animated by the same spirit 
 which animated William of Orange, Oliver 
 Cromwell and George Washington, I shall 
 attempt to show you in my next letter. 
 
THIRD LETTER 
 
 THE PEACEMAKERS 
 
 If you were living In a town In New Mex- 
 ico and a gang of desperadoes from across 
 the border were attacking a neighboring 
 town, robbing the banks and stores, murder- 
 ing the men, and preparing to carry away the 
 young women to a fate worse than death, 
 and a band of citizens was starting out from 
 your town, rifle In hand to defend their neigh- 
 bors, you would wish your son to join them 
 though he did so at the peril of his life. This 
 is what has taken place on an enormous scale 
 on the other side of the sea. We speak of a 
 war In Europe. In strictness of speech there 
 is no war In Europe. There is an Inter- 
 national posse comitatus, representing more 
 than twenty civilized nations, summoned to 
 preserve the peace and protect the peaceable 
 nations of Europe from the worst, most 
 highly organized and most efficient band of 
 brigands the modern world has ever known. 
 This Is not rhetoric. It is an accurate and 
 scientific statement of the facts. 
 25 
 
26 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 The classical definition of war is furnished 
 by Charles Sumner in an address on the 
 " Grandeur of Nations," delivered in Boston 
 in 1845. It Is based on authorities there by 
 him cited, and has ever since been accepted 
 as an authoritative definition: ''War is a 
 public armed conflict between nations, under 
 the sanction of international law, to establish 
 justice between them." 
 
 There are two things necessary to make an 
 armed conflict war. It must be for the pur- 
 pose of determining a question of justice be- 
 tween the warring parties, and it must be con- 
 ducted under international law. 
 
 There is no question of justice at issue in 
 Europe to-day. ^ 
 
 At the opening of the war, the German 
 Prime Minister, Bethmann-Hollweg, in- 
 formed the Reichstag that the German troops 
 had occupied Luxemburg and perhaps had al- 
 ready entered Belgian territory, the neutral- 
 ity of both of which States Germany had her- 
 self guaranteed, and he added, " The wrong 
 — I speak openly — the wrong we thereby 
 commit we will try to make good as soon as 
 our military aims have been attained." And 
 with that declaration before them the Ger- 
 mans, through the Reichstag, endorsed the 
 war and have ever since sustained it. In 
 191 1, three years before that declaration 
 
The Peacemakers 27 
 
 EcrnhardI, one of the leaders of the military 
 party in Germany, had declared that war is a 
 biological, a moral and a Christian necessity 
 " in which Might proves itself the supreme 
 Right," and he added, " France must be so 
 completely crushed that she can never again 
 come across our path." That the German 
 military party had been preparing Germany 
 for this war for something like half a century 
 is no longer questioned. That the Kaiser is 
 personally responsible for bringing It on is no 
 longer questionable. This conclusion no 
 longer rests upon what the lawyers call cir- 
 cumstantial evidence. It has been definitely 
 affirmed by German witnesses of such unim- 
 peachable authority as Prince Lichnowsky, 
 who was the German Ambassador to Eng- 
 land when the war was declared, and by Dr. 
 Miihlon, a German citizen who at that time 
 represented the German government in the 
 directorate of the Krupps gun works. And 
 the Kaiser's ambition was foreshadowed by 
 him in a significant speech made In 1900 
 on laying the foundation stone of a museum 
 at Saalburg: "May our German Father- 
 land," he said, " in the future, by the co- 
 operation of princes and people, of armies 
 and citizens, become sufficiently powerful and 
 as strongly united, as extraordinary, as the 
 universal Roman Empire, that at last in the 
 
28 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 future one may be able to say, as was said 
 formerly Civis Romanus sum, I am a German 
 citizen." 
 
 The object of the German government, as 
 avowed by its leaders, is not to determine a 
 question of justice; it is to crush France, 
 humiliate England, and bring the civilized 
 world under the domination of the German 
 sword. 
 
 Nor is this war — I must call it war be- 
 cause there is no other short word to use — 
 conducted under the sanction of international 
 law. 
 
 Germany has openly, flagrantly, avowedly 
 and with frankness declared that she does not 
 recognize the laws of nations, nor the laws 
 of war, nor the laws of humanity, nor the 
 laws of God. Her motto is, " Necessity 
 knows no law." 
 
 At first I could not believe the reports of 
 German atrocities in Belgium and France to 
 be true. I thought them the exaggerations 
 of newspaper reporters; then, the extravagant 
 outbursts of individual soldiers in violation 
 of law. But it is impossible any longer to 
 believe this. Three separate commissions, 
 the first appointed by Belgium, the second by 
 France, the third by England, have investi- 
 gated with scrupulous care and reported the 
 facts with names, dates and places given in 
 
The Peacemakers 29 
 
 detail and substantiated by affidavits. These 
 reports have rendered skepticism any longer 
 impossible except for those who think that 
 ignorance is a virtue when knowledge is dis- 
 tressing. Germany has been asked by Great 
 Britain to unite with her in an investigation, 
 and Germany, by refusing to share in such an 
 investigation, has pleaded guilty to the 
 charge. 
 
 Nor is It any palliation of these crimes to 
 say, as has been sometimes said, that they 
 are Incidents characteristic of war. This Is 
 not true. They are not characteristic of war. 
 They are in violation of the laws of war. 
 
 But that is not all. In our Civil War Mr. 
 Lincoln appointed a commission to prepare 
 rules of warfare to govern our army. The 
 draft was prepared, it is interesting to re- 
 call, by Francis Lleber, an American citi- 
 zen of German birth. After the military offi- 
 cials had approved these rules, Mr. Lincoln, 
 If I may use a somewhat barbaric phrase, 
 *' Englished " them. Those rules of warfare 
 prepared by our government under Lincoln's 
 beneficent administration, became the basis 
 of the rules of war accepted by the Hague 
 Tribunal. One has only to compare these 
 rules of war of America and of the Hague 
 Tribunal with those officially recognized by 
 the German War Book to see that Germany 
 
30 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 has officially put Itself outside the pale of 
 civilized nations. According to the rules of 
 civilized warfare, war is conducted against 
 the army of the enemy. According to the 
 German War Book, It is conducted against 
 the people of the country. According to the 
 rules of civilized warfare, churches, hospitals, 
 libraries, public buildings, are as far as pos- 
 sible to be guarded from destruction. Ac- 
 cording to the German War Book, they are 
 to be destroyed. According to the laws of 
 civilized warfare, the property of non-com- 
 batants is to be regarded as sacred, unless 
 military exigencies require its destruction. 
 According to the German War Book, the 
 property of non-combatants Is to be destroyed 
 for the purpose of producing terror. Ac- 
 cording to the laws of civilized warfare, the 
 captives taken In war may be used in peace- 
 ful industries, but not for maintaining the 
 armies or manufacturing the munitions to be 
 used against their own kinsfolk. According 
 to the German War Book, they may be so 
 used. 
 
 Not only have the laws of war and the 
 laws of nations been ruthlessly set aside; the 
 crimes that have been committed by the Ger- 
 man armies have been glorified by the Ger- 
 man nation. The Germans have boasted of 
 their booty; they have organized triumphal 
 
The Peacemakers 31 
 
 processions, struck off medals, sung hymns of 
 praise, preached sermons in pulpits and made 
 addresses on platforms in praise of the men 
 who have committed these unspeakable 
 crimes. 
 
 It is then not rhetoric, it is a simple, accu- 
 rate, scientific statement of the fact to say that 
 in Europe the Allies are fighting to protect 
 lands of peaceable people from brigandry. 
 What is brigandry? The definition in the 
 Century dictionary has only five words. It is 
 easily remembered: " Highway robbery by 
 organized gangs." Was there ever highway 
 robbery conducted on so enormous a scale by 
 so ruthless and unscrupulous a gang as what 
 Henry van Dyke has well called " the preda- 
 tory Potsdam gang " ? 
 
 The Archbishop of York has told us that 
 we ought to offer for the Germans the prayer 
 of Christ upon the Cross, " Father forgive 
 them for they know not what they do." 
 Christ offered that prayer for the soldiers 
 who did not know what they did. To them 
 Jesus was only a common criminal, con- 
 demned both by the courts of his own coun- 
 try and by the Roman courts. For them he 
 asked his Father's forgiveness. But he did 
 not ask his Father's forgiveness for Caiphas 
 who declared, when he conspired Jesus' 
 death, that it was better that an innocent 
 
32 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 man should die than that the Jewish rulers 
 should lose their places. He did not ask it 
 for Pilate who before delivering Jesus to the 
 priests to be crucified declared " I find no 
 crime in him." He did not ask It for Judas 
 who confessed that he had betrayed innocent 
 blood. They knew what they did. I will 
 offer this prayer to my Father for those Ger- 
 mans in the trenches who have been deluded 
 or driven into this horrible warfare; but I 
 will not offer it for the Kaiser or his accom- 
 plices, for they do know what they are do- 
 ing and deliberately conspired to do it. I 
 may be tempted to lie to my fellow-men, but 
 I will never lie to my God. 
 
 The French greeted our boys on their ar- 
 rival in France as " the Salvation Army." 
 They were right. It is a salvation army. 
 We are inspired by no territorial ambition. 
 We want no more territory. We have been 
 reluctant to take territory lying outside the 
 continent of America even when It has been 
 thrust upon us. We have no political ambi- 
 tions. We have no desire to govern an alien 
 people. The responsibility for the govern- 
 ment of the Philippines we have temporarily 
 assumed with great reluctance. We could 
 not with honor escape it. For having de- 
 stroyed the Spanish government, international 
 law and national honor combined to require 
 
The Peacemakers 33 
 
 us to maintain a provisional government in 
 its place until the Filipinos were prepared to 
 assume its responsibilities and exercise its 
 duties themselves. We have no wish to dic- 
 tate to any other peoples what their form of 
 government shall be. We are equally ready 
 to fellowship monarchial England and Re- 
 publican France. We find it difficult to per- 
 suade ourselves to interfere in order to pro- 
 tect the Russian people from the anarchy 
 which incompetence and treachery have com- 
 bined to inflict upon them. We should never 
 have desired to interfere with absolutism in 
 Germany if Germany had not attempted to 
 impose despotism by military power upon 
 free peoples. 
 
 But we cannot stand idly by while a 
 great nation, which for half a century has 
 been preparing for its crimes, enacts the 
 part of a pirate on the sea and a brigand on 
 the land, sinks peaceable merchant vessels 
 without warning, destroys in mere wanton- 
 ness churches, libraries, hospitals, enslaves 
 unoffending men and rapes defenseless 
 women. It is a disgrace to a noble profes- 
 sion to call the German officers soldiers or 
 the German forces an army. They are in 
 the strictest and most scientific sense of that 
 term brigands, for they constitute a highly 
 organized gang engaged in highway robbery 
 
34 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 on an enormous scale. The armies of the 
 AlHes are in the strictest sense of that term 
 " officers of the peace." They are " fighting 
 for peace." They might well bear upon their 
 banners the inscription, " Blessed are the 
 peacemakers, for they shall be called the 
 children of God." 
 
 A friend has called my attention to the fact 
 that over thirty-six years ago Phillips Brooks 
 preached a sermon on the curse of Meroz, to 
 be found in the Book of Judges, 
 
 ** Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, 
 Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; 
 Because they come not to the help of the 
 
 Lord, 
 To the help of the Lord against the 
 
 mighty." 
 
 From that sermon I reprint this extract: 
 
 Meroz is gone. No record of it except this verse 
 remains. The most ingenious and indefatigable ex- 
 plorer cannot even guess where it once stood. But 
 the curse remains; the violent outburst of the con- 
 tempt and anger which men feel who have fought 
 and suffered and agonized, and then see other men 
 who have the same interest in the result which they 
 have, coming out cool and unwounded from their 
 safe hiding-places to take a part of the victory which 
 they have done nothing to secure. . . . The sin for 
 which Meroz is cursed is pure inaction. We hear 
 
The Peacemakers 35 
 
 so much about the danger of wrong thinking and 
 the danger of wrongdoing. There is the other 
 danger, of not doing right and not thinking right, 
 of not doing and not thinking at all. It is hard 
 for many people to feel that there is danger and harm 
 in that, the worst of harm and danger. And the 
 trouble comes, I think, from the low condition of 
 spiritual vitality, from the lack of emphasis and 
 vigor in the whole conception of a man's own life. 
 
