Class l!lJi:SA_ Copyright }J" CQEffilGHT DEFOSm THE SOUL OF AMERICA IN TIME OF WAR THE SOUL OF AMERICA IN TIME OF WAR REPRESENTATIVE SERMONS BY FIFTEEN UNITARIAN MINISTERS THE BEACON PRESS 25 BEACON STREET BOSTON. MASS. Copyright, 1918, by THE BEACON PRESS, Inc. All rights reserved AUG -9 1918 ©Gi.A5014l8 \ // /\A.f\ I PREFACE THE value of this book lies largely in the fact that these sermons are in no sense exceptional. They set forth the normal spirit and utterance of representative Uni- tarian ministers during the first year of the great war. The first sermon was, indeed, pre- pared for and preached at the meeting of the General Conference at Montreal, and some of the others were delivered on special occasions, such as the dedication of a service flag or the posting of the Honor Roll of a church; but for the most part they are sermons such as any listener might hear any Sunday in any Unitarian church. Each minister is responsible for his own sermon only. He has not assumed authority to speak for any one else or for the fellowship of churches with which he is associated. In the selection of the sermons care has been taken to avoid overlapping, yet a certain amount of repetition is obvious and perhaps desirable. It is evident that while these ministers work and speak quite independently, they are all dominated by one purpose and Preface seek the same large ends. Their purpose is to interpret the events of the critical days; to enlighten minds about the meaning of the war; to encourage those who go into active service and to comfort those they must leave at home; to provide moral motive power; to hold the intention of their hearers above selfishness and arrogance; to preserve and communicate heroic ideals; to receive and transmit the oracles that the human heart in all solemn hours has uttered. These preachers recognize the immediate duties and practical necessities of the hour. They have met the new issues resolutely and outspokenly. At the same time they have resisted the peculiar temptation that besets many a patriotic preacher. They have not been seduced into exaggeration or undue ve- hemence. They conceive of the war as a sol- emn duty, but they have put restraint upon their speech. They have applied in their preaching the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln's saying: "At times like these men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity." S. A. E. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGB The Things that Cannot be Shaken Francis G. Peabody 1 Preached at the Church of the Messiah, Montreal, Can. A Definite Aim and an Undaunted Will Howard N. Brown 23 Preached at King's Chapel, Boston, Mass. The Spirit that Makes Men Free Samuel A. Eliot 40 Preached at the First Unitarian Church, Baltimore, Md. The Defence of our Heritage John D. Reid 55 Preached at Unity Church, St. Paul, Minn. The Immediate Duty Samuel M. Crothers 71 Preached at the First Parish Church, Cambridge, Mass. The Law of Sacrifice for Men and Nations William L. Sullivan 85 Preached at All Souls' Church, New York, N. Y. Angels in the Wilderness Paul Revere Frothingham 98 Preached at the Arlington Street Church, Boston, Mass. The Willing Sacrifice Robert P. Doremus 115 Preached at the First Congregational Church, Eennebunk, Me. Are we Worth Dying For? John Haynes Holmes 130 Preached at the Church of the Messiah, New York, N. Y. Contents Interpreting the Times George R. Dodson 155 Preached at the Church of the Unity, St. Louis, Mo. Religion in Action Augustus M. Lord 182 Preached at the First Congregational Church, Providence, R. I. The Creative Purpose of the Lord of Life William G. Eliot 195 Preached at the First Unitarian Church, Portland, Ore. The Uses of Faith in War Time Richard W. Boynton 212 Preached at the First Unitarian Church, Buffalo, N. Y. The Bow in the Cloud Augustus P. Reccord 222 Preached at the Church of the Unity, Springfield, Mass. Peace on the Earth John C. Perkins 237 Preached at the University Unitarian Church, Seattle, Wash. THE THINGS THAT CANNOT BE SHAKEN Yet once more I shake, not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. — Hebrews xii. 26, 27. THIS is the story of an earthquake; and no calamity was more famihar or more terrible to the people whom this writer addressed. For the New Testament comes from an earthquake-country. All up and down the Mediterranean coast the traveller still sees the scars of shocks, and the ruins are sometimes piled one on another where suc- cessive catastrophes have occurred. No one who has ever felt a real earthquake can forget it: the frightful suddenness of onset, the strange, slanting, sea-sick motion, the shatter- ing of solid walls, the fall of chimneys, the rush of people into the open air. It was said of the last California shock that it was as if some huge giant had seized the earth and 2 The Soul of America in Time of War shook it in his fist. The whole disaster lasted, they said, but a fraction of a minute, but it seemed as if the trembling would never end. That was the sensation which this writer re- called when he made God say: "Yet once more I shake, not the earth only, but also heaven"; and his readers knew very well just what he meant. Mascfield, in his last dra- matic poem, describes Pilate as confessing this bewildered helplessness when the earth was shaken during the crucifixion of Christ: '& *'No man can stand an earthquake. Man can bear Tumults of water, and of fire and air; But not of earth, man's grave and standing-ground; When that begins to heave, the will goes round." And the New Testament comes, not only from an earthquake-region, but from an earthquake-period; an age of catastrophe and shock in the political, social, and religious world. Empires and dynasties, customs and laws, philosophies and religions, were being shaken as a tree is shaken by a great wind until its dead branches fall. Egypt had been overwhelmed by Greece, and Greece in its turn by Rome; and at the very centre of this earthquake-zone was the httle land of Pales- The Things That Cannot Be Shaken 3 tine, shaken both by the power of Greek ideas and by the tramp of Roman legions, until the destruction of Jerusalem was but a symbol of national disruption and decline. On the cross of Jesus Christ was set, we are told, an in- scription "in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin." It had to be thus written if it were to be read by the heterogeneous population which passed that way. The country had become a melting-pot of the nations in which the native stock was being submerged and lost. Not the earth only of their unoffending land had been crushed by foreign armies, but the very heaven of their beloved religion had been rent asunder; and the fragments of Greek and Roman and Jewish faiths lay in a mingled mass waiting for an era of spiritual rebuilding. Such was the scene which confronted an observer of that time, — a world in which still survived something of the splendor of an Augustan age, but which, wherever it was shaken by virile nations or fresh ideas, crumbled at the touch; an Empire which had gained the whole world and had lost its own soul; a world of feverish seekers for new philosophies and religions; a sick, decadent, 4 The Soul of America in Time of War stricken world, unable to resist the earth- quake of the time. "Strong was its arm," said Matthew Arnold, — "Each thew and bone Seemed puissant and alive, But ah, its heart, its heart was stone. And so it could not thrive." How, then, was one to estimate a world and a time like that? Alarming and dis- astrous as were the signs of the age, was there anything in them which might reassure one's hope? Could any gain be counted amid the vast losses of an earthquake? That was the problem which met this New Testament writer, and his answer to it is unhesitating and clear. This shaking of earth and heaven, he says, signifies the removing of those things which are shaken, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. A time of agitation, that is to say, with all its tremors and even its tragedies, is a time of discrimi- nation; a time when one may learn what will stand and what may at any moment fall; a time to distinguish solidity from flimsiness, firm masonry from cheap construction, the permanent from the transient, reality from The Things That Cannot Be Shaken 5 pretense, truth from fiction. A terrible ex- perience it must be to live in such a time. The calamity is to be dreaded before it oc- curs and deplored after it is over; yet it may leave behind it, amid much desolation, the reassuring confidence that there are some things which cannot be removed. There they stand amid the ruins, all the more impressive for their majestic solitude! When the shock is over, people will look about them for the things they had thought indestructible and may find them fallen to the ground; yet with an equal amazement they may find unshat- tered those things which could not be re- moved. No experience of travel is more thrilling than to come on some spot where an earth- quake has happened and a temple has been left unharmed. All about are the ruins of the homes which had clustered round the temple walls, and here and there a fragment or cornice of the shrine itself has been torn away by the shock. But amid the desola- tion stands the mighty monument, unspoiled, colossal, serene, — the majestic columns of Karnak, the lonely dignity of Baalbec, the unscathed front of Psestum, — the symbol of 6 The Soul of America in Time of War permanence amid the scars of change, the thing that could not be removed among the things that could be shaken; as though what Ruskin said of the mediaeval cathedral- builders was true of an earlier time: *'A11 else for which they sacrificed has passed away. . . . They have taken with them to the grave their powers, their honors, and their errors; but they have left us their adoration." Thus it was that this writer could look with an un- disturbed composure on the political revolu- tions and religious transitions which were shaking his country and his time from end to end. For he had found refuge in a faith which was earthquake-proof. "We have," he says, "a kingdom which cannot be shaken." Shattering as the time might be to many a tradition and creed, it was the very time to prove the indestructibility of the religion of Jesus Christ; and with an undiminished hope a thoughtful Christian might survey the spirit- ual earthquake of his age. But what would he say to-day.^ The shak- ing of the world just after the Christian era was severe, but it was limited in area to the fringes of the Mediterranean Sea. Now, on the other hand, the entire world is stricken, The Things That Cannot Be Shaken 7 not alone in its prosperity, its population, its products, and its peace; but even more pro- foundly in its ideals, its hopes, its belief in progress, its faith in God. Not the earth only is rent by battles and bankruptcy, but the very heaven is shaken by doubt, denial, and despair. Terrible as have been the catas- trophes which have overtaken ancient cities and in an instant levelled them to the ground, never was there an earthquake so overwhelm- ing and so prolonged as this. What, then, can be said of such a time.^ What good can an earthquake do.^^ There are, it would seem, three ways in which so desolating a calamity may be re- garded. One is that of a frank and undis- guised despair. This is the end, one may say, of all that the world had thought worth having. Here lie buried the ideals of man- kind. Here, among the ruins of the French cathedrals, is the ruin of the faith they repre- sent. We are confronted by a world, not of Christian faith and hope and love, but of untamed barbarians and of maritime mur- derers. Civilization is bankrupt; religion is a mockery; Christianity has been tried and has failed. Let us abandon the practices of 8 Tlic Son! of .inirricd in Time of War worslilj), ami doclaiv a inoratoriuiu on tlio proachinii: o{ the gospel, and llml somo iiiulcr- groiiiul ivfu^v U-o\\\ tlio ilolusions of I'ailli, as viilautM-s on llio iirini;-lincs drsorl tlioir diurc'lios and rnn to llioir collars when ihc boinbardnient begins. AnolluM' atlitntlo of mind when an eartli- (|nake eonies is thai of a persistent eonseiva- tism. Let us reeonsirnet things as lliey were, r(>l)uild the same slruelnre which has just crumhleil l)el\)iv our eyes, plaster up the cracks, pi\>p up the walls, revive the scmu- hlance of solidity, and cherish the lio[)e that such a shock may not, in our time at least, haj)pen again. People are said to have re- marked of the deluge that it was not likely to he nuich o{ a shower. The same trilling optimism fancies that tlie world which is to issue from tlu* i)r(\senl chaos is to be the old world, with its landmarks of government and social life and religii)n standing just as they did before; a } 77:f- Soul of Ajurrica in Tiiut- of )Vnr of v:\oc aiitauonisin, i>f impiM-ialisti*.' ilosii^n. jiiul of tr.'ulo rivalry to tluvaton disturbaiuv i>f tho NViM-UTs i>oai'i\ ^^ c* knrw that; but wo also know that if war ilul i'c>ino it woiiKl bo iiii-oiu'cMvably friuhtful. aiul wo oiMintoii upon tho torriblo risk of it io provout ovorv OHO from doliboratoly sottinu oui to proihioo it. It soomoil ti> us that, thoui^h tho world's aruianiouts woro booonuui; a hoa\y tinanoial burdiMi. vot tho roal ilan^or of war was bo- oouuuu' loss with ovory passing' yoar. Vo this oxtont nu>st oi us woro all guilty. Inil out^ uatuMi alouo. as it is now uiado plain, intondoil to niako war whon sho saw hor i^p[>ort unity. C^thor nations, in pruikMuv. proparod io pri>toot thonisolvi\-; fri>ni au'^rros- sion; ui aoi'idont. was by oui* nation I'lMisoiously and \\ilfully tiroil. In (his niattiM- wo wimv not all guilty, auvl wluwor says wo woro is ilislu>nostly or disin^onnously taniporiui: with tho faots \u tho oasi\ ^^^' havo a ri^ht to bo mitracwl auil in- J A Prjinitr Aim and An Vmhinnlcd Will 27 digiiaiil llinl I his lliing was done. Wo have i\ y'vj}\[ lo f<*<'l Mini I his world can never ai!;ain be a safe [)lace lo hve in if an aet h'ke that can be done wilh advantai^e lo those by whom it was ixm'im^I rated. We are bound to see to it that a nation which will not keep faith wilh its nei<;hbors, but |)hni,i;;(\s I hem into such a ealastr()|)he as this, lu>|)iiiL; for its own aggrandizement, is placed wiiere it is not likely to repeat that reckless and wicked experiment. This is iiol viudietive- ness or revenge; it is the voiet* of conscience and Ihe moral law within us, if we know what consciiMice is. That war is atttMuh^l by many e\ ils, whoever niay wage it, we know full W(^ll. Hut whoever observes moral distinctions nmst see an innnurpose of the Central Powers of Europe in beginning this war? There can be no such reasonable doubt. 28 The Soul of America in Time of War What are they doing in Belgium and northern France if their object was merely to protect themselves? The very presence of a thief, caught at night in the dwelling whose lock he has broken, is not more con- clusive evidence against the innocence of his intent. They may make what specious plea they will, but judgment must be that they have committed gigantic robbery, — a crime not in the least palliated or excused by the action of the South African Republic in taking away their colonial possessions, for there too they had planned and were in process of executing schemes of spoliation on the property of their neighbors. Their action has not been that of men seeking to defend themselves, save as we may allow that the highwayman is able to persuade himself that society has been unjust to him, and driven him to make reprisals upon his fellow-men. We may feel that there is something in his plea, but we cannot agree that it mitigates the enormity of his crime, or should shield him from the punishment he deserves. It has been said that we cannot *' indict a whole people." Perhaps not. But we A Definite Aim and An Undaunted Will 29 can indict the rulers of a nation who have hatched among themselves an infernal plot; and when a whole people has such blind confidence in these rulers that they will follow any course marked out for them, we have no alternative but to treat them as fellow -conspirators, in the same criminal attempt. This, then, first of all, is what we are fighting for, — to bring to naught a scheme of conquest which, if it could be carried out, would leave no nation on earth safe for a year from similar attacks. In plain English, we are fighting to compel a nest of robbers to disgorge the plunder they have seized, and to break up a band of thieves whose insane delusion that they have a kind of divine commission to seize and convert to their own uses whatever they can lay their hands upon renders them all the more dan- gerous to the world's security and peace. In the next place we are determined to put that powder magazine, of which we have spoken, under better and more effective guardianship for the days to come. We would be glad to abolish it altogether; and there is much hope that we can greatly 30 The Soul of America in Time of War reduce its size. For the time being, at least, we can put a stronger curb on race antago- nism, and we can establish a stronger league of nations in defence of peace than the world has hitherto possessed. But, whatever may be left of the causes which tend to produce war, we are deter- mined that henceforth it shall not be left to any small set of men, gathered in secret conclave, to decide the question of peace or war. This present strife was precipitated by such a small and secret group; and there is much reason to think that from the counsels of that clique which held the reins of power in Germany, even the Emperor was, at the critical moment, excluded. We want it made impossible, during any future time that we can provide for, for anybody working in these hidden ways to set a match to whatever explosive substances the life of society may generate. Whoever is placed on guard over these dangers must be, not only men whom the people trust, but men who cannot act at all without taking the people into their confidence, and securing their assent to measures which jeopardize the pubhc order and peace. A Definite Aim and An Undaunted Will 31 This has been said again and again to those against whom our quarrel Hes, and the answer comes back across the sea that we have no right to interfere in their domestic concerns. It is not a straightforward answer, but that of a nation seeking some quibbhng loophole of escape from public condemnation. No one has presumed to dictate to them the nature or form of their political institu- tions so far as these relate to their own affairs. We freely grant their right to have whatever kind of government they please. Only, we say, they have no right to main- tain a government which is a constant menace to all other nations. They may manage their domestic concerns as they like, but they must put their foreign rela- tions into the keeping of men toward whom other peoples can feel some degree of confi- dence; and they are so to order their affairs that there shall be ample time for reason and conscience to deal with disputed ques- tions before armies are set in motion and neighboring countries are subjected to fire and sword. There is no doubt whatever about our right to hold this position, or about the 32 