 Thank God that America Is saved from the 
 sin of Meroz. Thank God that you and 
 your son were never even tempted In this 
 hour of trial to the sin of indifference and in- 
 action. 
 
 ^ That In this hour of world peril the dis- 
 ciples of Jesus Christ are definitely called to 
 service by the explicit and unambiguous com- 
 mission of their Master, I shall endeavor to 
 show you in my next letter. 
 
FOURTH LETTER 
 
 THE OLD GOSPEL 
 
 You told me once that your minister said 
 sometime before America entered the war — 
 or was it some other minister in your Church? 
 I am not sure — that after serious reflec- 
 tion he had determined that In his preach- 
 ing he would make no reference to the war; 
 he would confine himself to the Old Gospel. 
 A Christian friend of mine not long since 
 said to me that he thought this war was just 
 and necessary, and he was glad that America 
 had entered into it; but that he could not rec- 
 oncile war with the teachings of Jesus Christ 
 and thought that we must be content to lay 
 Christianity, as Christianity, aside until the 
 war is over. Others in defending the action 
 of Christ's followers in entering the war, 
 have said that Christ in his teaching presents 
 an ideal which cannot now be put in practice; 
 he gives us not a chart to guide us in our 
 voyage, but a picture of the land to which 
 we are voyaging. Others have contended 
 that this war, fought at such cost of life, more 
 than eighteen centuries after Christ's birth, 
 36 
 
The Old Gospel 37 
 
 proves that Christianity Is a failure; and still 
 others that Christianity cannot be a failure 
 because it has not yet been tried. In this 
 letter I desire to explain to you the ground of 
 my faith that Jesus Christ calls his followers 
 to the colors and that their response to the 
 call constitutes a triumph for Christianity 
 such as the world has never before known. 
 
 The ancient Hebrews called themselves a 
 peculiar people. One of their peculiarities 
 was that they looked forward, not backward, 
 for their Golden Age. They believed that a 
 time was coming when poverty would be 
 abolished, when property would be so equally 
 distributed that every man could sit under his 
 own vine and fig tree, when education would 
 be universal so that no man would need to 
 teach his neighbor, when despotism would 
 cease because the laws of God would be ac- 
 cepted by mankind and just law would need 
 no other enforcement than the sanctions of 
 religion, when wars would end and the imple- 
 ments of war would be converted Into instru- 
 ments of Industry, when family dissensions 
 would cease and the hearts of the fathers 
 would be turned to the children and the hearts 
 of the children would be turned to the fathers. 
 
 The theme of Jesus' ministry was this king- 
 dom of God. In his first published sermon, 
 
38 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 delivered in the synagogue at Nazareth, he 
 read one of the ancient prophecies of this 
 Golden Age, and told the congregation he 
 had come to fulfill it. At the end of his life, 
 in the trial before Caiaphas, he was put upon 
 the stand; in violation of the Jewish law the 
 oath was administered to him; and under the 
 solemn sanction of that oath he reaffirmed 
 his mission, and in a different form repeated 
 that affirmation in the subsequent trial before 
 Pilate. 
 
 In the fulfillment of that mission Jesus 
 never set aside the social teachings of the 
 prophets or substituted for their glad tidings 
 of a Golden Age any other. On the con- 
 trary, he emphasized their social teachings. 
 They had denounced injustice and inhuman- 
 ity and repeatedly declared that no forms or 
 ceremonies could take the place of doing justly 
 and loving mercy. Jesus denounced injustice 
 and inhumanity with even greater vigor, and 
 reaffirmed the truth that righteousness and 
 mercy are greater than temple services. And 
 he taught his disciples to pray, " Thy kingdom 
 come; Thy will be done; on earth as it is in 
 heaven." 
 
 But in emphasizing the teachings of the 
 prophets he cleared away misapprehensions 
 which had grown up about those teachings 
 and obscured their real meaning. 
 
The Old Gospel 39 
 
 Early In his ministry he called twelve 
 friends about him to be his companions, to 
 learn his principles, Imbibe his spirit, and 
 proclaim to others the glad tidings which they 
 had received from him. On the occasion 
 of their consecration to this ministry, he 
 preached what is popularly known as The 
 Sermon on the Mount, though never so 
 entitled In the New Testament. In this ser- 
 mon he described certain essential principles 
 of the life which he had come to inspire in 
 humanity. He told the people that happi- 
 ness cannot be conferred, for the secret of 
 happiness is character; that there can be no 
 kingdom of God in society unless there is a 
 kingdom of God In the Individual life; and 
 that obedience in action to the divine law Is 
 not enough, that their righteousness must 
 exceed that of the Pharisees who were 
 scrupulous observers of the law; that the 
 kingdom of God requires unity of the human 
 spirit with the divine spirit; and that the life 
 which unites the Father with his children is 
 freely given by the Father to his children If 
 they will seek It from him. Thus the Sermon 
 on the Mount Interprets the declaration of 
 the psalmist : *' I delight to do thy will, O 
 my God; yea, thy law Is within my heart." 
 Jesus did not substitute an Individual gospel 
 for a social gospel, but he taught that there 
 
40 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 could be no social gospel without an individual 
 gospel. A brave army cannot be composed 
 of cowardly soldiers, nor a learned school of 
 dunces, nor can a loving and loyal family of 
 the heavenly Father be composed of disloyal 
 anxi quarreling children. 
 
 The Jews believed that this kingdom would 
 be given to them as the favored people of 
 Jehovah. Jesus told his disciples that it 
 would not be given by God to man, but must 
 be wrought by men in a spirit of loyalty to 
 God. In one of his sermons, several times 
 repeated in different forms, he compared God 
 to an absentee landlord and the world to an 
 estate which the landlord has left for his serv- 
 ants to administer. The Jews believed that 
 the kingdom would suddenly and by a 
 miraculous display of divine power be be- 
 stowed. Jesus in a series of parables told 
 his disciples that the kingdom of God was 
 like a seed growing secretly, no one knows 
 how; that its growth was dependent upon the 
 soil in which it was planted — that it would 
 thrive in some communities better than in 
 others and in some communities not at all; 
 that evil would grow as well as good, and that 
 they must never be discouraged because they 
 saw the growth of evil; that the kingdom 
 would grow only by agitation against hos- 
 tility, inertia, and indifference — like a little 
 
The Old Gospel 41 
 
 yeast In a great lump of dough; that it would 
 be won by his disciples at a great cost, like a 
 treasure hidden In a field or a pearl found In 
 the market-place, to acquire which the pur- 
 chaser has to sell all that he has; and again 
 and again he told his disciples that to acquire 
 this kingdom they must be ready to give up 
 houses, lands, reputation, peace, life Itself. 
 
 The contrast between the kingdom of God 
 and the kingdom of this world he made very 
 clear In a passage which furnishes, I think, 
 both the briefest and the most lucid definition 
 of the difference between Christianity and 
 paganism to be found anywhere In literature. 
 It is as follows : 
 
 Ye know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it 
 over them, and their great ones exercise authority 
 over them. Not so shall it be among you : but who- 
 soever would become great among you shall be your 
 minister; and whosoever would be first among you 
 shall be your servant: even as the Son of man came 
 not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to 
 give his life a ransom for many. 
 
 Whether a community Is pagan or Chris- 
 tian does not depend upon Its theological 
 creed, Its church organizations, Its forms of 
 worship, or even the name it gives to its God. 
 It does not depend upon the question whether 
 the people correctly define the relation of 
 Jesus of Nazareth to God on the one hand 
 
42 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 and humanity on the other; whether they 
 worship In a temple, In a meeting-house, or In 
 the woods; whether they use an elaborate 
 ritual or none at all; whether they call the ob- 
 ject of their worship Odin, or Buddha, or Al- 
 lah, or Jehovah. It depends on the question 
 whether their idea of God is an almighty 
 power which they fear, or an inexorable law 
 to which they reluctantly submit, or a serene 
 indifference to the pains and pleasures of life 
 which they admire, or an Infinite love which 
 lives for and suffers with the loved one. For 
 he who worships the Deity because he is the 
 All Mighty worships Odin; he who worships 
 a Deity who looks upon the struggles and the 
 sorrows of his children with a serene indiffer- 
 ence worships Buddha; he who worships a 
 Lawgiver, who only wishes from his obedient 
 subjects their submission to his rule worships 
 Allah; only he who believes that the All- 
 Father lives with his children, bears with 
 them in their struggles and their sorrows, and 
 seeks to save them from their sins, worships 
 the God of the Bible, the God of Isaiah and 
 of John. Whether a community is Christian 
 or not depends on whether their religion ter- 
 rifies or rules or meditates or serves. Any 
 community in which the weak serve the 
 strong, the poor serve the rich, the Ignorant 
 serve the wise, the many serve the few, is m 
 
The Old Gospel 43 
 
 so far a pagan community. Any community 
 in which the strong serve the weak, the wise 
 serve the ignorant, the rich serve the poor, 
 the few serve the many is in so far a Christian 
 community. 
 
 What Jesus meant by service he made 
 clear by his teaching. He illustrated it by 
 his story of the heretical Samaritan going to 
 the succor of the wounded traveler in con- 
 trast with a priest and a Levite hurrying to 
 the church service; by his story of the rich 
 man whom he sent to hell, not for any wrong 
 inflicted upon Lazarus, but for saying to him- 
 self, " The sufferings of the beggar at the 
 door do not concern me," and leaving the 
 beggar unrelieved; by his picture of the Last 
 Judgment in which those were welcomed to 
 the mansion of their heavenly Father who 
 had fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, 
 clothed the stranger, and visited the sick. 
 The fact that they did not know that Jesus 
 was the Messiah and that they were render- 
 ing service to him did not affect the divine 
 judgment. 
 
 Still more clearly Jesus illustrated by his 
 own life what he meant by service. He gave 
 himself unreservedly to making the world he 
 lived in a better and a happier world.^ Were 
 men hungry he fed them, were they ignorant 
 he taught them, were they in sorrow he com- 
 
44 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 forted them, were they in despair he brought 
 hope to them, were they the victims of wrong- 
 doing he denounced their oppressors, and in 
 two instances at the hazard of his life he 
 came to the rescue of the defenseless. 
 
 How can any man to-day preach the Old 
 Gospel and ignore the present war? 
 
 The Master has made his mission very 
 clear. " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," 
 he said, " because he anointed me to preach 
 good tidings to the poor: he hath sent me to 
 proclaim release to the captives, and recover- 
 ing of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them 
 that are bruised." Dying, he transmitted to 
 his disciples this mission. "As the Father 
 hath sent me, even so send I you," were al- 
 most his last words to them. 
 
 A band of robbers has invaded Belgium 
 and France and stolen coal and iron from 
 the mines, crops from the fields, money from 
 the banks, pictures, statuary, and jewels from 
 the homes, and what it could not steal It has 
 wantonly destroyed. We have power to 
 drive the robbers off. How can we preach 
 glad tidings to the poor if we play the part of 
 Dives and the woes of Lazarus do not con- 
 cern us? This band of robbers has enslaved 
 men and women by the thousand and set them 
 to work raising food to feed their enemies 
 and making munitions to enable their enemies 
 
The Old Gospel 45 
 
 to continue the work of devastation. How 
 can we preach deHverance to these captives 
 and remain at home complacent in our own 
 prosperity? This band has used its scientific 
 knowledge in the manufacture of poisonous 
 gases to destroy the eyes of thousands of its 
 fellow-men. How can we allow that process 
 to go on and pretend to fulfill our divine mis- 
 sion to give sight to the blind? The imperial 
 leader of this band has avowed his purpose to 
 establish a Roman Empire in Europe, and the 
 intellectual leaders of this band have poisoned 
 the minds of the people with the doctrine that 
 " Might makes Right," that the strong owe 
 no duty to the weak — the sooner they die, 
 the better — and some of them have declared 
 that Odin, the god of force, is greater than 
 Jehovah, the God of love. How can we pre- 
 tend to set at liberty them that are sorely 
 bruised by these oppressors if we are deaf to 
 the cries of the Armenians, the Serbians, the 
 Poles, and the Belgians? The minister who 
 Is indifferent to this war is either ignorant of 
 or indifferent to the call of his Master. He 
 does not preach the Old Gospel — the Gospel 
 which Paul summed up in the sentence, " God 
 was In Christ, reconciling the world unto him- 
 self " — the world, not some men from the 
 world. He came not to rescue a few favored 
 ones from a sinking ship, not to graduate 
 
46 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 a few choice scholars from a mass left in igno- 
 rance, not to save a few saints from a lost 
 world : but to show the mariners how to bring 
 the ship and all its passengers safe into the 
 harbor, the teachers how to instruct all the 
 pupils in the laws of God, and to reconcile 
 the world to God by making it a world in- 
 spired by God with the spirit of love, service, 
 and sacrifice. 
 
 I do not forget that there are those who 
 honestly think that Jesus Christ forbade all 
 use of physical force in resisting the powers 
 of evil. Tolstoi, from the command " Judge 
 not," concludes that all courts should be abol- 
 ished; from " Resist not evil," that all police 
 should be abolished; from " Lay not up for 
 yourselves treasures on earth," that all saving 
 and all thrift is wrong; from " Give to him 
 that asketh of thee," that begging ought to be 
 encouraged. But he is the only consistent 
 literalist I have ever met with either in litera- 
 ture or in life. 
 
 The early disciples did not so understand 
 their Master. Matthew reports him as say- 
 ing " Think not that I came to send peace on 
 the earth: I came not to send peace but a 
 sword." Paul declares that the magistrate 
 " beareth not the sword in vain: for he is a 
 minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him 
 that doeth evil." The author of the Epistle 
 
The Old Gospel 47 
 
 to the Hebrews glories In the faith of those 
 who by their faith " from weakness were 
 made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to 
 flight armies of aliens "; John sees his Mas- 
 ter as a knight errant on a white horse going 
 forth " conquering and to conquer "; and the 
 historians tell us that one reason why Con- 
 stantine adopted Christianity as the religion 
 of Rome was because he found that the Chris- 
 tians made better soldiers than the pagans. 
 Robert Louis Stevenson's Interpretation of 
 Christ's teaching is far more rational than 
 Tolstoi's. " In our own person and fortune 
 we should be ready to accept and pardon all; 
 it is our cheek we are to turn, our coat that 
 we are to give away to the man who has taken 
 our cloak. But when another's face is buf- 
 feted, perhaps a little of the Hon will be- 
 come us best. That we are to suffer others 
 to be injured and stand by, is not conceivable 
 and surely not desirable." 
 
 This interpretation tallies with the spirit 
 of Christ's teaching. Can anyone believe 
 that if the Good Samaritan had appeared 
 upon the scene when the robbers were engaged 
 in beating the defenseless traveler and had 
 passed by with the priest and Levite the world 
 would by universal consent have given him 
 the title of Good Samaritan? Can anyone 
 believe that if the roughs and toughs of the 
 
48 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 city had beaten Lazarus at the rich man's 
 door and the rich man, with servants able to 
 furnish protection, had not Interfered, Christ 
 would have sent the rich man to Abraham's 
 bosom? Can anyone believe that He who 
 pronounced accursed of God, doomed to be 
 destroyed by the fire prepared for the devil 
 and his angels, those who had simply neg- 
 lected the poor, the sick and the Imprisoned, 
 would welcome to the kingdom prepared for 
 them from the foundation of the world those 
 who had the power to give succor and had 
 stood by idle and indifferent while a brutal 
 gang was impoverishing, enslaving, and mur- 
 dering hundreds of thousands of their peace- 
 able and unoffending fellow-men? 
 
 The example of Christ Interprets his teach- 
 ing and it gives no warrant to the pacifism 
 of Tolstoi. At the beginning of Christ's life, 
 he drove from the Temple a corrupt ring of 
 thieves, pouring out the changers' money and 
 overthrowing their tables. At the end of his 
 life he put himself between the Temple police 
 and his half awakened and defenseless disci- 
 ples, stood guard while the police fell back- 
 ward to the ground — were floored as we 
 should say — and not till his disciples, taking 
 his hint, " let them go their way," had es- 
 caped, did he deliver himself up to his 
 enemies. He saved others, himself he would 
 
The Old Gospel 49 
 
 not save. He forbade Peter's futile resist- 
 ance to the guard because it was futile and 
 because he would not live under the protection 
 of a government and at the same time resist 
 the officers appointed to execute its laws. He 
 was no I. W. W. Peter had neither the 
 power nor the authority to protect his Master. 
 But Pilate had both the power and the au- 
 thority and because he was a pacifist and did 
 not use his power, he has always and justly 
 been accounted a partner in the crime of 
 Calaphas and Judas. For power always 
 carries with it responsibility. 
 
 I cannot understand those who think that 
 Christianity has failed. These strangely 
 blind skeptics can see the pitiless German 
 horde raping, robbing, murdering, but they 
 cannot see the followers of Christ carrying, 
 at the cost of their own lives, his message of 
 succor to the poor, the captives, the blinded, 
 and those that are bruised by oppression. 
 They can see the priests confessing their 
 travesty of faith In the sentence, '' He trusted 
 on God; let him deliver him now, if he deslr- 
 eth him "; but they cannot see the crucified 
 Christ conquering the world by self-sacrifice. 
 '""^ I think Christianity has never been so 
 triumphant as It Is to-day. But my grounds 1/ 
 for this faith I must leave to be stated in my 
 next letter. 
 
FIFTH LETTER 
 
 " WE GLORY IN TRIBULATIONS '' 
 
 You ask me why God permits war. If he 
 Is In truth a heavenly father, why does he 
 allow his children to fight and kill each other? 
 Why does he not Interfere to prevent this un- 
 told suffering? 
 
 The question why a God of love permits 
 sin and suffering In the world, Is one which 
 many have asked of others and many more 
 probably of themselves, In all ages of the 
 world. It has caused many honest students 
 of life to abandon their faith in the goodness 
 of God as unreasonable, or at least to give up 
 all attempt to frame any conception of God 
 or to enter Into any personal relations with 
 him. It is this question which Job's friends 
 put to him and he could not answer; all he 
 could say was that his suffering was not a 
 punishment for his sins for he had not com- 
 mitted sins which would deserve such a pun- 
 ishment. It Is Implied in the experiences of 
 the Old Testament prophets and poets In 
 such phrases as " Be not thou far off, O 
 50 
 
'' We Glory in Tribulations " 5 1 
 
 Jehovah : O thou my succor, haste thee to help 
 me." "How long, O Jehovah? wilt thou 
 forget me forever? " " How long wilt thou 
 hide thy face from me?" "Why standest 
 thou afar off, O Jehovah? Why hidest thou 
 thyself in times of trouble? " " O Jehovah 
 God of Hosts, how long wilt thou be angry 
 against the prayer of thy people ? Thou hast 
 fed them with the bread of tears, And given 
 them tears to drink in large measure." 
 " How long shall the wicked triumph? " 
 
 To this question I can give no answer. I 
 have no faith in what the theologians call 
 theodicy — the attempt by scholars to justify 
 the ways of God to man. This world is but 
 a grain of sand in an infinite universe, and 
 you and I but midgets on this grain of sand. 
 To suppose that we can comprehend and in- 
 terpret the plans and methods of the Eternal 
 appears to me much more preposterous than 
 to suppose that a child two years old can com- 
 prehend and interpret the plans and methods 
 of a Lincoln, a Gladstone or a Cavour. I 
 rest content with the answer of Jesus Christ 
 to the perplexity of his disciples: " What I 
 do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt un- 
 derstand hereafter." 
 
 But I can see that God is doing something 
 for us that is much better than stopping the 
 war; he is inspiring us with courage to win it. 
 
52 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 Happiness is not the end of life. Happi- 
 ness is not the greatest gift love has to be- 
 stow. Happiness is not the gift which we 
 chiefly desire either for ourselves or our loved 
 ones. What is the end of life? It is diflfi- 
 cult to find any one word which will express 
 it. Character, wisdom, righteousness, educa- 
 tion, human development, progress, growth, 
 greatness of heart and greatness of mind are 
 some of the phrases which have been em- 
 ployed. The word I like best is the one 
 which is most frequent in the New Testament : 
 Life. 
 
 Life Is the object of life — every day a 
 larger life than the day before. This is 
 Christ's word : " I am come that they might 
 have life, and that they might have It more 
 abundantly." *' I give unto them eternal 
 life." That he might bring this gift of life 
 to men, Jesus Christ came into the world: 
 " The grace of God that bringeth salvation 
 hath appeared to all men . . . teaching us 
 that we should live.'^ This is the object of 
 the Bible. Scripture is given " that the man 
 of God may be perfect." This is the object 
 of the Church! He gave apostles, prophets, 
 evangelists, pastors and teachers, that we 
 might come " unto a full-grown man, unto the 
 measure of the stature of the fullness of 
 Christ." Buddhism regards life as an evil: 
 
'' We Glory in Tribulations ^^ 53 
 
 heaven is Nirvana, escape from life, uncon- 
 scious existence. Christianity regards life as 
 the greatest gift which a God of love can be- 
 stow upon his children. Hell is Eternal 
 Death; Heaven is Eternal Life. 
 
 Is not life what we all want for ourselves 
 and for our children? Coningsby Dawson 
 writes home from the ship that is carrying 
 him to France : " In seventeen days the boys 
 will also have left you — so this will arrive 
 when you're horribly lonely. I am so sorry 
 for you dear people — but I'd be sorrier for 
 you if we were all with you. If I were a 
 father or mother I'd rather have my sons 
 dead than see them failing when the supreme 
 sacrifice was called for." 
 
 Does not that appeal to all of us? Would 
 you not rather have the sacred memory of a 
 brave son than the shameful presence of a 
 cowardly one? Would you not rather see 
 him suffering for his heroism than happy in 
 his flight from peril? Nay! Would not his 
 happiness in his shame add to your sorrow? 
 
 In June, 19 17, Hermann Hagedorn read 
 before the Harvard Chapter of the Phi Beta 
 Kappa an " Ode of Dedication," from which 
 I take these two verses : 
 
 Who said, " // is a booth where doves are sold"? 
 Who said, " It is a money-changers' cave " f 
 
54 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 Silence to such forever, and behold! 
 
 It is a vast cathedral, and its nave 
 And dim-lit transept and broad aisles are filled 
 
 With a great nation's millions, on their knees 
 With new devotion and high fervor thrilled 
 
 Offering silver and heart's-ease 
 And love and life and all sweet, temporal things, 
 
 Still to keep bright 
 
 The steady light 
 That stifles in the wake of kings! 
 
 A market-place! they cried? 
 
 A lotus-land! They lied! 
 It is a great cathedral, not with hands 
 Upraised, but by the spirit's mute commands 
 Uplifted by the spirit, wall and spire. 
 To house a nation's purified desire! 
 A church! Where in hushed fervor stand 
 
 The children of contending races, 
 Forgetting feud and fatherland — 
 
 A hundred million lifted faces. 
 
 Is It not worth all that It costs us to have 
 America changed from a " money-changers' 
 cave " to a " great cathedral "? Have you 
 not reason to exult that your boy has helped 
 directly and you and your husband scarcely 
 less directly by the life you have nurtured In 
 him, to bring about this rehabilitation of the 
 nation? 
 
 For it cannot be doubted that Americans 
 
** JVe Glory in Tribulations" 55 
 
 were growing soft, easy, adipose. Our pros- 
 perity was poisoning us. We were fast as- 
 suming the fatal falsehood that happiness is 
 the end of life. Our current phrases, *' A 
 happy New Year," " Many happy returns of 
 the day, " A long and happy life to you," 
 were conventional, but they expressed what 
 was becoming a dominant desire for ourselves 
 and for our friends. " Safety first " gen- 
 erally meant comfort first. Much of the in- 
 dustrial unrest was the struggle of pigs at the 
 trough over the division of the swill. The 
 ministers were hard put to it to reconcile the 
 inequalities and unhappinesses of life with 
 faith in a just and benevolent God. Glory 
 in tribulation was becoming a lost art. 
 
 The war is teaching us that happiness is not 
 the end of life; that the joy of self-sacrifice 
 is greater than the joy of self-indulgence. 
 This we are learning as such a lesson only 
 can be learned, not from sermons or text 
 books, but in the school of experience. 
 Thousands of men and women have crossed 
 the Atlantic and are in the trenches, the air- 
 planes, the ambulances, the hospitals, laying 
 down their lives in self-denying services for 
 their fellow-men, and thousands more are pre- 
 paring to follow them. Doubtless the spirit 
 of adventure mingles with and quickens the 
 
56 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 spirit of self-sacrifice, but also the spirit of 
 self-sacrifice mingles with and ennobles the 
 spirit of adventure. 
 