The Soul of America in Time of War necessity now laid upon us to maintain it, at whatever cost. With the scientific per- fection to which mihtary armaments have now been brought, the world simply cannot go on at all if these things are to be left in the keeping of irresponsible hands. *' Making the world safe for democracy" means secur- ing enough democratic control for the tools and implements of war so that their use shall be invoked only by those whom the people choose to carry out their will. The industrial life of the world must not any longer stand at the hazard of being brought to utter stagnation and ruin because a few diplomats and statesmen wish to make war; but only the solemn and considered deter- mination of the people at large, made known through their accredited representatives, must be allowed to set that dread machinery in motion. This, then, is the second point at which we aim. First, a colossal scheme of national plunder must be stopped and foiled, and some attempt must be made to secure restitution for a long series of immoral and illegal acts which that scheme has involved. Secondly, we must have guarantees that A Definite Aim and An Undaunted Will 33 they who have set all international law at defiance will hereafter respect that law, and stand for its enforcement; the chief warrant for this which we demand being that the war-making power shall rest everywhere in the hands of^^the people, by whom wars must be fought, not in the hands of masters whom the people are bound to obey. So far as this plain common sense may carry us, and the things we aim at are so definite and concrete that they can be stated, one would think, beyond possibility of mis- take as to our purpose and meaning. But there is more than this to be said; for no people ever fought long and valiantly with- out having something in view that coiild not be reduced to the terms of exact de- scription. In life, generally, though we focus our attention upon the next step to be taken, or the next point to be gained, there is always a long vista of hopes and ideals, which may not shape themselves into much more than dim possibilities of the future, but which none the less inspire and guide us even more than any immediate end. Every man has his dream of the coming time, which is apt to be more to him than 34 The Soul of America in Time of War the tilings he holds in secure possession. Every nation has its ideal of what is, in the highest sense, right and good in its own eyes; and the lesson of the past is that, though this ideal may seem to be altogether in the clouds, men will fight for it as for nothing else that can be set before them. We have our national ideal by which, con- sciously or unconsciously, we are being led through the present crisis. We must do our enemies the justice to remember that they also have their dream. They are not fighting for mere plunder, but for a view^ of life that has become with them a kind of religion; though it is one which, so far as we can make it out, seems to belong to the Dark Ages rather than to our own. So far as we are able to fathom the German mind the two great words of its civilization are "discipline" and "obedience," Its vision of the perfect state is one in which every citizen is assigned his part by com- petent authority, and compelled by those who are set over him to perform that part to the best of his ability. It is essentially the military ideal carried into all the details of civil fife. Now we are not blind to the A Definite Aim and An Undaunted Will 35 necessity for a certain amount of discipline and obedience; and we perceive that when we come to make war we also have to adopt them as our chief watchwords, since there is no other way to make war effectively. But we do not believe that warfare is the main business of life, or that the military ideal is best for peaceful days. Quite other- wise. Over the two words which are su- preme in German thought we have written what we think is the much greater word, "Freedom," to indicate our vision of the goal toward which society is set to strive. We do not want a wooden system to define for us all our duties, however perfect the system may be, or whatever social efficiency it may develop. We want men left very much to find their own way and to make their own for- tunes. We want them thus to learn to act on their own initiative and to obey the voice of their own conscience. And we want this, not because we think that it will at once yield us better social results; indeed, we freely grant that in this respect democ- racy cannot rival an autocratic regime. We want it because we believe that, in the 36 The Soul of America in Time of JJ\ir end, froedoiu is the only thing that can train charnctor and niako nion. Our ideal for humanity is not that of a Hock of shoop, sliophordod hero and there by watchful guardians. It is tliat of a free society, where each man walks by a moral law planted in his own heart, and does his work as a freeman, never as a slave driven by the overseer's lasli. We live in a land which has been consecrated to this idea of freedom. We come of an ancestry which has spent rivers of blood to purchase for mankind the right to try out this ideal of freedom, in the endeavor to rid itself of the huge tyrannies of the past. I confess that no other apostasy would seem to me quite so black as for sons of such fathers as we have have had, and citizens of such a country as we now possess, to fall away from that ideal, and lose the enthu- siasm for liberty which has given us all the true national greatness we have won. I believe we are incapable of such baseness; and that our eyes, perhaps too nuich dazzled for a season by material si)lendors, are being again opened to the vision of those who have said, '*No matter for nuich of A Definite Aim and An Undaunted Will 37 anything else in this world, if only we can be free!" Human nature is so made that, in spite of every bribe that ean be offered, the manliood witliin us rises uj) to i)r()test against the outrage and indignity of being slaves. We have not yet worked on I our society to the end on a basis of freedom, and we have many trials and dillienltics yet to face before that can be aee()mj)h,shed. But we are bound to see to it that this road on into the future is left open, and that all the pion(HT work our fathers have done in building il thus far is not l)rought to naught. To secure this we have now a great fight to make. Though we have work and i)rob- lems enough of our own to leave us small disposition to pick a ({uarrel with those who prefer to be ruled by the divine right of kings, we perceive that kings of that sort have a quarrel with us, which we cannot afford to neglect. The growth of democ- racy in the modern world so threatens their caste and privilege that they have armed themselves to thrust it back into :i subordinate i)la('e. We therefore have taken our stand beside democratic i)eoj)les, who have felt the weight of a conqueror's lieel; 38 The Soul of America in Time of War partly in chivalrous devotion to the ideals which we hold in common with them, and partly because we know that, were democ- racy overthrown in the old world, that would leave democracy an unending fight for its existence here at home. For myself, I can see no possible way out of this situation save to fight the battle through. Now, as a half century ago, when our own land was torn with civil strife, some are saying that this way is blocked against us; that no mihtary decision can possibly be reached. But such a decision was reached then; I believe it will be now. It is a hard task, a bloody task, a task that tests our manhood to the uttermost. But I know not who has a right to tell us that it cannot be done. At least it is our solemn duty to go on with it till we know it cannot be done; and then, if the attempt fails, the responsibility will not be ours. But the attempt will not fail. It is un- thinkable that such wreck can be made of human hope as that failure would involve. We may be all but spent before victory comes; but the day of victory will dawn. The wisdom that is above us all sometimes A Definite Aim and An Undaunted Will 39 leaves men to struggle till they seem at the last gasp, almost lost and forsaken. Yet that wisdom cannot be indifferent to such an issue as this, and we may count upon the help of Heaven to save the fortunes of man- kind from utter ruin. If ever men were called upon to consecrate themselves, body and soul, to a holy cause, that call comes to us to-day. And that spirit of consecration, I am sure, is in the minds of those who go forth to fight what we trust may be the world's last battle on behalf of the freedom of self-governed peo- ples. We are not of a race which much wears its heart upon its sleeve. Though it may carry profound emotions within, it often covers them with a cloak of careless gayety. But I think we do realize the dreadful nature of the undertaking which time has laid upon us; and I am sure that the youth of this land, when the moment comes, will do, and dare, and if need be die with undaunted hearts, that their country may live honored and blest among the nations of the earth. THE SPIRIT THAT ]MAKES MEN FREE For the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. — Romans viii. 2 IT has not been easy for some of us to enter this year into the habit and spirit of our pubhc worship. As we think of the thunder and turmoil of the carnage overseas our hymns and anthems have al- most a mocking echo. I can well imagine that those splendid words of the prophet that I read to you just now sounded almost like satire. We think of the ruined towers of Belgium standing like the monuments of a dead civilization, and of the wooden crosses of northern France as marking the graveyard of Christianity. I do not want to force a note of artificial cheerfulness, but I do wish to say that to me at least those noble words of the prophet still ring true. I find them pertinent, applicable, and justifiable even to- day. Never was there a time more filled with The Spirit That Makes Men Free 41 high ideaHsm or with helpful Christian activity than are these turbulent days. Never a time when the big vital things of human experience were so much in the foreground. Life is taking on for multitudes of people a deeper tone and significance. In every nation latent capacities for heroism are being revealed. Energies are being dis- covered that before we hardly dreamed of. Both our patriotism and our Christianity are becoming fired with responsibility and moral earnestness. We are discovering the possibility of cooperation among all the forces of righteousness. We are sweeping away the cobwebs and subtleties. We are sending to the scrap heap the separatist theories that churches and nations can be exclusive and selfish. Sobriety and sim- plicity more and more rule in our social habits. New and deeper attachments bind us to each other. The petty controversies that divide people have lost their interest and importance. We have escaped from hampering prejudices. We have vastly en- larged our sympathies. We have been de- livered from conceit. Men and women visibly grow in moral stature. 42 The Soul of America in Time of War And if this is true of our collective experi- ence, is it not equally true of us as individ- uals? What makes life mean and sordid for many people is the sense of its futility, the feeling that there is nothing in it that is very much worth while, the absence of any high aim or of something that calls out the latent strength and fidelity of a man. Joy comes to a human soul when it recog- nizes the claim of a great adventure or a noble quest. Give a man an ideal, make him feel that his life is worth something because of the end to which it is dedicated, and his lethargy and selfishness vanish. It is, then, with no sense of incongruity that we can join in our public services of praise and prayer, for I cannot but believe that as never before we can appreciate how the sufferings of the present time may por- tend the beginning of a new era of progress, peace, and happiness for mankind, how a new birth of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus may foretell the dawn of a great deliverance. I cannot indeed undertake to enumerate or define all the impulses and forces that make up what the Apostle called the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. All the centuries The Spirit That Makes Men Free 43 of Christian preaching have not begun to exhaust the riches of such a theme. Let me select just three of the principles of the teaching of the Gospels, principles that are peculiarly close to our thought and experi- ence in these days, and then try to indicate to what conclusions they lead out. I cannot pause to marshal the proof texts, but let me ask you to think with me of how the religion of Jesus Christ affirms and com- pels — first, a confidence in the capacities of human nature, then a passion for right- eousness, and then a prophetic idealism. The first is a faith, the second a duty, and the third a hope. Certainly one of the fundamental things in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is his concep- tion of the possibilities of human nature. To be sure, it is rather easy in these days to believe in the total depravity of some people, but that old doctrine of depravity confutes itself. If men really were totally depraved, they would never have found it out. The characteristic of the thoroughly evil man is that he does not know that he is wicked. As soon as he sees that he is bad he has begun to grow better. At any rate, 44 The Soul of America in Time of War there is no justification in the rehgion of Jesus for any behef in a ruined human nature. Intuitively Jesus felt the divinity of humanity. He knew that the creative hand of God could not blunder, and that the noblest work of God is not a failure. Not all the blindness and cruelty that he saw and suffered could overthrow his trust in that which man might become. He aflSrmed that we are all children of God — beings destined to growth in righteousness and wisdom, and not to evil and decay. Indeed, what a change of atmosphere one feels when one turns from the debates of the theologians about such things to the calm, comprehen- sive affirmations of the Gospels. The ideas which the long generations of men have argued over and laboriously formulated were to Jesus simple and elementary assumptions. He did not argue or debate about them at all. He serenely uttered them and went his way apparently unconscious of their inffuence. He brought no formal proofs. He simply felt that all souls belong to God and to goodness. In all the ways in which self -forgetting love acts, in every motion of conscience and every ffight of prophetic The Spirit That Makes Men Free 45 imagination, Jesus saw human nature per- vaded with God. Kinship with God is not a future possibihty, but a present reahty. Conscience is not merely a growth of human judgment; it is the voice of an Eternal Right in us. Wisdom is not merely the accumulation of human study and experi- ence; it is the quickening of man's mind by the thoughts of God. Love is not a matter of atomic movements; it is the thrill of God's heart in our hearts. This is the great assurance which the spirit of life in Christ Jesus gives to the kindred spirits of men. That is the Master-truth that underlies our neighborly good will, our search for knowl- edge, our faith in progress, our devotion to democracy, our confidence in the final triumph of good over evil. That is the first way in which the spirit of life in Christ Jesus may set us free. In the second place, the Evangel of Jesus Christ, like the appeal of the prophets that preceded him, is all aflame with a passion for righteousness. Too often we have been told that the true Christian life is one of withdrawal from the clash and conflict of common experience. It is a life of gentle 40 The Soul of Amrrica /;/ Timr of War oiulunuice and of placid dovotion. To my mind that is a distortion and perversion of the teaching of the New Testament. The Christian life is not all a matter of passive virtne and meek snbmission. I eannot hel]> thinkini;' that we liave not had enouiih of the power of righteous wrath in our moral ideals. To many of us the ideal Christian has been a man half of whose faeulties are in abeyance, a life as iimocent of tlavor as the white of an egg. Resist ance to evil is not to my mind a failure of religion. but a positive sign of intelligent spiritual life. Anger against iniquity is not a failure of character; it is the evidence of moral health. If our religion prevents us from vindicating some imperilled right; if it de- stroys our ability to be indignant against i>utrage; or impairs our discriminating judg- ment between the principles that are worth perpetuating and those that ought to be destroyed; if our religion is to level our emotions to "one tepid sentiment of ac- quiescence," then surely we have need of a new birth of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. Have we not had too nuich of the super- ficial optimism that Avould have us believe The Spirit That Makes Men Free 47 that iniclloclual and moral (lillVrcncos arc only su|)or(u'ial, llial no man really moans to be cmol and rapacions, ilial, what wv call error is only truth in tlie making, and whal, we call evil, only goodness insufficiently developed? lias not that kind of easy tolerance heen too cliaraclerislic of Lhc re- ligious liberalism in wliicli you and I were bred? Is it nol lime that we recognized tlial Iliere are terrible evils in llie world that nuist be confronted and overlhrown and that there are fundauiental conflicts of ideals which must be fouglit out? There can be no mild neutrality wlien the issues of rigliteousness and justice are drawn. The third element in the Christian Evangel of wliich I wish to speak is its spiritual opti- mism. The idealist is, I know, often counted an imj)ractical visionary, but T submit ihat th(^ glory of the sunshine, though it is perfectly intangible, is as needful to life as the brown earth and the furrowing i)lough and the bent back of the ploughman. You may ask just what I mean by spiritual ()[)timism or idealism, and I cannot answer. TIk^ essence of the thing is that it defies defini- tion and refuses to be put into a headline. 48 The Soul of America in Time of War The influence of an ideal is something felt, not uttered or heard. A definition is wooden and mechanical. An ideal is a living, growing energy, a reaching toward infinite meanings. The idealist is thus one who endures as seeing that which is invisible, one who forecasts the law of life before it is written. He may indeed be too much withdrawn from the practical world, and his ideals may find little contact with the common life of man, but it need not be so. You remember how Plato answered the critic of his vision of the Holy City: "but whether," he said, "such a city exists or ever will exist in fact, is no matter, for he who has seen it will live after the manner of that city.'