 A nation is made Christian, not by main- 
 taining an established church, nor by building 
 cathedrals, nor by writing a confession of its 
 faith Into Its constitution. It is made Chris- 
 tian by the spirit of love, service, and sacrifice. 
 When did a nation ever show so much of this 
 spirit of love, service and sacrifice as the 
 American Nation does to-day? The Govern- 
 ment has called upon the people for thousands 
 of millions of dollars to carry on the war for 
 the freedom of the world, and the people 
 have offered more than they were asked to 
 contribute. The Red Cross has asked for 
 millions to minister to the wounded on the 
 fields, the sick and suffering In the hospitals, 
 and the Impoverished civilians In the devas- 
 tated countries, and the people have offered 
 more than they were asked to give. The Y. 
 M. C. A. and the Y. W. C. A. have asked 
 millions to aid them in social and spiritual 
 services, and the people have given them more 
 than was called for. They are denying them- 
 selves food they prefer that they may send 
 food to others who are In greater need. The 
 young men and women are offering them- 
 selves, and their fathers and mothers are of- 
 fering their sons and their daughters, in life- 
 
**We Glory in Tribulations'' 57 
 
 giving service — laying down tlieir lives for 
 peoples across the sea whom most of us have 
 never seen, whose very language most of us 
 cannot understand. The cross, which a few 
 years ago was seen only on the breasts of a 
 few ecclesiastics or on the spires of some of 
 our churches. Is now accepted as a symbol of 
 their faith by twenty-three million members 
 of the Red Cross who have the right to this 
 symbol, and most of whom are wearing it on 
 their persons or displaying It in their win- 
 dows. Every man who wears this cross 
 wears the symbol of a universal priesthood; 
 every home adorned by it carries the syjnbol 
 of Christ's Universal Church. The spirit of 
 love, service, and sacrifice has burst through 
 all barriers of creed and church, and is found 
 to-day in the hearts and lives of Catholics and 
 Protestants, Christians and Jews, believers 
 and agnostics. 
 
 And this is more than self-sacrifice; it is 
 sacrificial service. We are learning by ex- 
 perience what it is to suffer for the sins of 
 the world, what it is for the innocent to suffer 
 with and for the guilty, and how suffering re- 
 deems, saves, delivers. When a nation which 
 has been poisoned by a century of pernicious 
 teaching makes war upon civilization, civiliza- 
 tion is doomed unless there are men and 
 women willing to give up all they hold dear — 
 
58 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 property, home, husband, wife, children, life 
 Itself — In brave battle against sins which 
 they have never committed, for which they are 
 not responsible, which they have done nothing 
 to promote. Europe could not have been 
 saved from a revival of Roman despotism, 
 pagan alike in its philosophy and its spirit, if 
 there had not been in Belgium, in France, In 
 Great Britain, in Italy, in Russia, and in 
 America men who were willing to suffer and 
 to die for their faith in liberty. It is be- 
 cause there were no such sacrificial lovers of 
 liberty in Germany that Germany has been 
 given over to the spirit of autocracy. It is 
 because there were such sacrificial lovers of 
 liberty in Russia that Russia has been set free 
 from the old autocracy. 
 
 Thus we are learning the meaning of Chris- 
 tianity, both as a theology and as a spirit. 
 
 As a theology, Christianity is the doctrine 
 that there is a real battle in the universe be- 
 tween good and evil, the extent and full mean- 
 ing of which we need not and cannot know, 
 but In which we must bear a part whether we 
 will or not ; and that there is One greater than 
 we think, our Companion in the great cam- 
 paign, who voluntarily shares with us in all 
 the pains and perils of the battlefield. As a 
 spirit, Christianity is reverence for our Great 
 Companion, not because he is the Almighty, 
 
'' We Glory in Tribulations '' 59 
 
 or the All-wise, but because he is our Leader 
 in the sacrificial service. 
 
 We cannot revere in God what we despise 
 in our fellow-men, and in our fellow-men we 
 despise the power and the wisdom which are 
 used in the service of self. The greater the 
 power and wisdom, the greater is our con- 
 tempt for its mean and selfish possessor. 
 We cannot refuse our reverence to the auto- 
 cratic emperor of Germany and give it to 
 God if we think of him as an Almighty King 
 governing only by his power, or if we think of 
 Him as without emotions and living in eter- 
 nal serenity looking upon the struggles of 
 mankind with placid indifference; and we can- 
 not give our reverence to the exiled king of 
 Belgium laying down his life for his country 
 and refuse our reverence to the Galilean who 
 has laid down his life for the whole world, 
 nor can we give our reverence to the fathers 
 and mothers who have given their sons for 
 the salvation of a foreign people and refuse 
 it to the All-Father who so loved the world 
 that he gave for it his only begotten Son. 
 
 Little children are sometimes great teach- 
 ers because they naively express the feeling 
 which they have not learned from their ill-in- 
 structed elders to repress. When the French 
 children knelt in the streets of Paris as the 
 American troops passed through that city, 
 
6o The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 they revered, not our wealth, nor our shrewd- 
 ness, nor our power, but our sacrificial serv- 
 ice; and taught us what in our kneeling ought 
 to inspire our revering. This is the reason 
 why Christendom, in spite of much semi- 
 pagan teaching from our pulpits, reverences, 
 not an enthroned Allah in the heavens, but a 
 thorn-crowned Christ upon the earth, not a 
 Buddha without passions, purposes or desires, 
 but a human God, a man of sorrows and 
 familiar with grief. Christians find Him on 
 the battlefield — a leader in its great cam- 
 paign, sharing with them in the sacrificial 
 service. And this experience is giving a new 
 and deeper meaning to the declaration of the 
 unknown writer of the book of Hebrews, 
 '' Without shedding of blood there is no 
 remission of sin," and a broader and more 
 universal meaning to the declaration of Paul, 
 '' I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and 
 fill up on my part that which is lacking of the 
 afilictions of Christ." 
 
SIXTH LETTER 
 
 "the republic of god" 
 
 You say that you fear you have not put 
 your question very clearly, that It is not very 
 clear in your own mind. I think, however, 
 that I understand it. Let me state it in my 
 own words. 
 
 You are satisfied that this is a just war; 
 that France had a right and duty of self-de- 
 fense; that Belgium had a right and duty to 
 maintain her neutrality on which France had 
 depended for protection; that England had a 
 right and a duty to come to the defense of 
 Belgium whose neutrality she had guaranteed. 
 But what had Italy to do with the war? 
 What had we to do with it? How is it our 
 war? Have we not problems enough of our 
 own without taking upon ourselves the prob- 
 lems of other lands? Are we not in danger 
 of forgetting the beam in our own eye in our 
 excitement over what is more than a mote in 
 our neighbor's eye? The President has said 
 that the object of this war is to make the 
 world safe for democracy. Are we so sure 
 that democracy is the best form of govern- 
 6i 
 
62 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 ment that it is worth all that this war is cost- 
 ing us to make France and Belgium safe for 
 it? 
 
 Have I fairly stated your perplexity? 
 
 I might reply by saying that we did not de- 
 clare war against Germany until Germany 
 had made war against us; had set at nought 
 international law which all civilized nations 
 are under obligation to maintain; had inter- 
 fered with our commerce on the high seas; 
 had murdered our citizens traveling peace- 
 ably on the ocean; and had assumed the right 
 to tell us how often and on what pathway we 
 might traverse that ocean. But while these 
 and kindred acts were the occasion, they were 
 not the cause of our entering upon this war. 
 These are not the facts which have set on fire 
 the indignation of the American people and 
 united us in the determination to conquer 
 whatever it may cost. The President has 
 rightly defined that cause. We believe that 
 the right of Nations to be free is in peril and 
 we joined with them in the defense of that 
 right. We have engaged in a crusade to 
 make this world a home in which God's chil- 
 dren can live in peace and safety, a crusade 
 far more in harmony with the spirit and will 
 of Christ than the crusade to recover from 
 pagans the tomb in which the body of Christ 
 was buried. 
 
'' The Republic of God '' 63 
 
 Jesus Christ has in a memorable passage 
 defined for his followers the spirit which 
 ought to animate the social order of the 
 civilized world, which will animate their in- 
 stitutions when the kingdoms of this world 
 have become the Kingdom of our Lord and 
 of his Christ: 
 
 Be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your teacher, 
 and all ye are brethren. And call no man your 
 father on the earth: for one is your Father, even 
 he who is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: 
 for one is your master, even the Christ. But he 
 that is greatest among you shall be your servant. 
 And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled ; 
 and whosoever shall humble himself shall be exalted. 
 
 How does this differ from the motto of the 
 French Republic: ^'Liberty, Equality, Fra- 
 ternity " ? How does it differ from Abra- 
 ham Lincoln's definition of the purpose of our 
 fathers : 
 
 Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought 
 forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived 
 in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that 
 all men are created equal. 
 
 There is one important difference. Jesus 
 Christ recognized the Fatherhood of God and 
 mated with it, perhaps I should say deduced 
 from it, the Brotherhood of Man. In this 
 
64 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 respect he Is still In advance of modern po- 
 litical and social reformers. There Is no 
 ground that I can perceive for the faith that 
 all men are brethren except the faith that we 
 are all children of one Father. 
 
 All ye are brethren: that Is democracy; 
 one is your Father: that Is the spiritual 
 foundation of democracy. 
 
 Democracy Is not a mere form of govern- 
 ment. It Is a religious faith. It is a spirit 
 of life — a spirit of mutual regard for each 
 other's Interests and mutual respect for each 
 other's opinions; it is government by public 
 opinion; it is liberty, equality, fraternity — In 
 the Institutions of religion, of Industry, and 
 of education as well as in government; In a 
 word, it Is human brotherhood. We are 
 not fighting to impose our political institutions 
 or our political Ideals on reluctant peoples. 
 We are fighting to maintain the right of eager 
 peoples to organize their Institutions in har- 
 mony with this spirit of brotherhood. We 
 have joined with all the free peoples of the 
 world in a stern resolve, not that all Nations 
 shall be Christian, but that all Nations shall 
 have liberty to be Christian If they wish. 
 
 This human brotherhood involves four 
 fundamental liberties: 
 
 Religious liberty. 
 
 Industrial liberty. 
 
'' The Republic of God " 6| 
 
 Educational liberty. 
 
 Political liberty. 
 
 And these liberties are not only rights; 
 they are also duties. We sometimes ought 
 to forego our rights ; we never ought to aban- 
 don our duties. 
 
 I. The prophet Ezekiel, overcome by the 
 vision of Jehovah in the Temple, threw him- 
 self upon his face before his God. And the 
 Voice said unto him, " Son of man, stand 
 upon thy feet, and I will speak to thee." 
 
 It is a fundamental right of man to stand 
 upon his feet, and face, unafraid, the Al- 
 mighty. This is his right because this is his 
 duty. It is not right for him to allow any 
 priest, church, creed, or book to stand between 
 him and his heavenly Father. The priest, the 
 church, the creed, the book, may help him to 
 find his way to God; they may help him to 
 understand his God; but they never should 
 be allowed to take the place of God. God Is 
 not an absentee, to be interpreted only by a 
 messenger or a letter. He is man's '' Great 
 Companion." The messenger and the letter 
 are useful only as they bring the soul into 
 companionship with that Companion. It is 
 the right of every man to give account of 
 himself to God because it is the duty of every 
 man to give account of himself to God. No 
 substitute can do this for him. The rec- 
 
66 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 ognltlon of this right and the fulfillment of 
 this duty forbid all spiritual despotism, and 
 are a sacred and solemn guaranty of spiritual 
 liberty. 
 
 This is Religious Democracy. 
 
 2. God made this world for the habitation 
 of man and has given it to him for his dwell- 
 ing-place. It was not made specially for 
 white men or for Anglo-Saxon men or for rich 
 men or for wise men or for good men; it was 
 made for all men. They are all his children. 
 And they all have a right to a share In it. In 
 the Father's house there Is bread enough and 
 to spare; why should any one perish with 
 hunger? That is the question which the 
 hungry in every land are asking, and they 
 have a right to ask it. Society is not di- 
 vinely organized when some men have so 
 much that they know not how to use It, and 
 others so little that they know not how to 
 live. 
 
 Whether the twin evils of luxurious wealth 
 and sordid poverty are due to the rich or to 
 the poor or to neither but to a vicious organ- 
 ization of society I do not here consider. 
 They are evils which democracy is endeavor- 
 ing to cure by promoting a better distribution 
 of wealth. And In doing this democracy is 
 endeavoring not only to secure to all men their 
 rights, but to enable all men to perform their 
 
'' The Republic of God " 67 
 
 duties. For it is the duty of every man to put 
 Into the world at least as much as he takes 
 out of it, and it is the duty of society to make 
 this possible for every man. 
 
 I have met many skeptics, but never one so 
 skeptical that he doubted the Biblical state- 
 ment, " Naked came I out of my mother's 
 womb." Coming Into the world naked, It is 
 clear that if we are to possess anything we 
 must either produce It, accept it as a gift, steal 
 It, or get it out of the common stock. Who- 
 ever does not by some service of hand or 
 brain or heart, by what he does or what he 
 endures, by what he makes or what he says 
 or what he suffers, contribute his share to the 
 world's welfare, must be classed with the 
 beggars, whether he Is clad In rags or in 
 velvet. To make such contribution Is the 
 right and the duty of every man. 
 
 This Is Industrial Democracy. 
 
 3. We are In this world in the making! 
 The object of life Is the development of men 
 and women. It Is therefore the duty of 
 every one to make of himself, and of every 
 parent to make of his children, the best prod- 
 uct possible. The Northern radical affirms 
 that the Negro can be made the peer of the 
 white man, and therefore ought to have the 
 same education. The Southern conservative 
 declares that the Negro never can be made 
 
68 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 the peer of the white man, and therefore 
 ought not to have the same education. Both 
 are guessing. What the Negro race can be- 
 come after an education Hke that of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race no one can foretell. And 
 the expe iment can never be tried. For it Is 
 not within the power of man so to shape the 
 world's destiny as to pass one race through 
 the educational process through which other 
 races have passed. It is neither possible nor 
 desirable that the Africans or the East In- 
 dians or the Chinese or the Japanese should 
 become replicas of the Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 This truth democracy recognizes, and 
 therefore wherever It has gone it has estab- 
 lished the public school. The object of edu- 
 cation should not be to run all pupils Into the 
 same mold. The school should not be a 
 foundry. The object should be to give to 
 every pupil a chance to grow. The school 
 should be a garden. Education, therefore, 
 should prepare for life, which is itself the 
 larger education. It should be adapted to 
 the present conditions and the prospective 
 needs of the pupil. The growing recognition 
 of this truth has created optionalism in edu- 
 cation, has added Industrial training to 
 academic education, has provided, as never 
 before, for woman's education. To enjoy an 
 opportunity for education is the right of 
 
'' The Republic of God '' 69 
 
 every individual; to make that opportunity 
 so varied as to meet the varied needs of the 
 members is the duty of society; to avail him- 
 self of the opportunity to make all of him- 
 self that he can make is the duty of every 
 individual. 
 
 This Is Educational Democracy. 
 
 4. It is the right and duty of every man 
 to govern himself. It is one object of edu- 
 cation to prepare him to perform this duty. 
 It is his right to determine his own destiny — 
 his right because his duty. And as he must 
 see with his own eyes, work with his own 
 hands, and think with his own brain, so he 
 must guide himself with his own judgment and 
 rule himself with his own conscience. If he 
 is blind, some one else must see for him; if 
 he Is paralyzed, some one else must work for 
 him. So, if he has no judgment or no con- 
 science, some one else must guide and rule 
 him. But every normal man Is furnished 
 with eyes to see, hands to work, judgment 
 to guide, conscience to rule. Such is the as- 
 sumption of democracy, which holds that the 
 object of all just government is to prepare the 
 governed to govern himself. Democracy, 
 therefore, in the family and In the school 
 trains the growing child in the art of self- 
 government. And democracy in the state 
 throws responsibility upon the untrained citi- 
 
70 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 zen and Is not discouraged If he blunders and 
 sometimes blunders badly, for democracy be- 
 lieves that the untrained voter will learn by 
 his own blunders. 
 
 This Is Political Democracy. 
 
 This Is the democracy for which we are 
 fighting against Its resolute and remorseless 
 foes. For Germany recognizes not one of 
 these rights, not one of these duties. 
 
 Germany has not political liberty. 
 
 And the German people do not desire polit- 
 ical liberty; It Involves responsibilities which 
 they do not wish to assume. Germany Is 
 autocratic not only In its form of government, 
 but In the spirit of Its people. Professor 
 Kuno Francke, of the German Department 
 In Harvard University, In an essay written 
 before the war, thus characterizes the dis- 
 tinction between the American and the Ger- 
 man temperament: 
 
 I think I need not fear any serious opposition if 
 I designate self-possession as the cardinal American 
 virtue. ... In contradiction to this fundamental 
 American trait of self-possession, I designate the 
 passion for self-surrender as perhaps the most sig- 
 nificant expression of national German character. 
 
 He adds that, while this passion leads the 
 German at times to surrender himself to a 
 great cause or sacred task, It also leads him to 
 
''The Republic of God'' 71 
 
 surrender himself to whims and hysterias of 
 all sorts. He says : 
 
 Nobody can be a more relentless destroyer of all 
 that makes life beautiful and lovely, nobody can be 
 a more savage hater of religious beliefs, of popular 
 tradition, of patriotic instincts, than the German 
 who has convinced himself that by the uprooting of 
 all these things he performs the sacred task of sav- 
 ing society. 
 
 The events which have occurred In Bel- 
 gium, northern France, Serbia, and Armenia 
 since this essay of Professor Francke's was 
 written furnish a tragic illustration of its 
 truth. It has been demonstrated to be a cor- 
 rect Interpretation of German character. 
 
 Germany has not educational liberty. 
 
 Its teachers are appointed in the provinces 
 by the King, In the Empire by the Emperor. 
 The object of their appointment was with al- 
 most brutal frankness defined by the Austrian 
 Emperor after the overthrow of Napoleon I 
 at Waterloo, In a speech to the German pro- 
 fessors at Laybach : " I do not need savants 
 but sturdy subjects. It is your duty to edu- 
 cate the young to be such. He who serves 
 me must learn what I order: he who cannot 
 or who brings me new ideas can go, or I will 
 dismiss him." The common people in Ger- 
 many have never been taught to think for 
 
72 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 themselves. For at least half a century they 
 have been trained to regard the authority of 
 the State as the supreme authority, and obe- 
 dience to its commands as the supreme virtue. 
 
 Germany has not industrial liberty. 
 
 It is a well recognized economic truth that 
 all wealth is derived from the land. In 
 America by our Homestead Law we threw 
 open our agricultural lands to all the world, 
 giving 1 60 acres to any individual who would 
 live upon them and cultivate them; and, 
 though we carelessly allowed our mines, for- 
 ests, and water powers to fall into the hands 
 of a few wealthy owners, we are attempting 
 by our policy of conservation and of land 
 taxation to correct that well-nigh fatal error. 
 In Germany the ancient feudal system sur- 
 vives, which puts the control of the nation's 
 wealth into the hands of a landed aristocracy, 
 popularly known as Junkers. Peasant pro- 
 prietorship is practically unknown. 
 
 Germany has not religious liberty. 
 
 *' Perfect love casteth out fear." It is 
 equally true that fear casteth out love. The 
 religion inculcated by the leaders of German 
 thought and life is the religion of fear. The 
 reverence demanded is for a God who is the 
 ally of the military power, and the worship 
 inspired if not inculcated is the worship of 
 Odin, not of Christ. Bernhardi represented 
 
'' The Republic of God " 73 
 
 this spirit in his declaration that " Might 
 proves itself the supreme Right." The 
 Emperor represented it when in 1900 he put 
 before his soldiers Attila, the ruthless king 
 of the Huns, as the model for them to follow. 
 Pastor Vorwerk represented it in his para- 
 phrase of the Lord's Prayer: " Though the 
 warrior's bread be scanty, do Thou work 
 daily death and tenfold woe unto the enemy. 
 Forgive in merciful long-suffering each bullet 
 and each blow which misses its mark! " It 
 is not difficult to believe the apparently well 
 authenticated report, that the verse which 
 I here quote, by an unnamed German poet, 
 has had wide circulation and great popularity 
 throughout Germany during this war. Con- 
 trast these two ideals, the first this ode to 
 Odin by a modern German poet, the second 
 The Miniature of Christ, by Sir OHver 
 Lodge, a modern English philosopher. 
 
 THE GERMAN GOD 
 
 The foes of Germany, full of irony, inquire: 
 " You Germans call upon God, and pray to him 
 To aid you in the battle. 
 So you have a God of your own, 
 Whom we know not, 
 A God on j^our side? " 
 
 " Yes," cries all Germany, " and if you know him 
 not 
 
74 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 We shall tell you his name. 
 
 The God who speaks through our guns, 
 
 The God who shatters your fortresses, 
 
 Who roars in the sea by our cliffs, 
 
 Who hovers in the heavens with our aeroplanes, 
 
 The God of our swords, who fills you with affright, 
 
 He is the same Almighty Spirit 
 
 Who through the centuries 
 
 Has hovered over Germany, 
 
 Who weaves and mixes all our lives, 
 
 And on whom we depend. 
 
 Odin the ancient vagabond of the clouds, 
 
 The Odin of our fathers, it is He and no other." 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN GOD 
 
 Overwhelmingly and appallingly simple is the no- 
 tion presented to us by the orthodox Christian 
 Churches: — a babe born of poor parents, born in 
 a stable among cattle because there was no room 
 for them in the village inn — no room for them in 
 the inn — what a master touch ! Revealed to 
 shepherds. Religious people inattentive. Royalty 
 ignorant, or bent on massacre. . . . Then the child 
 growing into a peasant youth, brought up to a 
 trade. At length a few years of itinerant preach- 
 ing; flashes of miraculous power and insight. And 
 then a swift end: set upon by the religious people; 
 his followers over-awed and scattered, himself tried 
 as a blasphemer, flogged, and finally tortured to 
 death. . . . Such occurrences seem inevitable to 
 highest humanity in an unregenerate world; but 
 
''The Republic of God'' 75 
 
 who, without inspiration would see in them a revela- 
 tion of the nature of God? 
 
 We are fighting to make the world safe for 
 this democracy, safe for liberty, equality, 
 fraternity, safe for a community inspired by 
 the faith that One is your Father, even God 
 and all ye are brethren. When this cam- 
 paign is ended and this safety has been se- 
 cured, then each Nation will be free to enter 
 on such studies, discussions and experiments 
 as shall make clear what democracy means, 
 that is, what it means to recognize in all men 
 our brethren, in life an opportunity for mu- 
 tual fellowship and mutual service, and in 
 God one to be revered not for his might but 
 for his love, his service and his self-sacrifice. 
 
 This is the crusade to which your son has 
 consecrated himself. Are you not glad? 
 
SEVENTH LETTER 
 
 Christ's peace 
 
 Never before have we understood as we 
 do now Paul's experience: "We are 
 troubled on every side yet not distressed; we 
 are perplexed but not in despair." As moths 
 to the candle so we fly to the daily paper to 
 increase the troubles of our mind by reading 
 scenes from the terrible tragedy enacted on 
 the European stage. The pathetic cry of the 
 Psalmist of old is repeated in our hearts: 
 " Oh, that I had wings like a dove! Then 
 would I fly away, and be at rest." 
 
 But we have not wings and cannot fly and 
 if we could, flight would not give us the rest 
 we covet. We have tried that method and 
 it failed. When this war burst upon Europe 
 we struggled hard to persuade ourselves that 
 its causes were obscure, that it was a new 
 outbreak of the senseless struggle between 
 ambitious, covetous, jealous rulers of the peo- 
 ple, that it did not concern us, that we could 
 be and ought to be neutral in thought and 
 feeling as well as in official acts. And we 
 76 
 
Chris t^s Peace 77 
 
 struggled to quiet our consciences by listening 
 to the soporific preachments, by press, by 
 politicians, and sometimes by pulpit, urging 
 that it was our duty as well as our self-inter- 
 est to keep out of the war. 
 