* The idealist, that is, is one who sees in the ordinary issues of life not only the immediate ends, but the larger, more comprehensive, finer ends. Thus he wins for his cause a loyalty which is different from mere allegiance. Allegiance may be enforced; but loj^alty to ideals is a volunteer devotion. It is patient with mistakes, slow to suspect or accuse, ready to believe good, not easily discouraged. It makes willing sacrifices, suffers defeat without thought of surrender, fights on The Spirit That Makes Men Free 49 through long years of hope deferred. Men of constrained fidelity may falter, but men who fight for their ideals never know when they are beaten. Given, then, these constituent elements of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, a faith in human nature, a passion for righteousness that cannot meekly endure hypocrisy and tyranny, a loyalty to ideals, to what do they lead out and up, to what end are these creative energies directed.'^ The Apostle tells us that they have set him free. Freedom appears as the goal of Christian thought and effort. Progress in liberty appears as the end of all the otherwise blind striving of humanity. Freedom is what we win by realization of the divine possibilities of our nature, through our struggles for the triumph of justice and humanity, by our loyalty to the ideals of honor. To be sure, I suppose that when Paul declared that he had been made free from the law of sin and death he really meant nothing more than freedom from the formal law of Judaism. I cannot confine myself to that limited interpretation. Indeed, I do not think that I quite understand what sin 50 The Soul of America in Time of War in the abstract is. Sins I know something about, — my own and other peoples, — but sin — well, it is a word we meet with in Paul's Epistles and in revival sermons, but to me it has always seemed to belong to a professional vocabulary rather than to mean anything concrete. Nevertheless, there is a suggestive contrast even in the narrow inter- pretation of the apostolic saying, that may indicate how the Gospel sets men free. The Jewish Law is a code of negative command- ments. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a way of life. The Law is an outward regulation; the Gospel is an inward force. Government, according to the Law, is an obligation im- posed upon men from without. Govern- ment, according to the Gospel, is the realized presence of God in the souls of men. The teaching of Jesus implies and prophesies a social and political organization which is not so much administered by outward re- straints as guided by inborn and prescient desires for justice and order. The nation that obeys its legal code inevitably develops a Pharisaic pride, and the more complete its submission the more intolerable will its racial and ecclesiastical egotism become; but The Spirit Thai Makes Men Free 51 the nation that commits itself to the control of Christ's law of liberty can never overtake its ideals. I am not saying that Christianity is to be identified with any political system, or that it is tied to any transient or perish- able idea of social organization. Its impulses and ideals have entered into the hearts of men under many different forms of govern- ment. It has modified the evils and devel- oped the good of feudal, monarchial, imperial, and democratic institutions alike. The point is that it has worked not through the in- stitutions of law or statecraft or diplomacy, but through the motives and forces of moral and spiritual regeneration. The attitude of Jesus toward the Roman government which controlled the rather in- significant province where he lived his short life was that of comparative indifference, and he consistently refused to be entangled in the political discussions and arguments of his time. When the Pharisees tried to catch him in seditious utterances he met the demand for loyalty to Csesar with the counterdemand for loyalty to God. His conception of government was apparently that of a spiritual democracy beyond and 52 The Soul of America in Time of War above the power of any Caesar. He imagined a society much more comprehensive than the Roman Empire — a Commonwealth of Hu- manity, a Kingdom of God. In the mind of Christ what we call the State is certainly not a compact of convenience maintained by the ambitions of princes or the interests of a trade. It is a spiritual creation, the in- carnation of a dream of freedom and loyalty, an instrument of prophetic idealism. The New Testament is a charter of democracy and it still proclaims an unattained ideal of freedom which commands the imagina- tion and remains the hope of the world. And what is the final victory of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus? It is deliverance from the bondage and the fear of death. We learn to look upon death from a wholly new point of view. It is borne in upon us that in the sight of God this physical life of ours must be a rather unimportant thing, and that he does not take much account of it. Now that idea may at first seem to you in contradiction to our accustomed thought of the mercy and love of the Almighty, but I believe that that is just what the teaching of Jesus imphes and I find the thought not The Spirit That Makes Men Free 53 without comfort and dignity. To us, indeed, this physical existence seems to be every- thing. We cHng to it instinctively. We would give everything we possess to, as we say, save it. We cannot see beyond it. But am I not right in believing that with God this present physical existence is im- material.'* Looking beyond the mists that bar our vision, he sees only life everywhere. To him there are no dead whelmed in a wintry sea, no gallant youths shattered and torn by the shrapnel, no comrades banished into a mysterious nowhere. The body is nothing but the garment of an undying soul. What difference, then, does it make whether we die in youth or age, in sick bed or on battlefield, by disease or by the bursting shell.'* What is it all but a great adventure of uninterrupted life.'* The spirit of life in Christ Jesus thus emancipates us from all dread of an unrevealed future. It bids us understand that goodness is some- thing of a higher grade and value than the motions of our bodies; that courage and fidelity are essential parts of a deathless personality; that tenderness and love are unutterably more real and more lasting than 54 The Soul of America in Time of War the rocks beneath our feet or the vault of heaven over our heads; that the spirit of man is more substantial than all the goodly frame of earth. We are caught up into the confidence that whatever happens to our mortal frame it is only an incident in the hfe of an immortal spirit. We smile on crumbling worlds and darkening suns, for we know that the things that are seen are temporal and that the things that are not seen are eternal. THE DEFENCE OF OUR HERITAGE So when he had committed all to the Creator of the world, he exhorted his soldiers to fight manfully, even unto death, for the laws, the temple, the city, the country, and the commonwealth. — II Maccabees xiii. 14 THE generation of men that has got so far away from the great and heroic moments of history that it is no longer stirred by them has no special reason to count itself blessed therein. It needs to learn by its own experience the cost of the heritage that it has hitherto merely appro- priated without expense to itself. There is such a thing as the sons escaping too long the brunt that the fathers bore. When that happens, it means that decay has set in. What is there in our time so precious that it is entitled to immunity from the struggles that have made other times memorable.'* In these fateful and stirring days let us not 5Q The Soul of America in Time of War indulge in weak repinings. Let us rather gird up our loins like men and hearten our- selves with the assurance that there is a soul of goodness in this evil thing that has come upon us, a soul that in the end shall shine forth triumphant and vindicated. Now is the time to look forward to the sure and ample compensation for our hours of per- plexity and pain, for all the hardship and woe and sacrifice that the dark future may hold in store for us. Unless our faith in the supreme and final good will stand this crucial test, it is of little worth; and that would mean that we were of little worth, and it could matter not at all what happened to us. Not so very long ago many persons had got into the habit of saying that, while we ought to stand ready at all times to pay any price for the guarding and extending of human rights, for the preserving of the state, for the maintaining of just causes, there would not henceforth be any occasion to include war among the possible kinds of payment that would be called for. It was held that war was, or ought to be, a dis- carded method of upholding the right. But The Defence of Our Heritage 57 people who reasoned so forgot two things. They failed to reckon with human nature, which has a disconcerting way of refusing to run in the grooves devised for it by even the best meaning and most ingenious minds. And then it somehow escaped them that what we call the rights of men and all es- tablished law and government rest ultimately on force. It is true that might does not make right, but it is also true that if the right is to pre- vail, it must do so by means of might. The laws that govern men in their civic and national and international relations are no laws at all unless they can be and, on due occasion, are enforced. *' Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." That is the one sound principle of government. But it is to be taken in its complete sense and import, not in any one- sided or perverted interpretation. The jus- tice of government extends to its powers and the very word, "powers," implies en- forcement. Wilful or wrongheaded violators of the law must be dealt with, after all persuasion has failed, by force. That they for the time withhold their consent must 58 The Soul of America in Time of War not be permitted to nullify the permanent consent of the great body politic. Otherwise we shall have not government, but anarchy. In the controversial period before we had made our great decision, many well-meaning persons unconsciously lent themselves as tools of the enemy. They argued that the war in Europe was no concern of ours. They advocated a policy of aloofness on our part. They counselled embargoes and the restrict- ing of travel by our countrymen on the high seas. Why should we not shut our doors and sit snug at home until the great storm that is shaking the world has spent its fury.?^ Well, we might do that. We might take counsel of our fears and of a narrow, cool, calculating self-interest, considering only our immediate comfort, convenience, and safety. But if we had done that, we should have prepared for ourselves a not distant day of reckoning in which we should be made to pay terribly for our self-deception. W^e cannot say to the rest of the world, "We will be friends with you and do business with you as long as the weather is fair, but if you get into trouble, if your house catches fire, we shall have to part company, and you The Defence of Our Heritage 59 must get on as best you can." If we did that, it would mean that thenceforth every man's hand would be against us and bitter for us would be the reaping of that resent- ment. But far worse than that, we should despise ourselves and the world would de- spise us. For we should show ourselves unworthy of our own past, unworthy of the trust that our fathers put in us and that our brethren of to-day, who are struggling for the liberties of the peoples and the keep- ing of faith between nations, put in us. But now America has given her answer. She takes her place with the hosts that are bat- tling for a great human ideal. She is not recreant to her great trust. True to her best traditions, she still keeps the faith once delivered to the fathers and handed down from them to their sons. Still it is asked, "Are we not departing from one article of the faith, the article that forbade "entangling alliances"? No, not from the spirit of it. The advice to refrain from entangling alliances was a coun- sel of expediency. It did not lay down a fundamental principle. It was wisely suited to conditions that have long since passed 60 The Soul of America in Tiitw of War away. "We were a weak nation committed to what was then the hazardous experiment of independence and seH-government . To- day we are great and strong and the experi- ment has become an assm'ed success. There is not the slightest chance that our reaching out hands across the sea will put it in peril. Then the three thousand miles of ocean stretching between us and the old world was a barrier and a wall of defence. Now it is an open thoroughfare that makes our shores accessible at once to friendly com- merce and to hostile invasion. An alliance that so far from compromising or jeopardiz- ing our capital political principle of democ- racy, buttresses that principle and tends to give it world-wide scope, cannot properly be described as *' entangling'' in the old historical sense. Indeed it is "Washington himself who furnishes us with this very conunent, for it was none other than he who entered into an alliance with France, the better to car^^' on the war of the Revolu- tion. And in any case we have no choice but to accommodate ourselves to the fact that the davs of the old isolation are sfone forever. "\A'hether in peace or in war. the The Defence of Our Heritage 61 nations are bound together in a community of interest and action, and they must deal with each other as members of that com- munity to support its laws and punish their infringement. Nobody is remote from any- body nowadays. It is impossible, even were it desirable, for a nation of one hundred millions to maroon itself in the parochial or provincial stage. True patriotism is not a narrow senti- ment. It is not circumscribed by local bounds. There was a time when certain states of the Union maintained the su- premacy of each state in the allegiance of its citizens. But we have got past all that. The question was fought out and settled once for all. Now when we say, "My coun- try," we look at the flag, and we count the stars in it. And by as much as all of them are more than any one of them, by so much is our country greater than any section or any partial definition of it. Moreover, it is found that the several states lose nothing through this inclusive loyalty. Rather do they gain. It is the good citizen of the nation who makes the best citizen of the state. And so I venture to say that in a &2 The Soul of America iJi Time of War large sense it is the good citizen of the world who makes the best citizen of his own nation. America means not just so much land and so many people. America means democracy, and democracy cannot be forever confined to any one people. In its final working out it must mean liberty and self-govern- ment for all nations. That is its scope and destiny; and they who are at present its favored children cannot seek to limit it to less than this without denying it and proving unworthy of it. In this matter we lie under an obligation to the world as well as to our- selves. This does not imply that we are called on to right every wrong whenever and wherever it is done, or that we are on every provocation to go to the ends of the earth to inaugurate our principles of govern- ment. But we may know this of a surety, that as long as democracy does not prevail throughout the earth it has no certain tenure in our own land. The fate of democracy everj^where will be its fate here. So the cause of democracy and our countr\''s cause are one. In setting ourselves resolutely to discharge a manifest duty we are also being educated to a larger conception of our duty. The Defence of Our Heritage 63 As a free people serving the cause of freedom, we shall become free in a nobler and broader sense than we have yet known. We shall learn something of the responsibilities of freedom and curb all mere license to its severe disciplines. No war was ever so holy that it did not have its regrettable phases. War always brings to light a pestilent brood of base motives and goes on to the accompani- ment of incidents that show human nature at its worst. The lower passions and the meaner ambitions will have play even among those who are fighting for the right. No right-minded person will countenance these things, but neither will he allow them to becloud the main issue. The pursuits of peace are attended by the same or by equally objectionable features, and yet we must all engage in these pursuits. We must take the risks of war as we take the risks of peace. There may be a different set of them, but they are no more deadly. Like fire, war, though a bad master, is some- times a good servant. The fighting instinct, like all human instincts, will bear watching and needs to be kept under control. But 64 The Soul of America in Time of War there is no appetite or passion that does not in its turn serve some good purpose. No cause that we hold dear would to-day be other than a lost cause, if the fighting instinct had not in times of need led men to rally in its defence. A true religion does not obliterate the passions of men. It guides them to the service of the higher ends of truth and justice. The spirit that is born from above does not supersede nature. It imparts to nature a nobler range of motives and inspires it to high sanctions. We are indeed creatures of mixed motives, but the true judgment of men is that which accords most weight to the highest motives that prompt their actions. So, in going to war for a worthy cause, it is the patriotic spirit that moves us and that determines the character of the war we wage. The patriotic spirit especially makes itself kno^^^l in this, that it leads men to make the utmost sacrifice, even to that of life itself, for the sake of laws and temple and country and conmionwealth. AYe do well to exalt the worth of human life. To hold it cheap were sacrilege. But the crowning evidence of its worth is seen in its great The Defence of Our Heritage 65 purchasing power. The Hfe is to be ex- pended, poured out, sacrificed for great and enduring ends. That is the just measure of its worth, and in some form every true life does exempHfy this worth. The life that is hoarded, that is held dear just for its own sake, is mere existence. He that loseth his life for the sake of country and honor and truth, shall save it. This is the great lesson that patriotic war brings home to us. And in this light the spectacle of a nation in arms for what on just grounds it holds to be the right, is invested with sacramental solemnity. To be sure, it has been said that "war is hell"; and that is literally true, but it is not the whole truth. The realists, those who set forth things in their sordid and repulsive literalness and have nothing more to say, can no more tell the essential truth about war than they can about anything else. Not hell but Calvary is the true symbol of patriotic war. Every true soldier is a soldier of the Cross. He gives his life a ransom for many. Stand before the Shaw Monument of Boston Common, and in the face of that surpassing revelation of an infinite pathos and an undying heroism try to make your 66 The Soul of America in Time of War lips utter the epithet so flippantly bandied about by those who prate of peace at any price. No, you cannot say the thing there, for the lesson of that marvelous work in bronze is the lesson of Calvary, and therein it bodies forth the very genius of a liberty- loving people in arms for the overthrow of the oppressor and the raising up of the down- trodden. We did well in being slow to invoke the tempest. But it does sometimes turn out that the will of God gets itself done in that fashion. And when the "stormy wind ful- filling his word" shall blow, there is some- thing in the spirit of every true son of man which rides that storm and rejoices not ignobly in the fury of it. America comes forward to bear her part in the great fray. Her resolve is now full- grown, and she stands forth, the New- world champion of world-wide democracy. "My country, do you hear the call? Its solemn message thrills the air. It sounds above the desperate fight, And sternly bids you do your share. With Freedom's very life at stake, With law and order overthrown, The Defence of Our Heritage 67 My listless land, awake! awake! The peril has become your own. From the ripe wisdom of the past A warning voice, a trumpet blast To-day seems ringing from the sky — * 'Tis man's perdition to be safe When for the truth he ought to die!' "My country, do you heed the call? The hour has struck; the sands are run; Your chance to take the patriot's stand May vanish by to-morrow's sun. If you refuse to guard the rights For which your fathers fought and died. To watch and trim the beacon lights, You shall be stricken in your pride ! Haul down the flag, no more to be Shelter and emblem of the free. For hark! again that warning cry — * 'Tis man's perdition to be safe When for the truth he ought to die ! ' " To-day we stand a united people owning one loyalty and fronting our common foe. If there is treason and treachery, or half- heartedness, or sullenness, be sure it is not on the part of the many, but only of com- paratively a few. All honor to our fellow- citizens of German blood who more and more with each passing day give evidence 68 The Soul of America in Time of War of their devotion to the flag of our common country. Naturally it costs many of them a terrific wrench to turn against the govern- ment of their Fatherland, even as it went hard with many of the English colonists in 1776 to break with the government of the Mother Country. It is for the rest of us to appreciate that and to make it as bear- able as may be for these who are thus placed in so difficult a position. There is in especial one way in which we hope to make ample amends to these our fellow-citizens and to their friends and rela- tives across the water as well. In this great world-crisis, aligning ourselves on the side of democracy, we fight not only for our- selves and our allies, but for Germany too. For that great nation shall by reason of this convulsion of the forces of civilization enter the more quickly and the more fully into the heritage that too long has been with- held from her. As in the final event we proved by our struggle for independence that we were better friends to England than George the Third was, so when all shall be said and done it will appear that we have been better friends and have done a greater The Defence of Our Heritage 69 service to Germany than the House of Hohenzollcrn has been and done. Germany cannot be expected to see this now, but in the long peace that shall follow this welter of war a better day will come, and in the light of that day she will see it. Yes, and all the nations will see eye to eye, and in mutual good-will, each imparting counsel and help to its neighbors and receiving help and counsel in return, all together shall labor to bring to their perfection the fruits of this titanic and revolutionary struggle. Let us be clear and without misgiving as to the part we are called on to play. One great cause completely overshadows all minor offences. It is the cause of democracy, liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. In an en- larged vision it is so that we see it, and in the great day of the Lord that is at hand we stand ready to seal our faith with our blood. Shoulder to shoulder with our allies, we shall go forward to inscribe a new and glorious page in the long roll of deathless deeds through which the world of striving men wins its way to its rightful heritage 70 The Soul of America in Time of War of liberty and honor and a peace whose bulwarks are justice and truth. "God, give us peace! not such as hills to sleep, But sword on thigh, and brow with purpose knit! And let our Ship of State to harbour sweep, Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit. And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap ! '* THE IMMEDIATE DUTY When ye shall have done all those things which are com- manded you, say. We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do. — Luke xvii. 10 THAT doesn't sound like Jesus. It sounds, as we read it, very much more like Marcus Aurelius. The note is the note of a stoic, of the soldier, rather than that peculiar accent of grace and joy and freedom which we associate — and I think rightly — with Jesus. "The Law," it was said, "came by Moses"; that w^as the religion of duty. "But grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." In the text which I have read we hear Jesus saying something which sounds stern, austere, ungracious. He does not now tell us of the appreciative master who when the day's work is done says to the doer of it, "Well done, good and faithful servant!" There is a harsh command, as if the master said: "Here is something that must be done. 72 The Soul of America in Time of War It doesn't matter so much whether it is well done or not, but it must be done and you must do it. You must do it, not because you like to do it or because you are praised for doing it or because it is ideally the finest and the most beautiful thing that you can imagine, but you do it because it is your business to do it. It has to be done by some- body; you are the one to do it. When you have done that, you have only done your duty, that's all, — duty done without any sense of reward, without any particular joy in the doing it, without any clear insight as to why it should be done or why you of all other persons should be called upon to do it; just doing it because you are com- manded to do it." Now that was not the characteristic of what we call a gospel. It was not particu- larly good tidings to anybody, rather bad tidings on the whole, it would seem. It was the plain statement that this which you do not want to do must be done, and that no joy or grace or emotion or idealism can be now as a substitute for the required action. That is duty reduced to the very lowest terms, to what the diplomats call The Immediate Duty 73 the "irreducible minimum." Now and then people have to face just that; and it is the test of manliness. What do you think of duty without privi- lege, without grace, with nothing but the bare moral necessity which makes you say, "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise!" It is a sweeping away of everything else as the man faces with absolute self-forgetfulness and humility a task that to him is un- pleasant, that he fain would escape if there were any honorable way by which that escape might be made. It is, in the last analysis, the test which the Roman stoic accepted. It is precisely the thing which Jesus here presents to his disciples. Now duty in its barest form is not gra- cious, and duty never can be the substitute for other forms of religion, never can be a substitute for joy, for grace, for love, for freedom. And when, in the spirit of a nar- row Puritanism, duty becomes the only word, human nature always revolts. It is not something that should always be in the foreground of our thought, but it must be somewhere. And these are times when it must be emphasized. 74 The Soul of America in Time of War Whittier expresses the serener moods of religion when he tells of the way in which "The beggar self forgets to ask, And duty leaves to love her task." That is what we all desire, — that freedom of movement, that sense of spiritual ex- pansiveness, which now and then we all feel when we know that we are doing some- thing that is not only right but in itself desirable. We are at once fulfilling what we know to be a law of righteousness and what is the satisfaction of our own nature. We do it because we love to do it. And any one who, when his opportunity is offered him, falls back upon a mere sense of duty, is making a great mistake and we all recog- nize it. No one in the home likes to have some one who is always parading the sense of duty, who is kind and helpful, because he ought to be thus. We resent the attitude of the person who says, "I come to see you be- cause of a sense of duty." The courtesies of life lose their charm when they are forced by a sense of obligation. Duty should leave to love these pleasant tasks. But there are The Immediate Duty 75 times — and these are the great times of trial — when all is reversed, when love must of necessity leave to duty the task, or else the task cannot be done; when all the volun- tary motives must give way to the pressure of a great necessity, or everything fails. In a letter to the farmers of this country, given to the public during the last week, the President of the United States says that this year everything must be looked at from the standpoint and "under the aspect of duty." It is an emergency in which we must all do things which we can- not pretend that we enjoy doing. That means that just as there is an econ- omy in eating, drinking, clothing, so there must be a necessary economy, if we are to win the war, in our feeling. We have to economize emotionally and intellectually. We cannot afford our peace-time luxuries or even comforts. There are a great many thoughts and feelings and amiable desires that we have to postpone for another time while we take up painful tasks with the minimum of emotion and a maximum of efficiency, believing that by and by we shall have opportunity again for the freer, fuller. 76 The Soul of Arywrica in TiiJie of War and more gracious moods of life. During this period, religion itself must be looked at from the standpoint of duty rather than from the standpoint of privilege. I think if we get into our mind that necess;ir\' economy which even' where must be used, it will save us from certain moments of self-criticism and of futile desire which to many excellent persons bring a loss of real efficiency. Duty, reduced to its simplest terms, is a matter of doing something that is neces- san'. and getting it done at the right time. It doesn't matter much how you feel when you are doing it. — whether you feel happy or exalted. — if only the thing is done. "Where are the joys that once I knew?" says an old. sad hymn. It dcx^sn't matter where your joys are. The thing for you is not to whine about it, not to complain about it. Rather say: "I don't know where my joys are. They will probably be in good preservation when I have need of those things but now. now. I am commanded to do something that I don't want to do. But it is right and I am going to do it whether I enjoy it or not." The Immediate Duty 77 Many of the criticisms that we make upon ourselves, and particularly upon those who like ourselves are caught in the same difficulties, have a note of petulance and childishness about them. Why haven't there been great flaming prophets of righteous- ness going about the country and stirring people up over the wrongs that we have seen? Why haven't the ministers of religion voiced more eloquently the world's wrath? Why haven't there been great philippics like those that Demosthenes uttered when he urged the people of Athens to go against the tyrant of Macedonia? I think the reason is that the situation has demanded patient, well-considered action rather than the ex- pression of passion. Now and then a great catastrophe comes, so immense, so beyond any of our powers to conceive it, that we instinctively know that that is not the time for unrestrained emotion. It is the time for plain, simple, continuous, coordinated work. It is the prose rather than the high poetry of ethics that is demanded. And I believe that that is what people have understood at this time. The men who have gone out from this 78 The Soul of America in Time of War church to take their part in the great war have not done so because they enjoyed the soldier's hfe. There was Httle emotional excitement or joy of conflict. These men, and thousands and hundreds of thousands of men in the free nations, are not stirred by passion. They are moved by a sense of duty, — plain, simple, unescapable duty. And they are acting just as all men act when they are confronted by a grim alternative: either to go forward honorably or to go back shamefully; either to allow arbitrary power to conquer, or else at the risk of all they love to say: "Thou shalt not pass this point! Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther!" It is not a flamboyant patriotism but a sense of obligation that has been the moving power. There are criticisms, on the other hand, that seem to me equally petulant. The church is taunted for the inconsistency of its ideals and its practice. There is delicate irony in the advice that is given, that if it is to preserve its spiritual ideals it should retreat from the conflict. "The church should have remained a centre of beauty and of prayer and of hal- The Immediate Duty 79 lowed quiet and of great literature and of noble music, a consolation to the world, a testimony to realities no less substantial than war. The church should have com- muned during this painful time with its own soul and been still. With the result of the fight, the church as such is not concerned. It should remember that Jesus did not win. On the plane of physical force, the greatest and most efficient force will always win; but on the plane of the spirit, physical force is not so much important as irrelevant. Christianity has always been the religion of losers." What shall we say to that counsel? A beautiful conception of Christianity! A beautiful conception of the church! A much more beautiful thing, much more satisfying to the spiritual desire, than the world that lies in its great agony. But what do you think of the kind of man that would leave the world in its agony and go and comfort his soul in such a church? You call him a slacker, you call him a shirker, if you think that he sought peace for himself, while evad- ing his responsibility. Those are very harsh terms, but they describe the attitude of a 80 The Soul of America in Time of War man who at such a time as this seeks com- fort for himself while leaving his brethren to suffer and to strive. That does not mean that there should not be a sanctuary. But it must not be a refuge for timid or selfish souls. It must be a place of refreshment for those who are actually doing their part in the common work. In our highest moods as in our lowest moods, we are confronted by an austere requirement. The things that in this gener- ation have to be done are things which we hope will never have to be done again. What reason have we to hope for a time when a just peace shall be established? It is not because men desire it, but because multitudes of brave and simple-minded men are willing to give their lives for it. There is a phrase which has come from the old creeds, born of sorrow and agony, which the modern church likes to pass over, but which w^as deeply significant: the words in the creed that not only spoke of the Christ as ascending into heaven, but which declare that before he ascended into heaven he descended into hell. The Immediate Duty 81 That descending into the hell of life in order that justice might be done and mercy might come, the willingness to take part in it, — that is the test of duty. We cannot find consolation in the idea of the different spiritual planes, imagining that we can have a religion on a plane so high that it does not touch the struggle. It does! Much as we may hate all kinds of strife and war, we have to live on that plane of duty wherein the things of the spirit come in conflict with things of the flesh. The conflict cannot be evaded. What becomes of the things we love most and enjoy most — liberty and peace, good- will to men, that life of grace and truth which is the real gospel? Well, Paul, when he was facing that question of the possibility of a new and freer order, faced also the religion of duty, which to him was sym- bolized in the old law. It was the conflict between what he called law and that grace which he found in Christ. And then he gives us a figure of speech which I think is help- ful. He said, "The law is the pedagogue who brings us to Christ." Our old trans- lators obscured the meaning of it by saying. 8'^ The Soul of America in Time of H'^r "The law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.'