 But our consciences were not quieted. We 
 could not read of robbery and murder upon 
 an enormous scale and be unconcerned. We 
 could not see treaties rudely broken, un- 
 fortified cities bombarded, helpless men, 
 women and children killed, peaceable mer- 
 chant ships torpedoed and deliberate attempts 
 avowedly made to crush the France that in 
 1776 had come to our rescue, and remain 
 neutral In thought and feeling. A great, 
 rich nation, strong unless Its cowardice made 
 It weak, we could not play the part of Gallio 
 and care for none of these things. We could 
 not deceive ourselves with the pleasing delu- 
 sion that we loved peace when we were only 
 afraid of war. Our pride in our wealth and 
 our numbers became our shame. The de- 
 mocracy which had been our glory became our 
 dishonor. Our trouble grew to be a dis- 
 tress; our perplexity a despair. The day of 
 peace dawned upon us on that memorable 
 Good Friday when as a nation we recognized 
 the truth that the battle for freedom fought 
 by our kin across the sea did concern us, and 
 reluctantly declared to ourselves and to the 
 
78 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 world that Germany was making war upon us 
 and upon all civilized peoples. 
 
 Cowardly flight from duty never leads to 
 peace. Courageous fulfillment of duty never 
 falls to find It. 
 
 I read the other day the story of a boy who 
 offered himself as a volunteer and was re- 
 jected because of the unsoundness of his 
 teeth. He went to a dentist, had them all 
 extracted and a set of false teeth furnished 
 him, then returned and was accepted. He 
 will not be troubled by the Inconveniences and 
 discomforts of camp life. He will not be 
 perplexed because he Is ordered to disagree- 
 able or perilous duty. He will not be dis- 
 tressed If he is wounded or taken prisoner. 
 He has given himself to the war In order that 
 he may render whatever service he Is called 
 upon to render and to suffer whatever discom- 
 forts or pains that service Involves. He has 
 given his life to the service of his fellow-men 
 and put himself under the orders of a com- 
 mander whom he does not know and may 
 never see, and he will neither hesitate because 
 he Is ordered to the front at the Imminent 
 peril of his life, nor grumble because he is 
 ordered to the rear to guard munitions or 
 take part In hospital service. 
 
 The difference between a true and a 
 spurious religious experience is strikingly 
 
Christ's Peace 79 
 
 illustrated by the contrast between the pre- 
 tentious faith of the Kaiser and the unpre- 
 tentious faith of Abraham Lincoln. Em- 
 peror WiUiam at Berlin, March 29, 1901, 
 said: "We will be everywhere victorious 
 even if we are surrounded by enemies on all 
 sides and even if we have to fight superior 
 numbers, for our most powerful ally is God, 
 who, since the time of the Great Elector and 
 Great King, has always been on our side." 
 Abraham Lincoln, during the darkest hours 
 of the Civil War, in response to the question 
 whether he was sure that God was on our side 
 replied: I do not know; I have not thought 
 about that. But I am very desirous to know 
 that we are on God's side. 
 
 In false religious experience we have a 
 plan which we wish to carry out; we have 
 faith that it is right and wise, that is, faith 
 in ourselves; and we want a silent partner 
 who will enable us to carry out our plan. 
 That is the measure of our faith in God. In 
 true religious experience we believe with 
 Hegel that "God governs the world; the 
 actual work of his government — the carry- 
 ing out of his plans — is the history of the 
 world," and we want to help him to accom- 
 plish his design. In the one case we want 
 God as our ally; in the other case we want 
 to be the ally of God. In the one case we 
 
8o The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 want him to do our will; In the other case 
 we want to do his will. In the one case we 
 want God to fight our battles for us; in the 
 other case we exult in the faith that he wants 
 us to fight his battles with him. 
 
 I read occasionally some writer who says 
 that " Since God is God and right Is right 
 it is impossible that we should be defeated in 
 this war." I do not think we shall be de- 
 feated In this war. All signs seem to me to 
 justify the conviction that we shall win just 
 as decisive a victory as we deserve, that if we 
 suffer any partial defeat it will be because we 
 have grown weary of the war and are willing 
 to make terms with the brigands against 
 whom we are fighting. But if it should be 
 otherwise, if the Kaiser should win all that 
 he hoped to win, if by conquest and alliances 
 he should establish a Pan-German Europe 
 extending from the North Sea to the Persian 
 Gulf, It would not have any tendency to shake 
 my faith in God. 
 
 To believe that God will carry out our 
 plans, that he will submit himself to our 
 judgments, that he will fulfill our requests, 
 that he will do our v/lll, is not to have faith 
 in God. To have faith in God is to believe 
 that he knows what his children need; that 
 he dares to allow them to take their own 
 Vay and learn by bitter experience the les- 
 
Christ's Peace 8i 
 
 son which they would not learn from teach- 
 ing; and It is so to learn that lesson from 
 this terrible experience that it will never have 
 to be repeated. Present defeat, therefore, If 
 it should come, though I repeat I think it 
 hardly conceivable, would only convince me 
 that God sees that the free Nations need de- 
 feat in order that they may learn the lessons 
 he would have us learn; among them that 
 democracy will not be perfected until it be- 
 comes a Brotherhood of Man, and a Brother- 
 hood of Man is impossible unless founded on 
 faith in the Fatherhood of God. 
 
 Jesus Christ offers to his disciples not 
 escape from the battle of life but peace of the 
 spirit on the battlefield. " Come unto me all 
 ye that labor and are heavy laden," he says, 
 *' and I will give you rest. Take my yoke 
 upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek 
 and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest 
 unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and 
 my burden is light." He offers, not escape 
 from life's burdens but a yoke which will en- 
 able us to bear its burdens. That yoke is 
 obedience to our Heavenly Father as Christ 
 was^bedlent to his Heavenly Father. It is 
 making our prayer, that Is th^ supreme desire 
 of our life, that our Father's will, not ours, 
 may be done. 
 
 What would be thought of a would-be 
 
82 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 soldier who should offer his services on condi- 
 tions such as: "I must be assured eight 
 hours' sleep every night"; or, "I am very 
 dependent upon regular meals and my coffee 
 in the morning "; or, " Wet feet are sure to 
 give me a cold, I must guard against that." 
 Conditional volunteering is as preposterous 
 in life as in the army; for life also is war. 
 Mr. Wells, in " God the Invisible King," puts 
 with characteristic forcefulness the kind of 
 volunteering required: "God takes all. 
 He takes you, blood and bones and house 
 and acres, he takes skill and influence and 
 expectations. For all the rest of your life 
 you are nothing but God's agent. If you are 
 not prepared for so complete a surrender, 
 then you are infinitely remote from God. 
 You must go your way. Here you are merely 
 a curious interloper." 
 
 He who makes this dedication of himself, 
 who realizes that life is a battle and gives 
 himself unreservedly to doing his bit, will 
 never be tempted to ask himself, " Is life 
 worth living? " and will never complain to 
 others or pity himself because his service is 
 hard and its results are disappointing. He 
 will not be perplexed because his companions 
 in the war are called to endure great self- 
 sacrifices and go through great sorrows; and 
 when one after another of these life com- 
 
Christ's Peace 83 
 
 rades fall at his side he will still go forward, 
 unterrified, unhalted, unhesitating. " 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 thinking of the 
 future. To be nearer danger and death is to 
 be nearer God, and therefore why pity us? 
 Put your trust in God ! Everything happens 
 according to His will, and it is ever for the 
 best." The pubHshed letters from the front 
 contain many similar experiences of peace in 
 the midst of peril. The remedy for the 
 doubts, the perplexities, the disbeliefs of a 
 troubled mind is a whole-hearted consecra- 
 tion 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: 
 
84 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 *' 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 forty-sixth 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 descrip- 
 tion 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 Hnd that periods of perfect repose suc- 
 ceeded those of destruction." . . . *' It is 
 just where ' the mountain falling cometh to 
 
Chris t^s Peace 85 
 
 naught, and the rock is removed 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 wolf's 
 ravin, have written upon their fronts, in 
 simple words, the mountaineer's faith in the 
 ancient promise — 
 
 * 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.' " 
 
 When we look back over the history of the 
 world, we see that the death of Jesus Christ, 
 which to the disciples seemed the end of all 
 their hopes, was the birth of Christianity, 
 that the destruction of Jerusalem, which to 
 the Jews seemed the end of spiritual religion, 
 was but the breaking of the alabaster box 
 that the perfume of its contents might spread 
 throughout the world, that the decline and 
 fall of the Roman Empire, which seemed to 
 th? mm of that time to be the overthrow of 
 
86 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 civilization, was but the labor pains of a new 
 and Christian civilization, that in our own 
 country the Civil War, which at the time ap- 
 peared to portend an enmity between the 
 North and the South which could only be 
 overcome after two or three generations, did 
 in fact unite the North and the South in the 
 bonds of a friendship founded on mutuality 
 of respect greater than the nation had ever 
 before known. Instructed by such a survey 
 of the past it is not difficult for us to believe 
 that the present great world cataclysm, when 
 it has accomplished the divine purpose, will 
 advance the world far on its road toward that 
 kingdom of God which is righteousness, peace 
 and joy in holiness of spirit. 
 
 But if the sufferings which our boys must 
 endure sometimes make us hesitate to enter 
 upon this campaign, the sufferings which they 
 must inflict appall us. They must not only 
 be ready to die but they must also be ready to 
 kill. 
 
 It IS true that many German children will 
 be made orphans and many German wives 
 will be made widows by our arms, and Ger- 
 many, which four years ago was so pros- 
 perous, will be left as Belgium, France, and 
 Italy will be left, desolate and draped in 
 mourning, and it will have lost what is the 
 natIon*s greatest possession — honor. And 
 
Christ's Peace 87 
 
 yet it is also true that we are fighting to 
 emancipate Germany no less than to eman- 
 cipate Belgium, France and Italy. We are 
 going to make the whole world safe for the 
 Brotherhood of Man — Germany no less 
 than the countries which the German auto- 
 cracy has attacked. And we are going to 
 do it whatever it costs us and whatever it 
 costs those whom we are fighting. 
 
 When Jesus drove out from the helpless 
 boy the demon that possessed him, " the boy 
 became as one dead; in so much that the 
 more part said, He is dead." This war must 
 not end until the demon of lawless self-con- 
 ceit and self-will is driven out of the German 
 nation, though the nation be left as one dead 
 by the very act which saves its people from 
 the madness which possesses them. 
 
 '' My peace I give unto you," said Jesus 
 Christ, in his farewell talk with his disciples: 
 ^' not as the world gtveth give I unto you.'' 
 What is the difference? 
 
 The world sometimes offers peace to the 
 coward who flees from the field of battle or 
 proposes conciliation and compromise with 
 enemies of righteousness. Christ never! No 
 more uncompromising enemy, no more vehe- 
 ment repudiator of all attempts to escape con- 
 flict by peace without victory does the history 
 of the human race afford. We remember his 
 
88 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 saying to the woman taken in adultery, 
 " Neither do I condemn thee." We forget 
 that he adds " From henceforth sin no more." 
 We remember his saying to the penitent 
 brigand, " This day shalt thou be with me 
 in Paradise." We forget that to the im- 
 penitent brigand he offered no word of com- 
 fort or consolation. We remember his 
 humility in washing his disciples' feet. We 
 forget his saying to Peter, " If I wash thee 
 not, thou hast no part with me." We re- 
 member his welcome to those who came to 
 him whatever their past offenses — Matthew, 
 Zaccheus, the publicans and harlots. We 
 forget his rejection of the self-confident disci- 
 ple : " I will follow thee whithersoever thou 
 goest," but Jesus said unto him, " Foxes have 
 holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the 
 Son of man hath not where to lay his head." 
 I wonder, did he follow the Master? We 
 forget his rejection of the procrastinating 
 disciple: ''Suffer me first to go and bury 
 my father "; but Jesus said unto him, " Let 
 the dead bury their dead; go thou and preach 
 the kingdom of God." We forget his re- 
 jection of the irresolute disciple : " Lord, T 
 will follow thee; but let me first go bid them 
 farewell which are at home at my house"; 
 but Jesus said unto him, " No man, having 
 put his hand to the plough, and looking back. 
 