* The pedagogue was not a schoolmaster at all. He was a servant whose duty it was to bring the unwilling boy to the school- master. This is a symbol of duty. It is that which brings us to grace and truth. The small boy dcx\«J not delight in the pedagogue. He is inclined to resist him. "My boy," says the pedagogue, "it is time for you to go to school where you are to learn the lesson." The boy says: "But I don't want to learn my lesson. I don't want to go to school. ^Yhy should I go to school:" And the pedagogue says. "Because you musi <^o to school." "But 1 went to school yesterday, and I learned the lesson yesterday." "Very well," says the pedagogue, "that will do for yesterday. That was yesterday's duty. Now you have to go to school and you have to learn a new lesson." "I don't want to learn a new lesson." "Very well. That divsn't matter, but you have to go whether you want to learn the lesson or not." The Immfdiafc Duiij S3 And only after tlio unwillingness is over- come ean tlie gracious words of wisdom be heard and understooil. Now the whole world in this period where everything wears the aspect of duty, nuist be content to be in the hands of the stern pedagogue. Nobody knows all the lessons that we have to learn. Nobody knows all the new truths that are coniing. the new principles of action, the new organization of the world. One man's thought about the speeihc forms that will emerge is per- haps just as near the reality as another's. We only know that we nuist go to-day along a certain path and that at the end of that we shall learn the new lesson. ^latthew Arnold's words about duty and morality, — "The tasks in hours of insight wilkxi Must Iv tlirouiih hours of gkunu fultillod." — do not quite tit our case. Our present tasks were not voluntarily taken by us. They were not tasks Mhich we planned in hours of insight. They were tasks forced upon us in hours of gloom. Rut we know full well that there is but one thiui^ for us, and 84 The Soul of Anierica in Time of War that is as manfully, as cheerfully, and as efficiently as we can to do those tasks. Even though in doing them we feel our own in- sufficiency,, that we are but unprofitable servants, we can trust that the hour of insight will come when the task is done. Thank God for the millions of men and women who are simply dav bv dav dome: the things that they know ought to be done, trusting in God for the day when the light shall shine upon their duty and they shall see the glory of it. Grant unto us some insight into truth, some glimpse of the great gloiy that is around us and that transfigures every act of simple duty. Grant also that we may not wait passively for that illummation, but 2,0 on steadily and calmlv till our work is done. THE LAW OF SACRIFICE FOR MEN AND NATIONS Are ye able to drink the cup that I ajyi about to drink? — ]\L\tthew xx. 52 JESUS asked this question of men who had no thought of the cup of sacrifice, but every expectation of soon er joying the dehghts of the Messianic-millennium. He had just announced to the disciples that at last they were going up to Jerusalem, the' capital city and the holy city of their patriotism and of their faith. Hitherto the Master had carried on only a provincial mission — a mission confined to the villages and hamlets of Galilee. But on this day he spoke the words that gave to the hearts of his little company the wings of ecstasy and to their hopes a rapture of expectancy: "Behold, we go up to Jerusalem I" The ominous prediction of rejection and death that he is said to have added to this they did not hear. They heard only, "We go 86 The Soul of America in Time of War up to Jerusalem I" and cared for no more. For to them the words meant that their Messiah-Master was about to be crowned in the city of David as king of the Golden Age; that by the visible visitation of the God of their fathers he was to be elevated from a wandering prophet's poor estate into the majesty of God's vice-regent ruling a glorified world; and that in the splendor of this miracle they themselves would have the next greatest share and in this divine governance of the earth the next highest posts of dignity. So the sons of Zebedee with cunning foresight came betimes to whisper their plea for the two best places, one on his right hand, the other on his left "in his glor\'." To men in the high fever of these ambi- tious ecstasies and this sensuous enjoyment of luxurious imagination Jesus shot that question: ''Are ye able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?" ""VMiat can he mean?" thev must have asked in thouoht if not in word. '*His saying has in it some- thing disturbing. "VMiy should he thus un- comfortably hint at a bitter cup when we are within a few hours of Jerusalem? In The Laic of Sacrifice for Men and Nations 87 Jerusalem God is to put an end to the wick- edness and sorrow of the world and crown him Messiah-King. There will be no more pain, then, no more heartbreak, but only- joy in Israel, honor for us glorj^ for h*m. Perhaps in forty-eight hours the millennium will come. Fifty generations of our fathers sighed for it. To us it has been reserved to enter it as the elect companions of the promised Christ. Surely it is a time for our Jewish hearts to leap in our bosoms for such joy as no hearts have ever known before. Yet he saddens us, and chills us with his awful question: 'Are ye able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?'" It is a striking scene that is here before us, and the word of Jesus that caused it is as solenui and sublime a word as he ever spoke. Of this word it behooves us to-day of all days to deepen our understanding. There is wisdom in it that we need; there is a majestic austerity in it that will enlarge and sanctify us if we accept it; there is a shelter of sanctuarj^ in it that will give us refuge in the days now near when we shall be seeking refuge. This misunderstanding of the disciples is 88 The Soul of America in Time of War now clear to us. It was clear to them also before many days. They began to see their error in the awful experiences of Good Friday. They perceived it better when they encountered the suspicion and hostility and stubbornness of the first audience to whom they bore the message of the new evangel. They at last comprehended it completely when they suffered a persecution like unto their Master's, and in his cause confronted shame and exile, the lot of outcasts and the death of martyrs. Then they knew that a great ideal is not to give us the com- fort of enraptured vision, but to demand of us the offering of hard self-sacrifice; that a holy hope does not put wings upon us to fly to easy and instant realization, but bestows on us an inner light not to be quenched by outer darkness, and a fortitude of soul that will sustain us as we climb the painful way to shrouded heights; that every daring faith is a difficult probation; and that the vocation to serve and save mankind is to be tested not by the fluent assurances of the lips, but by the steadfast consecra- tion of the devoted heart. By words they had deceived themselves; bv deeds thev were The Law of Sacrifice for Men and Nations 89 to redeem themselves. They had imagined that millennial joys were to be a donation to them. They learned that character, the chief grace of heaven, is never a donation. In a naive vision they fancied God as saving the world by miracle while they looked on. They acquired a holier and deeper wisdom gained by labor and heartbreak and pain, the wisdom that teaches the solemn lesson that God's ransoming of mankind is carried on through all the ages by those great- hearted who drink the cup and accept the cross. Do we need proof of this in human his- tory? Then let us know that all of history that deserves our reverence is a proof of it. See, for example, how truth has made prog- ress in the world. All men have professed to love truth. No one has ever desired to be known as hindering and violating it. In lip-service all men have served it. But there have been times when truth de- manded for her veiy existence not lip-ser- vice, but self-sacrifice. There have been times when public law and powerful insti- tutions conspired to put an end to truth by putting an end to that freedom of the 90 The Soul of America in Time of War mind without which truth must die and only her memory or her ghost is left. Then who served and saved her? The daring thinker, the laborious scholar, the devoted reformer, were dragged before tribunals of terror. Take back their innovations, deny, or at least conceal, their disturbing conclusions they must or suffer the provided penalties. These penalties were the foul dungeon perhaps for life, the public posting of their families as infamous and outside the law, exile from native home and domestic hearth, the an- guish of the rack, the torment of the stake. Consider these victims standing before their judges! They were alone; even a legal advocate was denied them. Their reluctant flesh cried out to be spared; friends beset them to vield; often wife and children pleaded the hardly-to-be-resisted claims of human love. Temptations of subtle dis- honor sought to seduce them — preferment, dignities, high station, and the favor of the great. And on the other side all that to the lower nature is darkness and desolation — the outcast's alien sky, the wanderer's lone- liness forever, the harsh cruelty of incited mobs, the unbroken horror of a foul cell The Law of Sacrifice for Men and Nations 91 never reached by the sweet visitation of the sun, the broken body, the fagots, and the fire! In how many bosoms these were the elements of decision, the dreadful alterna- tives awaiting the Yes or No of conscience! Some there were, and these in hundreds, who did not fail. These are the glorious company of martyrs. These are the ran- somers and redeemers of mankind. These are the followers of Jesus in the drinking of the cup. These are God's witnesses sealed unto blood. We recall them with our heads bowed. August hosts of the consecrated across the ages and from your high station above receive our homage! As with truth, so has it been with liberty. Lip-service again in plenty. But it was another sort of service that gained us the liberty we have. The burghers of the Netherlands might have been in a brute sense contented, in a base sense prosperous beneath the yoke of Spain. They had but to sacrijBce an ideal here and a conviction there to be the favored subjects of the bigoted Philip, and safe from the eager cruelty of his inquisition. But they had a keener sense of the value of their souls 92 The Soul of America in Time of War than of the bribes which, though fattening their bodies, would degrade their souls. They took the field and in the eighty years' war for their independence wrote the first immortal chapter of the history of modern liberty. Liberty, like truth, has drawn her breath of life from the last sighs of martyrs. So we might instance the Puritan move- ment in England. There again we come upon men who knew not the decadence of merely "entertaining views," but who showed the sublime example of profound and passionate conviction, and of the prompt spirit of sacrifice in suffering for conviction. T\Tiy not accept the rule of bishops? Why object to a surplice? "VMiy not shrug the shoulders and take whatever dogmas and rituals a haU-reformed church and a wholly despotic king might prescribe? The alter- native was costly. It would force them out of England. It would send them to the foreign soil of Holland. It would give them to the merciless Atlantic, to the poverty and hardship of Plymouth in midwinter, to the exile of a colony which fate might have reserved for convicts. Yet this alternative they chose, not having learned at all the The Law of Sacrifice for Men and Nations 93 coward's lesson of servility and dishonest compromise, but having learned well the Christian hero's lesson of the Cross. To nations also, as well as to individuals and lesser groups, the hour of decision has come for answering the question, "Can you drink the cup?" Instances in past history let me omit to come at once to this present day and to our own country. In January of 1917 the United States was asked to accept the proposal and claim of a military power for a new principle of international law in time of war. This principle was that nonbelligerent men and innocent women and children might 'hence- forth be systematically murdered in those regions of the sea wherein the previous laws and accepted decencies of civilized mankind had granted them safety. We had either to give our approval to this rule of murder or go to war; for a merely passive protest would have been actual connivance and a hypocritical connivance. Such was the de- cision that we had to make. Every material circumstance was in favor of submission. We were growing rich as fast as we could thrust the gold of Europe into our vaults. 94 The Soul of America in Time of War We had known for nearly three 5'ears the terrible suffering of war and the terrible uncertainty of military' venture. We pos- sessed a presumably divided population. We had begun to have knowledge of the peril of domestic discord, of the damage of the incendiary's torch, of the muttered counsels of revolt. \Miv not vield? In a hundred forms that question was put to us to sophis- ticate our conscience, to seduce us to prof- itable recreance, to chill our blood with fear. On the other hand were the outraged moral law waiting for our help; liberty crushed by the boot of force, but expectant that her ancient breed would fail her not; high duty, chivalrous honor, our oft-repeated professions, and the integrity of our name in history. We have made the choice that befits our inheritance and answers to our obligations. We have made reply that by no cooperation of ours will the hard-won chivalries of civi- lization be cancelled and the old law of savagery be brought back. We have refused to let it be entered upon the books of history that from craven terror or from any clever cheating of our conscience we shall hence- The Late of Sacrifice for Men and Nations 95 forth be known as a nation acquainted with the casuistry of recreance and faithless to the costly call of righteousness. We have said No! to the proposal that we become negative accomplices in the most monstrous crime that ever had the audacity to claim the shelter of international law. This has been the answer that has invigorated the conscience of America, sent a thrill of ad- miration through the world, and announced the death of the devil's gospel that might may make an end of right. Thus and in this cause we step forward to accept the sacrifices of war. Hardly a word is more hateful to us than war. ^Yere any other way left us of preventing the iniquity that has moved us to this decision, that way we would have taken, gladly taken, insisted upon taking. But other way there was none and is none. Triumphant crime, already black from the extinction of Serbia, from the flaunted perjury of the destruction of Belgium, from the massacre of eight hun- dred thousand Armenians, and now carrying on the systematic murder of innocent women and children on the hitherto inviolate sea, is preparing to utter the cry of victory, 96 The Soul of Ajnerica in Time of War victorj' not over nations, but over decency, chivalrj', and the high God's eternal law. Prevent it how? Tell us of means and method! None is there but indignation armed, civilization militant, conscience seiz- ing the weapons which are the last resource of right. Our country's choice is taken. We have reached forth our hand for the cup of sacri- fice. Our young men are in the field. Our fathers, mothers, sisters, wives are asked to give up those beloved that are the substance of their souls. We are already hearing that the heroic price of ransom is beginning to be paid. As the shadow deepens upon us remember this: we are redeeming humanity as those of old time redeemed it; we are insuring a future that righteous men and women may live in without terror and with- out shame; we are setting ourselves to a sorro-^-ful, but not-to-be-avoided task that has often been done before, and because nobly done, has bestowed upon us what we have of truth, of liberty, of pure religion, of most sacred memor^^ We had thought not to be asked this ancient sacrifice. We had begun to hope that the temple of Prog- The Laic of Sacrifice for Men and Nations 97 ress needed no longer the graves of martyrs for the resting-place of its pillars. We were mistaken. Again we see that right may die if there are none to die for right. Once more we learn that the future will be base or purified according to the readiness or reluctance of the present to suffer for the eternal. "Can you drink the cup?" With hearts that are humble, but not without holy pride, with souls that regret the occasion, but courageously accept the vocation; with the eye of conscience clear for the instant duty and the distant end, we answer Yes! If God's law requires this vindication; if the good of generations to come demands this sacrifice, behold us ready, willing, con- secrated, as were our fathers! Lord God, it is for thy right that we enter into con- flict. America, it is to keep thee faithful as vindicator of God's right that we fling ourselves forward, not asking whether death, but satisfied if duty, awaits us! ANGELS IX THE \MLDERXESS And immediait'ly the spirit drictih him into thf wilder- ness: and he iras in the irilderne.^s forty days tempted: and he iros icith the wild beasts. And the angels ministered unto him. — Mark i. 1"2. IS THAT sooius a singular coiiioidenco. — an anomaly of spiritual experience! He was in the wilderness and angels ministered unto him I In the midst of human desolation there eame heavenly messengers I When all was bare and dreary, divine assist- anee was reoeiveiil The Prophet entered on the pathless region where he was to nuvt temptation and there, with wild beasts for companions, help reached him from on high. On the mountain the tempter eame to him. In the wilderness God's presence was per- ceived as near. ^Yhen he was lifted up with consciousness of power the devil whis- pered with alluring words: but when he was weak with fasting a spiritual power lent assistance! Danger came with plenty, when Angch iu the Wilderness 99 tlio world seonied laid down at his feet; but out of hardship, struggle, and privation was born a deeper insight, with reliance on a holier and higher than himself. It is a somewhat singular fact that in the biographies, if we can call them that, of many of the great religious teachers, prophets, and reformers, we find them passing through some abrupt and definite wilderness experience! And, what is more we find them in the midst of that experience, sustained and soothed by a consciousness of things divine. Buddha, for instance, the great seer and teacher of India, was suddenly impelled by a deep desire to free his fellow-men from suffering. He left his palace, — said farewell to wife and child. He sought to be enlightened, and he turned with eager, palpitating heart -beats, not to the busy, crowded world of struggling men and women; but rather to the lonely, silent spaces of the world! Putting off his rich and flowing robes of state, he donned the vellow garment of a common beggar. And it was after he had had experience of suffering and want that he received enlightenment and inspiration. Zoroaster, too, — the mighty Prophet of the Persians, — was said to have passed through 100 The Soul of America in Time of War much the same dramatic period in early life. He was led into the wilderness, beset by fear- ful doubts, uncertainties, and apprehensions of unfitness, before the strength was given him to enter on his great career. Most of us remember, too, how it was with the great-hearted, but much-troubled Saul! After his conversion on the highway to Damascus, he did not join at once the ranks of the iVpostles. There was a period of doubt, of hesitation and preparation. He disappeared from the knowledge and the light of men, and was only heard of later as having undergone long penance and humil- iation in the desert places of iVrabia. All these, it seems, like Christ himself, were led into the wilderness. And in the wilderness, after being tempted, and under- going hardships, suffering, and privations, they found themselves ministered to, sus- tained, and comforted by angel-influences. Now, I do not wish to-day to speak of episodes like this in all our individual lives, although, of course, it would be helpful, perhaps, and natural to do so. In ordinary times that would form a most appealing subject. But we do not live in ordinary Angels in the Wilderness 101 times. We live in most exceptional and extraordinary times. And one result of their exceptional character is this, — that we are not thinking much about our individual troubles and privations, anxieties and sor- rows! The selfish element has almost wholly disappeared from suffering and loss. People are not saying nowadays, "What sorrow is like my sorrow," — or, "Why should I become subjected to this wilderness-ex- perience of apprehensiveness, or loss.^'* A great group-consciousness of trouble takes its place. There is a community of interests in facing what is hard. Yes; — as never probably before, in the whole long history of human beings, there is a great world- consciousness of having been led out into the wilderness. Rich and poor alike are conscious of the strain ! The wise and simple, great and little, high and low, the privileged and those who nearly all their lives have known privations, perceive themselves as being all together in a hard, forlorn, and desert place! The seas themselves form no dividing line in suffering ! We fast as one, — we grieve and bear, and strive and doubt as one! The world itself is in the wilder- 10'2 The Soul of America in Time of War nessi The burden that was borne by Christ has silently been laid upon us all. But what I want to have you see to-day, if I can somehow make it clear, is this. — that angel-influences minister to us. as they mmistered to him I "If we feel the splinters from his cross." we may also feel. — in part at least. — the sustenance that he received from higher hopes and dreams and aims I It was out of, and because of. his wilderness-experience that the son of man came forth to enlighten and redeem the world! The angel-forces that came to him and sustained him there were the forces that remained the guiding power of his after life. Having triumphed over evil, he was dedicated henceforth to the good. Hav- ing made his home with vrild beasts for a time, he was destined afterwards to make the world itself a friendlier and more human place in which to dwell I AMiat, then, we go on to consider, are the angel-influences that already have begun to minister to us in this wilderness of war.^ They should be to us not alone a present help, but a future guide. We should see in them a prophetic force, which predicts a final triumph over many forms of evil. Angeh in the Wilderness 103 I. The first such angel, it is clear enough. that is ministering to us, in this world-wilder- ness of war, is the gracious influence of human helpfulness and eagerness to serve! Did any of us ever see anything to equal it before? Has there ever, indeed, in all the history of human strife and progress, been anything that we have heard about so wonderful, spon- taneous, and universal? And I do not refer merely to the things that all of us can see upon the surface of society, — workers without num- ber: givers who make no measure of their gifts; Red Cross bearers of unnumbered bur- dens: eager volunteers who waited for no summons of the draft, and all those unseen countless ones who knit up scattered, ever- lengthening fragments of their time and strength and thereby help to clothe and heal the cold and weary in the fields and in the trenches, and the wounded in the hospitals! All this, and vastly more, we know, or hear about, in part! But the thing I wish to emphasize is that which all of this devel- opes, stimulates, upbuilds! ^Viid that is the spirit of cooperation, and of unity, and the relatedness of parts as to a whole! The present a\^'ful crisis has revealed not the 104 The Soul of America in Time of War weakness of democracy, but its strength, — and its strength in those things which are fundamental and inherent in it as a system! I know of nothing finer, in the first place, than the slowness and reluctance with which, as a country, we stepped into this maelstrom, nor the unanimity with which we have accepted our share in it as inevitable! Take, for instance, our press, as a good example of the thing I mean. If there seemingly, in the past, has been one weak spot, and one sore spot, in our freedom as a country, it has been in the freedom of the press! It has too often appeared to be a freedom devoid of due responsibility, and a liberty that revelled in the sensational elements of license! What, however, when the test came, has been more noble and honorable and high-minded than the way in which our newspapers have quietly accepted and discharged their duties in this time of stress? Without a censorship, they have been guided by a sense of patriotic service; and, uncurbed by law, they quietly have exercised calm self- control! One would not, in advance, have believed such cooperative zeal and willing chivalry of service possible; but, now that Angels in the Wilderness 105 it has taken place, we accept it as an evi- dence of democratic unity of purpose and devotion to high ends. Moreover, much the same is true along other lines, and in different departments of our national existence. A great deal has been written, — a great deal in this part of the country that was bitter and censo- rious, — about certain administrative weak- nesses in the government at Washington. The head of this department, it was said, is incompetent and ignorant; the head of that one well-meaning, but distinctly out of place! As regards the truth of all such strictures, I pretend to have no first-hand information. But this I know, and it appears to me a cause for great rejoicing, that many weak- nesses have been offset by the voluntary work of loyal and self-sacrificing citizens who have quietly associated themselves to- gether for the country's welfare! Seeking for no recognition; asking for no compen- sation; laying aside in many instances their private interests, and often at tremendous cost, — these men, from Mr. Hoover down, have placed their experience and knowledge 106 The Soul of America in Time of War at the nation's feet, requiring only in return some opportunity to be of use! I tell you, dear friends, that when this whole long wilderness-experience becomes understood and written, one great element of pride and satisfaction will be the services which our private citizens have given. Bankers and business-men, magnates and managers of great affairs, are, many of them, worthy of the highest decorations! Although seated in their othces, or standing at their desks, they are just as much enlisted men as those who go to training camps, or prepare to stand inside the trenches! And all this marks a great advance in unity of effort and coherency of organized existence, ^len were ever brave and eager fighters when great causes were at stake; but not always, by any means, have they been unselfish toilers, unheralded by glory or excitement. I venture to believe, therefore, that we shall come forth from our wilderness having been ministered to by the angol-inffuence of cooperative helpfulness! Barriers between classes will have broken dowTi; cleavages between churches will have disappeared; while equality and fraternity, which should Angels in the Wilderness 107 always characterize republics, will have gained a new ascendancy in life. II. Let me speak, however, of another ministering angel! I am at a loss exactly how to name it. It is not peace of mind, exactly, nor is it tranquillity of effort, nor yet the consoling sense of being one with Deity, on the side of right! It has some- thing in it of all these qualities, and yet it is more than any one of them! It is akin to the experience of the Master, who, fast- ing, found himself with wild beasts for companions, and yet knew no fear! For it is, you know, among the glories of the allies that they have "met f rightfulness with fearlessness!" What has been meant to intimidate and cow has strengthened and uplifted! Here, for instance, is what Agnes Repplier says about conditions which exist abroad. She writes: "That the war which brought to England and to France agony of soul and body brought them also some- thing akin to peace of mind, is one of life's comforting mysteries! We can understand the generous sympathy which springs from a common danger; the generous insight born of an unassailable idea! But that tranquil- lOS The Soul of America in Time of War lity should walk hand in hand with violence: that the mental attitude of men and women forever face to face with grief should be a com- posed attitude, has a psychological rather than a spiritual significance." But whatever its significance and however you describe it, — the thing is there, and the thing is also here! It is the calm accept- ance of what could not be escaped, — the quiet and determined putting of the nation's shoulder underneath a hea\y burden, and the stern, but smiling declaration that no shirking will be thought of, and no turning back considered. The deeper we get into things, the deeper oiu' conviction grows that we could not have kept out: and the more considerable the share in the struggle that we prepare to take upon ourselves, the less we consider what the cost may be! The finding of a world-duty has meant the find- ing of ourselves, and because we have entered into struggle we have entered into rest I A certain cahmiess. therefore, has come over us: and the calmness is the fruit of courage: and both calmness and courage are born of a great conviction that we have great ends to serve and a mii^htv mission to fulfil! AngeU in the Wilderness 109 Some one was telling me the other day of the impression that was made upon an English churchman by a recent visit to the Front. This religious leader had had intimate and confidential interviews with the various generals in command, — French as well as English, and it may have been with our American representatives as well! And he said, in speaking of his experiences, that the thing which struck him most was the solemnly religious point of view and attitude of mind which he had found! These sol- diers in command were more like men who themselves were under orders than they were hke instruments of bloodshed and de- struction. They commanded well because they felt themselves commanded from on high to fulfil a tremendous task of righteous- ness and justice. It was not victory alone they sought; but a victory that meant the righting of grave WTongs and the estab- lishment of a new world-order among men and nations. And that, as I believe, is a feeling which pervades all ranks of men and women "over there" as well as here. It is a feeling that helps the sorrowing to sustain their losses. 110 The Soul of America in Time of War and the anxious to suppress their fears, and the burdened ones to go on with their burden- bearing cahnly, and the workers to persist in working on serenely at their posts of danger in hospitals and munition factories! They are in the wilderness, — all of us are there together, — being led up by the Spirit I But sustenance and quiet conlidenee are given us: we hardly know precisely how or whence. III. And, finally, out of the union of tliese two influences whicli I have named we feel the presence with us of another power that makes the very desert blossom and almost seem a friend. It is the angel-intluence of hope. In almost all the wildernesses of the world hope finds a resting-place, and appears to make of it a home. Xo experience in life, it sometimes seems, can ever be so hard, no lot or fate so wholly dreary, that tliere is not an open door, or a ladder let down from on high, by means of which this white- robed messenger can come to meet us. At the present time, however, it is no ordinary* form of hope by which we are sus- tained. Hope can be of the earth, earthy, a merelv selfish and a sordid thiui;; — or it Angels in the Wilderness 111 can come to us trailing clouds of glory from on high. And it is this higher, heavenly thing which is ministering to us in our pres- ent need. And what do I mean by that? What is it that I have in mind.^ \Muit I mean is this, — that we are not simply sus- tained at present by the feeling that some- time the nightmare we are living through will terminate. We are not merely thinking and finding comfort in the thought, — "All things have an end": — "The longest road somewhere has a turning." War camiot last forever: peace will come at last! Such sentiments as those are born of hope; but just of ordinary casual and earthly hope! They minister to us, and exert an influence, no doubt; but they fall short of the highest influence. And I con- fess, for my own part, that if I had no other sustenance, — if I just lived and endured this present crisis in the strength of the thought that it would end at last, and this poor, maimed world go back in time to its same old selfish and discordant ways, — if I had no more than just that to sustain me, I do not think that I could bear it ! But I have more, — thank God, vastly more! 11-2 The Soul of America in Time of War The glorious angel of our present hope is this, — that we ourselves, and the other nations of the world, will come forth from our great ordeal equipped and consecrated to redeem mankind! All this sutfering, all these sacrifices, all these efforts to suppress our fears, and to rise above ourselves, and cour- ageously to do our parts. — do you imagine for one moment that they do not point to something, work toward something, mean the final bringing about of something com- mensurate in value to that which they have cost? Of course they do! And our present hope, which is founded even now on partial fact, is this, — that the world is going to be one, and mankind brothers, and allied nations merged in a league of international cooperation as they never were before! I believe it, because it has practi- cally come to pass already! I beheve it, for the reason that four-fifths of the world at the present moment is united in an effort to put do^^^l military domination, and to make the world an orderly and peaceful place in which to live. Perhaps it could not come, — this unified, related, allied, internationalized world, — in Angels in the Wilderness 113 any other way than through the gateway of prodigious suffering in common! I do not know about that, and it is needless now to speculate upon the matter. For the point is that it practically has come, — this linked-up world, — it has come through the great necessities of war! And, with God's good help, in the days to come, what was begun in war will become perfected in completer union through the blessings and contentments of enduring peace. This, dear friends, is the angel that sus- tains me, and which I believe should soothe and sustain us all in this present wilderness wherein we find ourselves. It is my great hope that the foundations have been deeply and securely laid for a new world-order in which liberty, equality, fraternity, and peace shall be no empty words, but elements of worth which mightily prevail around the world. America, I believe, was never in all her history so great and glorious, — never so much "America the beautiful'* as she is to-day. And she is beautiful not alone in the wonderful unanimity of purpose with which she has entered on this mighty task; 114 The Soul of America in Time of War not alone in the calm assurance of success which comes from the high conviction that no other course was compatible with honor: but, more than this, she is beautiful, even in the wilderness, by reason of the mighty and persistent hope which she cherishes in company with her allies. It is the hope and the belief that a United States of the world has been formed in suffering which will mean a United States of the world for the keeping of true peace and the working out of justice in the days to come. THE WILLING SACRIFICE Who then is willing to consecrate his service this day unto the Lord? . . . Then the people rejoiced, for that they offered willingly. — I Chronicles xxix. 5, 9 THEN the people rejoiced, for that they offered willingly. This is the rehgious ideal that breathes through the old narrative, the willing service, the response that at once met the appeal, unconstrained, unurged, a service, a response, given not from motives of selfishness, promised reward here or hereafter, not from motives of ex- pediency, not from motives of fear; but given from the motive of a great sentiment, a great loyalty, "I have set my affection to the house of my God," given from the motive of a great faith, "Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty . . . thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all," given from the motive of a profound sense of obligation. "All IIG The Soul of America in Time of War things come from tlioe, and of thine own have we given unto thee." Out of affection, loyalty, faith, reverent sense of indebtedness came a joyous acceptance of responsibility, a glad consecration of all that they had, all that they were. He who possessed brought to the common store, for the common ideal, the conuuoii purpose. '"Then the people rejoiced, for that they offered willingly." A temple that is built out of an affection, a pride, a loyalty, a consecration, a pro- found sense of debt, a joyous willingness, such as that, is indestructible. It is founded not upon the shifting sands of the transient, but upon the rock of the eternal. Though time may disintegrate it, crumble it to dust; though invading foes, destructive vandals, may leave not one stone upon another, yet it shall rise again in some form, for it is created from something more durable than stones and mortar. It is an embodied affec- tion; it is a visible loyalty; it is a faith, an ideal, hewn into stone before men's eyes. Gold and silver and jewels are precious, but the willing hearts, the priceless ideals, the holy faiths of men and women, that The Willing Sacrifice 117 make them ready to sacrifice, these are far more valuable. What holds true of the storied temples of religious worship holds true of the temple of a national life, of a nation's existence, of a people's dreams and hopes and purposes, of a spiritual democracy, which because it is founded on justice, on right, on equal opportunity for all, on principles of freedom and humanity, on respect for manhood and womanhood, is something more than merely political. Yes, let us say it; patriotism at its highest and best is an expression of re- ligion. The afPection, the loyalty, the faith, that sees the meaning of the ideals of the nation, and is willing to spend and be spent that the nation may be shaped and may be preserved unsullied and unharmed, is of the essence of religion. If our physical bodies may rightly be called the temple of the living God, how much more our institu- tions as a people, our national efforts and aspirations, our hopes and faiths for our- selves and for humanity, as they stand embodied in our national life.^ That sense of our life as a people, as a vehicle and ex- pression of the divine life in so far as it is 118 The Soul of America in Time of War true, just, high, may rightly make us feel that true service of country is service of God, and may add new motive to our willingness to consecrate ourselves to that service. The7i the people rejoiced, for that they offered willingly. The sentence we may well use to express the spirit of our democracy at its best. Affection and loyalty, love of country, pride in its noble history, its service to humanity in the past, its inestimable service to the world as an embodiment and beacon of liberty, faith in our country's destiny, in its promise to mankind, in its power of serv- ice not only to its own citizens but to the world, faith in democracy, its value, and with loyalty and faith a profound sense of obligation, the feeling of the debt you and I owe to the past, the realization that in giving to our country our best citizenship, our service, we are only giving back a small part of what we have received, the bene- fits that have blessed our life — "Of thine own have we given thee ! " — the thought of what it means to be born in such a country as ours rather than in one of the oppres- sive and repressive monarchies of Europe; America, with its great traditions, its high The Willing Sacrifice 119 history, its ideals, all these — affection, loy- alty, pride, faith, gratitude, — bring a joyous spirit of service. We are glad as Americans to help in any way that we can, glad to be responsible, alert, active citizens, glad to help build that temple of the national life in times of peace, glad to help defend and preserve the temple in time of war, when it is threatened, when ruthless foes menace it, flout the ideals for which our nation stands, challenge its powers. Yes, we are glad! The strength of a democracy such as ours is the willing service of its citizens, based not on policy, not on expediency, not on selfishness, but on affection, loyalty, faith, gratitude. It is impossible to destroy that kind of a nation. It indeed uses battleships, airships, guns, all the instruments of war- fare, when necessary, in the defence of its rights, in the upholding of its ideals, but its strength is greater than man -power, ship- power, gun-power. It is the power of the spirit, the power of an ideal, the power of a purpose. Crush it and it will rise again. It cannot be discouraged. It cannot be daunted or defeated. 