Christ's Peace 89 
 
 IS fit for the kingdom of God." Thousands 
 of sermons have been preached on the father's 
 welcome of the returning prodigal; not many 
 on the fact that the father did not receive 
 the prodigal till he had learned his lesson 
 and come home with " I am no more worthy 
 to be called thy son." Thousands of ser- 
 mons have been preached on Christ's saying 
 to Peter, " Thou art Peter and on this rock I 
 will build my church "; very few on the say- 
 ing which followed, when Peter desired to 
 dissuade his Master from the cross, '' Get 
 thee behind me, Satan." 
 
 There never can be peace in this world 
 without victory. No man can have peace in 
 himself except as he wins a victory over his 
 baser appetites and passions. No city can 
 maintain peace within its limits except as its 
 police win and retain victory over the criminal 
 population. Doing justice is the essential 
 condition of peace. If a thug attacks a peace- 
 ful citizen, knocks him down, robs him of 
 his watch and purse, and so injures him that 
 he has to go to the hospital for. repairs, 
 justice is not satisfied by a promise of the 
 thug not to do it again. He must restore 
 the stolen goods and pay the hospital charges, 
 and, if necessary, be made to feel such 
 *' humiliation " and " sting " that he will not 
 wish to repeat the crime. There can be no 
 
90 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 peace in the world until the prophets of false- 
 hood and the corrupters and oppressors of 
 their fellow-men are converted to a God of 
 truth and goodness, or are utterly destroyed 
 with unquenchable fire. 
 
 In this message to the children of God the 
 oldest prophet of the Old Testament and the 
 Master in the New Testament unite. The 
 writer of the third chapter of Genesis tells us 
 that the head of the serpent shall bruise man's 
 heel; but man's heel shall bruise the head of 
 the serpent. Now the head of the serpent is 
 erect, its forked tongue is running out, its eyes 
 red with wrath, its very breath is poisonous. 
 We have a difficult task to get our heel on the 
 head but when we do we must grind it to 
 powder. The Master in one of his farewell 
 messages to his disciples says that he who 
 takes up the sword shall perish by the 
 sword — not by pestilence, nor by thunder- 
 bolt, nor by the act of God — but by the 
 sword in the hands of man. That sword has 
 been given to us by our Master and we must 
 not sheathe it until the Predatory Potsdam 
 Gang has perished from the face of the earth. 
 
 Not by flight nor by compromise, but by 
 consecration to the completion of this task 
 whatever it may cost, to us or to others, shall 
 we find the peace of God which passeth un- 
 derstanding. 
 
EIGHTH LETTER 
 
 SHOW ME THY PATHS, O LORD 
 
 You are of the opinion that all Christians 
 would wish to follow the guidance and do the 
 will of God if they could know what that 
 will is; but how are we to know? The 
 religious teachers of Germany affirm with 
 great positiveness that it is the will of God 
 that Germany should impose her superior 
 Kultur upon all Europe, and the religious 
 teachers of America are equally positive that 
 it is the will of God that the people of Europe 
 should be free from any such imposition. 
 How are we to know which of these two 
 opinions is right? 
 
 This Is an old perplexity. Montaigne, 
 writing in the sixteenth century, maintains 
 that the laws of conscience proceed from 
 custom and he presents these same perplexities 
 to his readers: *' Such people as have been 
 bred up to liberty, and subject to none but 
 themselves, look upon all other forms of 
 government as monstrous and contrary to 
 nature. Those who are used to monarchy 
 91 
 
92 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 do the same." How are those of us who do 
 not believe that the laws of conscience are 
 derived from custom but are, or ought to be, 
 interpretations of the will of God, to know 
 whether God purposes for his children an 
 autocratic or a democratic rule, whether the 
 Germans or the Allies are doing his will? 
 
 There are two sources to which we may 
 look for an answer to this question: the 
 Bible; and Life. 
 
 The Bible clearly affirms that it is the will 
 of God to throw upon men the responsibilities 
 of freedom, the responsibilities of choosing 
 for themselves their own course in life, and 
 that this is true for communities as well as 
 for individuals. The history of the Nation 
 in the Old Testament, the history of the 
 Church in the New Testament makes this 
 clear. 
 
 God opens the way for the children of 
 Israel to escape from the despotism of Egypt. 
 In their flight they reach the edge of the Red 
 Sea. The hosts of Pharaoh are following 
 close after. The people cry out in anguished 
 protests against Moses. " It were^ better," 
 they say, " for us to serve the Egyptians than 
 that we should die in the wilderness." 
 Moses replies, " Fear ye not, stand still and 
 see the salvation of Jehovah. . . . Jehovah 
 will fight for you and ye shall hold your 
 
Show Me Thy Paths, O Lord 93 
 
 peace." But Jehovah replies from the clouds 
 unto Moses, " Wherefore criest thou unto 
 me? speak ye unto the children of Israel that 
 they go forward." It is only as they pluck up 
 their courage and press forward into the sea 
 that the waters are rolled back and they pass 
 in safety. Moses brings them to Mt. Sinai. 
 He goes up into the mount to commune with 
 Jehovah. Jehovah tells him to go back to the 
 people of Israel and submit to them the ques- 
 tion whether they will have Jehovah for their 
 king or not ^' All the people answered to- 
 gether and said, All that Jehovah has spoken 
 we will do." Not until then does God give 
 them in the Ten Commandments the consti- 
 tution for their national life. After a time 
 they become dissatisfied with the theocratic 
 rule and ask for a king to " judge us like all 
 the nations." And Jehovah says to Samuel, 
 *' Hearken unto the voice of the people in all 
 that they say unto thee; for they have not 
 rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that 
 I should not be king over them." At that 
 time Israel were the only free people in the 
 world, the only people without a landed 
 aristocracy or an hereditary monarch, and 
 with a popular representative assembly. But 
 they are allowed by God to abandon de- 
 mocracy and organize a kingdom like the 
 nations about them. Several centuries later 
 
94 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 their country Is overrun and they are carried 
 into captivity. When God opens for them 
 a door of escape and makes it possible for 
 them to return to their devastated land and 
 their ruined towns and cities, he leaves them 
 free to take advantage of this opportunity or 
 not as they choose. Many of them do re- 
 turn, accepting the sacrifices involved in the 
 long pilgrimage and in the colonial hfe, while 
 others remain in the land of their captivity. 
 These epochal incidents in the national life 
 all serve to indicate whether the writers 
 thought God willed for his people a subject 
 or a free life. 
 
 If we turn to the New Testament we find 
 Christ giving to his disciples the same free 
 choice and imposing upon them the same 
 responsibilities. Before his ascension it is 
 said he gave them this commission: *' As 
 the Father hath sent me, even so send I you," 
 then bestowed upon them the Holy Spirit and 
 told them " whose soever sins ye remit, they 
 are remitted unto them; whose soever sins 
 ye retain, they are retained." From that 
 responsibility the Church on earth has never 
 been relieved. It is left to us who are the 
 disciples of Christ to abolish the sins which 
 poison the life of humanity. Empowered by 
 him we can do it. If we do not do it, 
 those sins will remain. When we do not 
 
Show Me Thy Paths, O Lord 95 
 
 do it, those sins and iniquities do remain. 
 Jesus Christ is the friend and companion of 
 his Church so long as it is loyal, but that 
 friendship and that companionship with his 
 followers, and their consequent power to do 
 the work which he has given them to do, de- 
 pend upon the fidelity and loyalty of his fol- 
 lowers in his service. 
 
 If we turn from the Bible to life we see 
 written there the same truth. I will not at- 
 tempt in this letter to trace the history of 
 the world and show how it has steadily 
 progressed under divine leadership toward 
 freedom. I will content myself with out- 
 lining very briefly the progress which I my- 
 self have seen in the nearly three-quarters of 
 a century of my active life. 
 
 I was born in 1835, a little over eighty 
 years ago. At that time half of the 
 United States was slave territory and the 
 slave power controlled the Government of 
 the United States, most of the churches 
 and religious institutions in the United 
 States, and, to a large extent, its most in- 
 fluential press. 
 
 England was still governed by Its aristoc- 
 racy. There was a House of Commons, but 
 It did not represent the common people. 
 *' About one-half of the House of Com- 
 mons," wrote William Paley in his ** Moral 
 
g6 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 Philosophy," '' obtained their seats In that 
 assembly by the vote of the people, the 
 other half by purchase or by nomination of 
 single proprietors of great estates." The 
 powers of this House of Commons were 
 limited, since the House of Lords possessed 
 an absolute veto power over all legislation. 
 Labor servitude in the mines and factories of 
 Great Britain was little better than in the 
 slave States in this country. There was no 
 provision except by charity for the education 
 of the poor. 
 
 France was under the Imperialistic control 
 of Napoleon III, an astute and unscrupulous 
 politician. There was only the semblance of 
 popular representation. The final Repub- 
 lican Constitution was not framed until 1875, 
 after the Franco-Prussian War. 
 
 Italy did not exist. In that peninsula, 
 once the home of a powerful empire, were 
 provincial kingdoms, jealous of and hostile to 
 each other. The States of the Church were 
 under the control of a hierarchy which for- 
 bade liberty of speech. Venice was In decay, 
 strangled by the despotism of Austria. And 
 the government of Southern Italy was under 
 Bourbon rule, concerning which Mr. Glad- 
 stone wrote In 1851, *' the Government is in 
 bitter and cruel, as well as utterly illegal, hos- 
 tility to whatever In the nation really lives 
 
Show Me Thy Paths, O Lord 97 
 
 and moves and forms the mainspring of prac- 
 tical progress and improvement." 
 
 Russia was an absolute despotism in which 
 the people had no Parliamentary representa- 
 tion and no rights of free press, free assem- 
 bly, or free speech, nor even freedom to peti- 
 tion the Czar. 
 
 During my lifetime, that is during the last 
 eighty-three years, slavery has been abolished 
 in the United States, and is now nowhere 
 recognized throughout the civilized world. 
 The public school system has been extended 
 into every State and territory of our country, 
 and so developed as to afford equal benefits 
 for both sexes and all classes and all voca- 
 tions. The public lands have been thrown 
 open to settlers by our homestead law. It is 
 true that our forests, our mines, and our 
 water powers have been allowed to pass under 
 the control of private owners, but effectual 
 reforms have been initiated to secure such 
 Governmental control of these National pos- 
 sessions as will conserve them for the Nation's 
 use. Child labor has been forbidden, the 
 right of workers to organize for the protec- 
 tion of their rights and the promotion of their 
 interest has been recognized by law both in 
 England and the United States, and suffrage 
 has been so extended that it is either abso- 
 lutely free or subject to such qualifications as 
 
98 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 can easily be met by a reasonable degree of 
 industry and thrift. 
 
 In Great Britain the pocket boroughs have 
 been abolished and the House of Commons 
 has become a true representative of the com- 
 mon people. The veto power has been taken 
 from the House of Lords. The government 
 of Ireland and of the colonies has been re- 
 formed, and the English government is mak- 
 ing careful efforts to derive and establish for 
 them some system of self-government that 
 will not hazard the national unity. 
 
 The schools, colleges, and universities have 
 been opened to men and women of all classes 
 and all creeds. A free school system has 
 been provided. And a system of taxation 
 has been Introduced which will eventually 
 break up the great landed estates and so de- 
 stroy the power formerly possessed by the 
 feudal lords. 
 
 France has become a free constitutional 
 Republic. The control of education has been 
 taken out of the hands of the hierarchy and 
 put into the hands of the people. And alike 
 in the United States, in England and in 
 France the power to make industrial reforms 
 is put absolutely Into the hands of the people. 
 
 Italy has become a great united nation and 
 a free nation — the story of its emancipation 
 under the triple leadership of Cavour, Gari- 
 
Show Me Thy Paths, O Lord 99 
 
 baldl and Mazzini is one of the most 
 romantic and inspiring chapters in the history 
 of the human race. 
 
 In Russia a revolution has overthrown the 
 old bureaucracy; and though anarchy fol- 
 lowed immediately after this overthrow, as I 
 am writing this letter there is every reason to 
 believe that the people themselves, with the 
 aid of their democratic allies, will succeed in 
 establishing an ordered and stable govern- 
 ment. 
 
 He who believes that history is anything 
 more than merely a series of accidental hap- 
 penings, who believes that there is any con- 
 tinuity and coherence in history, who believes 
 in any ordered social evolution, should find 
 it difficult to believe that this march of the 
 century toward liberty will be halted, and 
 that at the command of the Hun the civilized 
 world will right-about-face and travel back 
 to the unendurable despotisms from which 
 at such a cost they have wrought their deliver- 
 ance. He who believes that God is in his 
 world, that above all earthly plans and pur- 
 poses there is One who gives to his children 
 their ideals and inspires them with their cour- 
 age, and that history is in very truth the work- 
 ing out of his plans for his children, will find 
 despair for the world impossible. He who 
 looks back only four years may find in those 
 
lOO Tlie Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 four years food for his doubts and discour- 
 agements, but he who looks back a hundred 
 years must have a great genius for pessimism 
 if he can doubt in what direction the unseen 
 forces are carrying the human race. 
 
 The Bible and Life unite in testifying that 
 the Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of Liberty 
 and that God is the Father of a free people. 
 
NINTH LETTER 
 
 CORONATION 
 
 A FRIEND of mine who knows General 
 Pershing intimately asked him last winter 
 what he regarded as the most distinctive fea- 
 ture in the character of the French people. 
 My friend said that General Pershing medi- 
 tated for a moment and then replied: 
 " Their absolute disregard of death." Con- 
 ingsby Dawson sees the same characteristic 
 in the English and American soldiers on the 
 front. In one of his letters he writes: 
 
 A strong man or a good man or a brainless man 
 can walk to meet pain with a smile on his mouth 
 because he knows that he is strong enough to bear 
 it, or worthy enough to defy it, or because he is 
 such a fool that he has no imagination. But these 
 chaps are neither particularly strong, good, nor 
 brainless; they're more like children, utterly casual 
 with regard to trouble, and quite aware that it is 
 useless to struggle against their elders. So they 
 have the merriest of times while they can, and 
 when the governess. Death, summons them to bed, 
 they obey her with unsurprised quietness. It sends 
 the mercury of one's optimism rising to see the way 
 
 lOI 
 
I02 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 they do it. I search my mind to find the bigness 
 of motive which supports them, but it forever evades 
 me. 
 
 Yet I think he himself answers this ques- 
 tion In a single sentence in another letter ex- 
 pressing his own personal experience: 
 
 " It isn't when you die that matters — It's 
 how." 
 
 To this conclusion the soldiers at the front 
 have come, perhaps without knowing it; cer- 
 tainly without being able to express it. 
 When they entered the army they definitely 
 decided that life was not too great a price to 
 pay for the privilege of rendering to the 
 world the service to which they were sum- 
 moned. As one of them expressed it to an- 
 other friend of mine, " I would rather die 
 than live under the rule of the Hun." So 
 " when the governess, Death, summons them 
 to bed, they obey her with unsurprised quiet- 
 ness," not because resistance is impossible, 
 but because the summons is not unexpected. 
 They have made once for all the great deci- 
 sion, and death comes to them as naturally 
 as life in the trenches. This is not true of 
 all, but it is true of a large proportion, and 
 the others catch the spirit of life from their 
 comrades. For hope and life of the spirit 
 are contagious no less than fear. 
 
Coronation 103 
 
 " Blessed," says the sacred writer In the 
 closing chapter of the Bible, " blessed are 
 they that wash their robes that they may have 
 the right to the tree of life." 
 
 The right to the tree of life. Our soldiers 
 disregard death because they possess a death- 
 less life, and know that they possess It with- 
 out being conscious of their knowledge. 
 Faith which we possess we are conscious of; 
 but we are often unconscious of the faith 
 which possesses us. Truth which we have 
 consciously acquired remains In our conscious- 
 ness; but truth which has unperceived entered 
 our life through our experience becomes a 
 part of our character, one of the unseen forces 
 which ever after shapes our thinking and con- 
 trols our will. Their forgetfulness of self 
 makes these soldiers as Indifferent to death as 
 they are to the discomforts of their camp life. 
 
 Immortality is not a hope for the future; 
 it is a present possession. Belief In immor- 
 tality is not the opinion, founded on argu- 
 ment, that I shall survive the body when it 
 decays. It Is the consciousness that I am 
 more than the body which I inhabit and the 
 mastery of that body by the immortal, in- 
 visible personality which inhabits it. 
 
 There never was a time when faith in the 
 powers and values of this spirit was as strong 
 as it Is to-day. Millions of young men — 
 
I04 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 Belgian, French, Italian, English, American 
 — are carrying their mortal bodies into ex- 
 periences sure to be those of great discomfort, 
 liable to be those of excruciating pain. And 
 there are millions of fathers and mothers 
 who are proud that they have sons who dare 
 to carry their bodies to the torture chamber. 
 The world has often witnessed a like faith in 
 spiritual values: a like conviction that the 
 spirit of honor, patriotism, humanity, piety, is 
 worth dying for. But never has it witnessed 
 that faith on so great a scale. And never 
 before has been so terribly illustrated, as Ger- 
 many is illustrating in the present war, the 
 effect on character of a belief that the only 
 values are material values, the only prosperity 
 a material prosperity, and the only force a 
 material force. 
 
 There are various arguments for immor- 
 tality, but the only convincing argument is 
 the possession of immortality. There are 
 various artificial tests by which the Church 
 has endeavored to determine who possesses 
 this gift of a deathless life. One of these 
 is a confession of faith in invisible and in- 
 tangible realities. Another is appreciation 
 of and participation in worship, the signifi- 
 cance of which depends wholly on that faith. 
 These ecclesiastical tests are perhaps the best 
 
Coronation 105 
 
 that the wit of man could devise. But they 
 are artificial. 
 
 Life is the real test. And when a man 
 deliberately gives up, In his devotion to, 
 the service of others, all that makes phys^ 
 ical life worth living, and his experience 
 culminates by an eager offer of life itself for 
 such intangible values as honor, courage, love, 
 he affords the best possible evidence that he 
 possesses Immortality. This evidence may 
 not be convincing; but It Is far more convinc- 
 ing than any of the tests which the Church has 
 ever been able to contrive. He who makes 
 this great renunciation thereby gives assur- 
 ance that above all things which are seen and 
 temporal he values the things which are un- 
 seen and eternal. To him who possesses the 
 deathless life death may easily appear to be 
 but an incident in that life. And if he does 
 not wholly disregard death, he will certainly 
 agree with Coningsby Dawson that " it isn't 
 when you die that matters — but how." 
 
 Who has better grounds for sharing In 
 Paul's summary of his life than our soldiers 
 at the front: " I have fought the good fight, 
 I have finished the course, I have kept the 
 faith " ? Paul does not say that he has gained 
 the victory, or won the race, or vanquished his 
 doubts. In truth his letters give abundant 
 
io6 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 evidence of the reverse. He had not gained 
 the victory: " I buffet my body and bring it 
 into bondage.'* He had not won the race: 
 *' Not that I have already obtained or am 
 already made perfect, but I press on." He 
 had not vanquished his doubts: "perplexed 
 yet not unto despair." Who of us In pew or 
 pulpit In our churches at home have fought 
 a more courageous light, or continued more 
 unflinchingly to the end In our course, or main- 
 tained a more unshaken loyalty In spite of 
 perplexity than these soldier boys In the 
 trenches? Who of us has better met the 
 test of hard experience or furnished better 
 evidence that by our mastery of the body by 
 the spirit we have a claim to the tree of life? 
 What Is It to wash our robes In the blood of 
 the Lamb but to share his spirit of sacrifice 
 and give our life for the life of the world as 
 he gave his life for the life of the world? 
 Who have done this more simply, more 
 sincerely, more devotedly than the soldiers 
 who have offered their lives, not merely for 
 their country but for an unknown people, of a 
 different land, a different language and often 
 of a different religious faith? What the Be- 
 yond may have for them we do not know and 
 cannot guess. But we may be very sure that 
 whatever may have been their faults or their 
 transgressions here below, the righteous 
 
Coronation 107 
 
 Father will not refuse to these heroic cross- 
 bearers the crown of righteousness. 
 
 Do not imagine that I think the soldier 
 earns heaven by dying for a great cause, any 
 more than I think his brother at home earns 
 it by accepting a creed and taking part in a 
 sacrament. Heaven is not for sale. I be- 
 lieve with Paul that God ^ives eternal life to 
 all those who by patient continuance in well- 
 doing seek for glory and honor and immor- 
 tality; and we may well believe that he who 
 gives his life for the life of the world puts 
 glory and honor and immortality above the 
 honors, the emoluments and the pleasures of 
 this mortal life. 
 
 Coningsby Dawson writes his mother, 
 '* Your prayers weave round me a mantle of 
 defense." You can weave round your boy 
 this mantle of defense while he is still here 
 where he can sometimes hear from you and 
 you can sometimes hear from him and he can 
 know that you are praying for him. But if 
 the great silence should come, what then? 
 Must you cease praying for him? Surely 
 not. The object of your prayer is not to let 
 your heavenly Father know of your need or 
 your son's need. " Your Father knoweth 
 what things ye have need of before ye ask 
 him." Nor is it to awaken his interest in 
 
io8 The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 your son by your pleadings. If not a spar- 
 row falls to the ground without your Father, 
 can you think his children fall by thousands 
 in this great harvest of death and he does 
 not care? Prayer Is talking with God. It is 
 carrying to him our joys and our sorrows, 
 our victories and our defeats, our laughter 
 and our tears. It is inviting him to share 
 with us our life that we may share with him 
 his life. Surely we should not shut him out 
 from sharing our deepest experiences, nor 
 shut ourselves out from him in the hour of 
 our greatest need. Surely he who craved the 
 companionship of his three dearest friends in 
 his Gethsemane can understand our craving 
 his fellowship In our Gethsemane. *' Yea, 
 though I walk through the valley of the 
 shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou 
 art with me." How can he be with me if I 
 do not invite his companionship? 
 
 After the death of my wife I found among 
 her papers the prayer given below. It Is 
 said to have been written by Mr. Gladstone 
 on the death of his son and subsequently used, 
 with some modification, at his own burial in 
 Westminster Abbey in May, 1898. As I do 
 not find In Mr. John Morley's life of Glad- 
 stone any reference to this prayer, I am not 
 sure that the newspaper report of its author- 
 
Coronation 109 
 
 ship Is correct. But it seems to me an ex- 
 pression of faith as beautiful in its frankness 
 as in its reverence and as beautiful in its child- 
 like simplicity as in its beauty of expression: 
 
 A PRAYER FOR A FRIEND OUT OF SIGHT 
 
 O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, in 
 whose embrace all creatures live, in whatsoever 
 world or condition they be; I beseech Thee for 
 him whose name and dwelling place and every need 
 Thou knowest. Lord, vouchsafe him light and 
 rest, peace and refreshment, joy and consolation, in 
 Paradise, in the companionship of saints, in the 
 piesence of Christ, in the ample folds of Thy great 
 love. 
 
 Grant that his life (so troubled here) may un- 
 fold itself in Thy sight, and find a sweet employ- 
 ment in the spacious fields of eternity. If he hath 
 ever been hurt or maimed by any unhappy word or 
 deed of mine, I pray Thee of Thy great pity to heal 
 and restore him, that he may serve Thee without 
 hindrance. 
 
 Tell him, O gracious Lord, if it may be, how 
 much I love him and miss him and long to see him 
 again ; and, if there be ways in which he may come, 
 vouchsafe nm to me as a guide and a guard, and 
 grant me a sense of his nearness, in such degree as 
 Thy laws permit. 
 
 If in aught I can minister to his peace, be pleased 
 of Thy love to let this be; and mercifully keep me 
 from every act which may deprive me of the sight 
 
no The Twentieth Century Crusade 
 
 of him as soon as our trial-time is over, or mar the 
 fullness of our joy when the end of the days hath 
 come. 
 
 Pardon, O gracious Lord and Father, whatsoever 
 is amiss in this my prayer, and let Thy will be 
 done; for my will is blind and erring, but Thine is 
 able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we 
 ask or think; through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
 Amen. 
 
 As this war goes on the number of fathers 
 and mothers, brothers and sisters, wives and 
 friends bereft and unutterably lonely will be 
 multiplied. I wish that this prayer, or one 
 conceived In the same spirit, might be used in 
 the service of every church from which any 
 son has gone forth never to return because 
 he has laid down his life that the world may 
 be a home in which God's children may live 
 as brethren in peace and safety. 
 
 THE END 
 
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