120 The Soul of America in Time of War That faith which Hves at all times, but in times of stress and danger wells up a surging enthusiasm, a great tide of purpose, is to be sharply distinguished from a false and narrow patriotism. It is much more than a blind and unreasoning attachment. It is the spirit of a free people in a free state, who are conscious of possessing something of inestimable worth, worth living for in earnest, worth dying for if need be. There is another kind of joy and willing- ness, of which we have seen horrid examples, a spirit that wells into hymns of hate, coins itself into curses, lashes itself into renewed spasms of fury. The lust of battle, the un- holy joy of satisfied greed and beastliness, the cruel joy of the pirate, the glad will- ingness of the vengeful, these are hideous realities on earth at the present moment. Preserve us from these, our God; save our souls and our nation's soul from the spirit that delights in evil, takes joy in wrong-doing, and lends itself willingly to cruelty and crime. What we admire is something far different; it is the consecrated joy and will- ingness of a people who, sad as they may be that the calamity of war has come, know The Willing Sacrifice 121 that they are striving for what is right, that their cause is just. Every true citizen must feel something of that glad willingness in such a crisis as is upon us. He wants in some way to have his part in the struggle for justice and humanity. He wants to have his stake in it. He not only does not want the struggle to be lost, but he does not want it to be won without him. He may not be able to do a great deal. His part may be small not from choice, but from necessity. But what he has he wishes to pledge that the country he loves may be preserved, that his country's ideals may live. The strength and the glory of our democ- racy is in this intelligent sense of partner- ship and responsibility. The government is not something apart from us, alien to us, an impersonal something that acts inde- pendently of us, that can achieve its ends without our cooperation. "America is you, and you, and I." The government is ours. It acts for us. It draws its strength, ma- terial and moral, from us. It is as strong or as weak as the intelhgence, the loyalty, the spirit of service, of those who maintain it. For a democracy such as ours to be effi- 122 The Soul of America in Time of War cient, successful, its citizens must have faith in democracy. We express our faith in democracy when we put ourselves ungrudg- ingly, ungrumblingly, whole-heartedly behind the decision and efforts of the government which represents us, which is our agent. It may be that had the decision in any particular instance lain with you or me individually, we might have made a dif- ferent decision. But we are a democracy. That means a people ruling itself, not in an anarchy of individualism, but by orderly methods through majorities by the agency of its representatives. Not all the glad willingness of the people of the story to give of their gold and jewels to build a temple could have built the temple had each one insisted on his own opinions in regard to architecture. Not all the glad willingness of a people to serve their country can either build it or maintain it safely, if each insists upon his own will, or even his own con- science, as arbiter. There are many men and women in America to-day whose first offer- ing to their country ought to be the sacrifice on the altar of patriotism of their wayward- ness and egotism. But notwithstanding these The Willing Sacrifice 123 malcontents and irreconcilables whose activi- ties are a weakness and a menace to the nation, these men and women who are not really democrats but moral anarchists, they are far outnumbered by those true Ameri- cans who have an abiding faith in democracy, a faith which makes them willing to spend and to be spent in its service. The American people's faith in democracy is indissolubly united with faith in justice. That, indeed, is its soul. I do not know how our people could have the courage to face such a war as this if it were not for their unshakable conviction that on the part of America and her allies this war is a struggle for democracy, for justice, for all that is most precious to human life. There are, indeed, those who seek to obscure the leading motives of this struggle. There are traitors, enemy aliens in our midst. There are hyphenated Americans, more loyal to the country of their birth than to the country to which they have sworn allegiance. There are doctrinaires, theorists, who have weakly and foolishly yielded to the sophis- tries of the enemy. The insidiousness of the crafty foe we fight is shown in no greater 124 The Soul of America in Time of War way than in his adroit use of the peace sen- timent of this country, to achieve his own diaboHcal ends. Money was spent freely in this country, before our entrance into the war through the channels of various organi- zations, to confuse the issues of this great struggle, and to prevent our taking our place in the war, that place which every dictate of justice and humanity bade us assume. Money has been spent assiduously since our entrance into the war to weaken the sentiment of our citizens, to paralyze patriotism, to lessen the response of the citizens to appeals for enlistment and to appeals for funds to finance the war. There is no question as to the harm that has been wrought, especially in certain sections of our country, by this propaganda. But the wiser of our people are not to be misled by any pernicious influences. We have been told that there never was a just war or an unjust peace. In one sense it is, of course, true that no war is a good war. In one sense it is true that there never was a good conflict between a thug and an honest citizen, or between a criminal and an officer of the law. But for all that it is a good thing, a right The Willing Sacrifice 125 thing, for the citizen to resist the thug if he have power, and for the poHceman to club the criminal into submission and bring him to justice. It is absolutely necessary for the protection of society, for the safety of law- abiding men and women. And exactly so it is right to resist national aggression. The German government is the armed thug of the world, the arch-criminal of the planet, the Hun of modern times. Who shall rea- sonably deny that it is just, right, necessary, to check, to thwart that thug, to deprive that criminal of his intended prey, to force him to respect the laws of civilization and the rights of humanity. The sane common sense of iVmerica, as well as American ideal- ism, has answered that we must so resist. Only the blind and foolish doctrinaire, whose theories ride him, can differ from this de- cision. We know that there might very well be an unjust peace. We know that no peace can be a just peace until the criminal is effectually subdued. There can be no endur- ing peace with Germany except by a de- cision which shall relieve the peoples of earth from the German menace. "Blessed are the peace-makers," but far from blessed 126 The Soul of America in Time of War are the foolish people who would attempt to have our government negotiate peace with an unconquered and unchanged enemy, leaving him with his bleeding prey, Belgium and France, between his paws. The true and wise citizens of America understand these things. It is because of this understanding that with persistence, unwavering loyalty, they intend, undaunted by the disloyal and uninfluenced by the doctrinaire pacifist, to give themselves and what they possess to the achievement of those ends for which America entered the war. Yet the spirit of the true American at this time is farthest possible from silly boast- fulness or shallow optimism. That is not the meaning of his joyous willingness. We are not blind to the resources, the power, the determination, of the foe this nation faces, the marvelous war machine, the technical skill, the material wealth, the disciplined people, the subservient press of Germanj^ the craft and insidiousness of the German government. We have no pleasant illusions as to the task the American people has be- fore it, in common with the allies. We know it will take men, arms, ships, food, The Willing Sacrifice 127 money, in colossal numbers and quantities, and all the energy, resourcefulness, courage, economy, self-sacrifice, that can possibly be mustered. But yet we know also that it must he done. The task that lies before the allies is no less a one than to restore the rent fabric of international law, slowly and painfully achieved through centuries, which Germany has in a moment destroyed, to rebuild the broken temple of democracy and justice. The task must be done with the sword in one hand and the tool of the workman in the other. Knowing all the difficulties, the true citizen has nevertheless no thought of depression or fear. His loyalty and faith are too big for that. Thousands upon thousands of the young men of the land are either training for war, on the way to war, or already at war, in our camps in America, "Somewhere in France," or on the waters between, and doing their part with a song on their lips, offering their will- ing service to an ideal, for the sake of their loyalty, their pride, their faith. This willing sacrifice is one of the nation's greatest assets. It is our answer to the 128 The Soul of America in Time of War foolish doctrinaire and to the agitator who continues to assert in the face of the facts that this is a war of the capitaHst and the newspaper, that the American people did not want and do not want the war. It is the best answer to the hyphenates and other disloyalists. It is the best answer to the Hun. It is the expression of the spirit and will of America, an expression of faith in democracy, of faith in the righteousness of our cause, of faith in its triumph. Then shall the people rejoice, then shall the heart of every loyal American rejoice, then shall the heart of stricken Belgium, and the heart of sore-pressed France, and the heart of brave and doughty Italy, and the heart of noble England, and the heart of the faithful in distraught Russia, and the heart of our great sister republic Canada to the north- ward, and the hearts of our sister republics around the globe. New Zealand and Australia, and the hearts of our sister republics of Latin blood to the southward, and the hearts of China and of Japan with the lessons of democracy yet to learn, the hearts of all our allies, whom principle and circumstance have made our partners in the struggle against The Willing Sacrifice 129 insolent and criminal authority, rejoice and be glad, in that America's citizens have offered willingly and generously. Then shall the cause we all have at heart be strength- ened and the day brought nearer of a just and lasting peace. ARE T^'E WORTH DYING FOR? Again the word of the Lord came unto me, sai/ing. Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them. When I bring the sicord upon a land . . . if our transgressions and our sins be upon u.t, how should we then livef — Ezekiel xxxiii. 1, '■2. 10 FOR some months past, we have been witnessmg in this conntry the most remarkable, and in many ways the most touching, spectacle that has ever been seen in the history of our republic. In answer to the summons of the President, thousands of our young men, the pick and flower of the land, have been withdrawn from homes, colleges, workshops, factories, harvest fields, and handed over to the con- trol of the military authorities. These men have been assembled in cantonments in this country or in Europe, and are being trained for efficient service in tlie battle against Germany. In course of time, they will step into the trenches left vacant by the Englishmen and Frenchmen who have pre- Are We Worth Dying For? 131 ceded them on the western front, and enter upon the indescribable difficulties and terrors of the great war. Life for these young men has been completely changed as in the twinkling of an eye. Yesterday they were playing games, or enjoying innocent recrea- tions. They were starting upon the lowest rungs of the commercial ladder which leads to fortune and personal distinction. They were dreaming in colleges or professional schools of years of high-minded service in the community. They were hearing the first call of love within their hearts, feeling the first touch of tenderness and romance, and catching the first glimpse of that home which some day would be builded by the labor of their hands, and of the wife and children who would some day be guarded within its walls. This was the world of these young men, but yesterday. Now it has gone, like some mirage upon the sea! And in its place is the grim landscape of north- ern France, with its wasted fields, ruined vil- lages and cities, trenches, artillery, bayonet charges, multiplying hospitals, innumerable graves for known and unknowTi dead. This contrast between what is and what 132 The Soul of America in Time of War might have been is, of course, much more vivid to the outsider than to the men them- selves. To many of the recruits, this sum- mons to mihtaiy service comes as a call of emancipation. All their days they have been bound, as it were, to the wheel of dull routine. Life has been to them a drab and colorless affair. Each day has brought its unrewarding toil, each night its restless sleep; and the looming years ahead have shown no promise of repose or change. Now, with the vast upheaval of the war, has come unexpected and joyful release. The doors are flung wide open and the fences taken down. Everywhere is the challenge to new experience, the invitation to adventure in unfamiliar realms for which they have been longing all their days. And b.ehold, they go forth to war as gladly as a bridegroom to his bride! The last three years have brought many strange surprises, many curious revelations of man and his world. None has been more impressive than the willing- ness with which men have faced the horrors of the battlefield, for the sake of escaping what are to them the equal horrors of every- day existence. Donald Hankey, the "stu- Are We Worth Dying For? 133 dent in arms," has told us of these men, and given us some understanding of their process of self -disco very. The passing of the war of chivalry and the coming of the war of machinery has introduced extraor- dinary changes on to the field of battle; but it seems to have left untouched the psy- chology of Scott's famous stanza — "Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name." To others of these young men, the call to the colors has come as an opportunity not so much for experience as for service. They believe that their country is in dire peril of an enemy across the seas. They believe that this country represents the high- est embodiment of liberty and justice which the world has seen. They believe that loyalty to the nation is the first duty of the good citizen. Therefore do they heed the nation's declaration of war against Germany as the knights of the Round Table heeded the call of Arthur to battle for the walls of Camelot. These young men ask for no 134 The Soul of America in Time of War sympathy for what has come to them. They are as scornful of pity as of praise. In a very solemn way they look upon themselves as fortunate to be living at a time when they may show their devotion to God and to his truth forever, by laying all they have and are upon the altar of self-sacrificing service, and are therefore ready to accept tributes not of condolence, but of congratulation. Each one of them is as "the happy warrior,'* of whom Wordsworth speaks — "He who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for human kind. Is happy as a lover; and attired With sudden brightness, like a man inspired; And through the heat of conflict, keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw. Or if an unexpected call succeed. Come when it will, is equal to the need." Then, of course, there is that vast host of men who march away to the Front, un- moved by any quest of adventure, untouched by any thrill of consecration, led simply by that sense of submission to the inevitable which has become to them a kind of second nature. There is something inexpressibly Are We Worth Dying For? 135 pitiful about these men. All their lives they have been the playthings of necessity. They have done what they have had to do in order to keep body and soul together, without thought or choice, without exercise either of imagination or of will. Never have they known what it is to be free agents. Some- where, somehow, the orders have always come, as from above, and they have never found it possible to do anything but obey. Thus it was that they began selling papers upon the street, or blacking shoes in the saloon. Thus it was that they went to work a few years later in the factory or the department store. Thus it is that they have kept on working in the same position in the same business, asking no promotion, seeking no change. And now to these men has come the summons! It is a surprise, something of a shock, but it stirs no excite- ment, and touches no chords of deep emo- tion. It is simply one more order, a little more sudden and imperative than the rest; and they march to their encampments as far removed from enthusiasm or sacrifice as from insubordination. It seems strange that such men should be produced by a democ- 136 The Soul of America in Time of War racy. Yet here they are, in numbers of appalHng magnitude. These are the men whom Theodore Parker had in mind when he spoke of the sad patience of the multi- tudes; and WiUiam James, when he wrote his great treatise on the laws of habit. These are the men who hold together the fabric of society in times of peace, and sustain unshaken the prolonged and awful agonies of war. Like Tennyson's brigade at Bala- klava — "Theirs not to make reply. Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do, and die." Such are the motives which are active in the hearts of our young men to-day and are working to prevent any such summing up of the situation now before us as was offered at the outset of this sermon. Largely, to their credit, be it said, the draft recruits do not see the contrast between what they are leaving and what they are taking. They do not meditate upon the vast tragedy involved in the transition from civic to military life. In them stirs only the thrill of adventure, the joy of service, the habit of obedience. But with us, it must be dif- Are We WoHh Dying For? 137 ferent. To us must come the realization of the sacrifice these boys are making, of the sacrifice we are asking them to make as the price of our security. I do not see how any stay-at-home who has one particle of sym- pathy or imagination can look upon these young soldiers without being acutely con- scious of what they are surrendering, some of them forever. I remember how this feeling swept over my mind when, on the occasion of a visit to a university on a preaching mission, I met a group of the students, to discuss the war and its obli- gations. Instinctively, as I talked with these young fellows, who were so soon to take "... the khaki and the gun Instead of cap and gown," I found myself thinking of what had come to them, in terms of my own experience. Less than twenty years before I had stood at the threshold of a great college. Since then it had been my fortune to taste of every good thing which life had to offer. I had passed my student days without in- terruption, and graduated successfully into the ministry. I had taken my place among 138 The Soul of America in Time of War my comrades, and followed unhindered the pathway of my career. I had known the love of woman, and in this love had built the structure of my home. I had seen my children come into the world, and watched them grow^ from year to year. I had made friendships, found opportunities of service, had happiness and health abundant. Every- thing that life could bring me in these years, I had received. All experience was mine, save that of death. And here were these young men, just starting on the road which I had travelled, now abruptly turned aside by the demand of war! I would have been unworthy, it seems to me, of the fortune which had been mine, had I not been con- scious, as I looked into these wistful faces, of the sacrifices which these college boys were being asked to make. If war has to be, and men have to fight, why should not those be chosen for the fray who, like myself, have tasted everj^thing that life has to offer and therefore have nothing to lose, and these to whom the world and its joys are new be exempted, at least for a few years, until they have had their chance to live. But this, of course, would not be war! It is Are We Worth Dying For? 139 the irony, the tragedy, of this monstrous thing that it takes the young, the untried, the purest, the best. Like the Minotaur, it must have sacrifice, and this sacrifice must be of those who should rightly be the last, and not the first, to pay! Now it is this fact of sacrifice which is the starting point of all I have to say. For however unimportant it may seem to our young men, this is the one thing, after all, which should be of supreme importance to us who are staying at home in this vast conflict of the nations. We are the respon- sible members of the community. We are the men who determine policies, enact legis- lation, issue orders. We are the ones who have commanded these young men to go forth and die for us and for our children. We are not going to do the dying ourselves, we who have enjoyed so much at so small a price of effort; but we are passing on this duty to others, who have enjoyed so little as yet, and therefore must make the supreme sacrifice of a vicarious atonement. Surely, this is a solemn thing which we have done! It was dictated, we say, by stern necessity and accompanied by profound regret. We 140 The Soul of America in Time of War have not asked others to die for us without good reason. But we have asked it all the same! And who among us can see another march away in his place and on his behalf to meet privations, sufferings, dangers, and perhaps death, without finding himself face to face with the fateful question, Am I worth dying for ? The asking of this question brings its own terrific answer! There are many good men and women among us stay-at-homes. I can look around this church, and see in faces which I have learned to love, true stories of devotion and of honor. Few of us have lived wholly to ourselves. Most of us have striven to attain to a fair standard of gen- erosity and good-will. I know too many of "The kind, the brave, the true, the sweet," to underestimate the amount of good that is at all times being manifested in human living. Ordinarily I should be ashamed of criticism and indictment. But when we face such a situation as this which is before us at the present moment, when we see young men by the thousands sent away to die for our security and happiness, we suddenly find Are We Worth Dying For? 141 ourselves confronted by standards of virtue which we have never met before. Nothing could fully justify the demand which we are making upon these boys of ours, but lives into which no selfishness has ever been per- mitted to intrude. We are asking them to die for others. Surely our right to speak must be based upon the fact that we have Hved for others! But we only have to search the secret places of our hearts, to learn how largely we have lived only for ourselves. We have known generosity — but has it attained to the standard of the ancient Jewish law, which exacted a tithe of all that a man had for the service of Jehovah? We have not been without a sense of justice — but has it been quick to resent and repair, at any cost to ourselves, the injuries done to "even the least of these, our brethren"? We have shown love — but has it ever at- tained unto the measure of that love than which no man hath greater, "that he lay down his Hfe for his friend"? We have been kindly, generous, self-forgetting, as such things go in this world — but have we ever done anything supremely great? Seldom, if ever, have we passed that test of sanctifi- 142 The Soul of America in Time of War cation "for others' sakes" which Jesus laid upon himself as the condition of a similar demand on his disciples. x\nd yet here we are sending forth millions of our young men, to endure suffering and meet death not al- together dissimilar to the suffering and death of the Cross, that we, forsooth, may continue to live in happiness and comfort! Are we worth dying for? When that question is asked of the stay-at-homes to-day, two things become for us inevitable. In the first place, there must be for every one of us confession of sin and prayer for forgiveness of sin. We must know what it means to be humble and repentant. WTien the armies of Holof ernes, captain of the host of Assyria, laid siege to the Israelitish city of Bethulia, we read in the book of Judith that all the young men were marshalled for combat, and that when the guards on the city walls saw the enemy, these young men "took up their weapons, and went out of the city against them to the top of the hill." Then w^e are told that all the people "cried to God with great earnestness and with great earnestness did humble their souls. . . . And every man and woman, and the little Are We Worth Dying For? 143 children, fell before the temple, and cast ashes upon their heads, and spread out sackcloth before the Lord; and they put sackcloth about the altar." Such acts were dictated very largely, of course, by fear, and by the theological hope that Jehovah might be persuaded by prayers sufficiently loud and sacrifices sufficiently many, to in- tercede for the defence of the city. But present also, in these services of penitence, must have been the consciousness of the part of the citizens of Bethulia of what they were asking their young men to do, and of their unworthiness to exact this sacrifice. Such, at any rate, should be our thoughts in this siege of a later and larger Bethulia. We are sending forth our best to die for us, and we know in our hearts that we are not worth the sacrifice. We have done a little, but not enough. We have given something to others, but kept much more to ourselves. We are sinners in the sight of God at least. Therefore should we ask these men to die, only on the con- dition that by penitence we begin the task of making ourselves worthy of their sacrifice! After this act of penitence must come a 144 The Soul of America in Time of War second — the act of consecration. Hence- forth, in the name of those who have died at our command and for our sake, we must hve as consecrated men. After all the blood and horror of this war, its willing sacrifice and noble heroism, no deed of selfishness on our part will ever be tolerable again. Already we are being told of the material sacrifices which we must make, in order to match in some measure the sacrifices which we are exacting of the men whom we are sending to the battlefield. Any man or woman who can live to-day as he lived yesterday, without sacrifice or denial such as he never knew before, is a being hopelessly lost to spiritual understanding. I do not worry about such persons, for I do not be- lieve that there are many such among us. "What concerns me is the thought of what is to come after the war, when the pressure is lifted, the drama closed, and the reaction come from the long years of agony and strain. Then must we give ourselves to this great act of consecration. For the problem of our worthiness does not end W'ith the end of the great war! So long as we shall live, the price of what has been Are We Worth Dying For? 145 done for us will stand to our account. There may conceivably come a time when the moral debt which this war has laid upon our hearts, like the financial debt which it has laid upon our pocket-books, will be discharged. There may come a time when the world again will be spiritually free. But we will never see that time. So long as we shall live, we shall l)e under bonds to these men who have died for us. To our last day on earth, it will be asked. Were you worth dying for? Therefore, my affirmation that to-day, and every day hereafter, must be to us a day of consecration! Day and night forever, must we pray, "O Lord, jis thy son, Jesus, died for me, so these young men have died for us. Henceforth our lives are theirs, and therefore thine! Ilelj) us, for their dear sakes, to escape selfishness and sin. Help us to attain to honor, uprightness, and good-will to men. As they died, so may we live, for others' sakes, and thus be worthy in some measure of their sacrifice. And thine shall be the glory, forever and ever!" These are the thoughts that come quickest to our minds as we face this question, Are we worth dying for? It would be a mistake. 146 The Soul of America in Time of War however, if we confined ourselves to this merely personal consideration of the problem. For there is something much more momen- tous in this war than personal relations, however serious and searching these may be. The American soldiers are not fighting for Americans, any more than the English soldiers are fighting for Englishmen, or the French poilus for Frenchmen. Not even may we believe that the Belgian troops are fighting for the people and ravaged soil of Belgium. These men believe that they are fighting not for themselves, or their families or country, but for a common cause which they all represent and to which they are all committed — the cause, namely, of democracy. We are insisting as a group of powers allied against Germany, that we are battling for the perpetuation of the society we have builded, of the political, social, and industrial fabric which we have reared, of that whole civilization of free and enlightened peoples, which constitutes the distinctive and beneficent feature of our western world. This is without question what brought America into the battle, what our young men are preparing to die for on the fields Are We Worth Dying For? 147 of France. Our civilization as a cause, and not ourselves as individuals, is what we proclaim to be at stake in the great war. The moment that this interpretation of the European struggle is accepted, the ques- tion, Are we worth dying for.'^ is shifted from the inquiry as to whether we as persons are worth dying for, to the question as to whether the society of which we are a part is worth dying for. The answer, however, remains the same! For the civilization which we have been building during the last three or four hundred years is hardly so perfect or final an achievement as to chal- lenge a supreme sacrifice for its preservation. Indeed, if I thought that the result of this vast struggle between Germany and the allies, with its millions of dead and wounded, its incalculable destruction of property and treasure, its indescribable misery of unoffend- ing peoples, was to be nothing better than the restoration of civilization as it existed before the war, I should be tempted to question if the cause was worth the life of a single soldier in the ranks. Universal discontent with our political and industrial society was the characteristic feature of our life a half- 148 The Soul of America in Time of War decade ago; and this discontent was based upon the undisputed fact that modern civih- zation, whatever its material triumphs, was a moral and spiritual failure. It is true that knowledge had never been so wide- spread, mechanical efficiency so marvelous, natural resources so abundant and accessible. It is true that political democracy had been born, the laws of sanitation discovered, and the science of communication developed to the point of miracle. In many ways, our society was the most marvelous the world has ever known. But the masses of the people were still wretchedly poor; starva- tion, disease, and prostitution were still unconquered; the slavery of toil still broke the bodies and blighted the souls of men. The old evils, in a word, were at best only tempered, not abolished; and to these were added the new and yet more dreadful evils of great cities, industrial monopolies, eco- nomic imperialism, moral instability, the vast menace of international war, and all the lust and greed that belong to a world at struggle with itself. When the twentieth century dawned, man had such power in his hands as had been wielded only by the angels. Never Are We Worth Dying For? 149 had he been so truly able to be the master of his own destiny and the creator of his own world. But he used this power for mate- rial and not spiritual works, dedicated it to struggle and not concord, and with it sought selfish and not unselfish ends. With the result of confusion, disorder, waste, poverty, suspicion, hate, and now, at last, as the natural spawn of such a breed, the universal cata- clysm of the great war! We look at the horror which is Germany, and shudder; but I am not altogether sure that this military monster is not the fruit which gives knowl- edge of the tree. Said Alfred Russel Wal- lace, second only to Darwin among the scientists of our time, a man of exact knowledge, careful observation, and sober speech, after naming in detail the evils characteristic of modern civilization — "Tak- ing account of these various groups of un- doubted facts, many of which are so gross, so terrible, that they cannot be overstated, it is not too much to say that our whole system of society is rotten from top to bot- tom, and the social environment as a whole, in relation to its possibilities and claims, the worst that the world has ever seen." 150 The Soul of America in Time of War Such was our civilization three years or more ago. If you ask if that civihzation is worth dying for, I answer, No! And yet it is being died for by milhons of noble men. WTiy, if the worth of our social order were to be measured by the blood and tears that are being shed to-day for its preservation, it would be precious beyond anj'-thing ever built by the hand of man! Something there is here which seems to most men to be worth while. And if this something is not to be found in what civilization actually was yester- day, then must it be foimd in what civili- zation may be to-morrow, and what the millions of these fighting men are willing to pledge their lives that it shall be to-morrow. Not in what civilization was, but in what good men desired and had faith that it might be made — not in the reality that festered like some poisonous growth upon the earth, but in the dream that blossomed like a fragrant flower within the heart — not in the disorder, struggle, and bloodshed of the society that bred this war, but in the order, cooperation, and brotherly accord of the new society that shall after this war bring in the thousand years of peace — here is to be Are We Worth Dying For? 151 found that thing that is worth dying for. And here, if I mistake not, is the thing for which the vast majority of men who have gone, or are going, into this war, are wilhng, nay glad, to lay down their hves. They are not fighting to preserve or to restore tlie old order. Nobody wants to see the world that crashed to ruin in 1914 brought back to curse mankind. If the old boundary lines, the old armaments, the old alliances, the old balances of power, the old suspicions, jealousies, and hatreds are to be revived, then is the sacrifice of these millions of young lives a futile thing. But if on the ruins of the old world, gone forever, a new world shall be built, then, indeed, may we declare that these unnumbered dead "shall not have died in vain." Hence the programs of recon- struction in government, economics, domestic relations, international institutions, religion, which are the product of all the thinking minds of France, England, and America at this moment ! It is here, in this matter of reconstruction, that we find the message for the stay-at- homes. We have more upon our hands this day than the confession of our sins and the 152 The Soul of America in Time of War rectification of our inward personal lives. We have as well the building of this new world, the bringing in of this new and better day. The Kingdom of God, of which Jesus talked, is laid upon our souls as it has been laid upon no other generation of Christians since the dreadful day of Calvary. Here are these myriads of youthful lives poured out in bounteous sacrifice! Here are these mil- lions of dead bones sowing the sweet earth as for a divine harvest! Here are the blood and tears and agony not of a nation's, but of a world's despair! What is it all for? How is it to be made worth while? Only by the supreme sacrifice in us, as well as in our boys! The sacrifice of all we have and are to the Kingdom of God, the world as Christ dreamed it and as God has had it in his heart through all the sad, dark years ! A little while ago, and every proposal for reform, every crusade for social emancipation, was met by the opposi- tion of "interests" — personal interests, busi- ness interests, political interests, class interests, national interests. These oppositions seemed defensible at that time. But they are defen- sible no more! Henceforth they stand as the sin against the Holy Ghost. Millions of 'Are We Worth Dying For? 153 boys have died, trusting in us who live to see that the new world of which they dreamed should be established. We are pledged to their dead bones — and the pledge must be redeemed! Said Mr. Britling, writing in the early dawn of his dead son: "Let us make ourselves watchers and guardians of the order of the world. ... If only for love of our dead . . . Let us pledge ourselves to serv- ice. Let us set ourselves with all our minds and hearts to the perfecting and working out of the methods of democracy and the ending forever of the kings and emperors and priest- crafts and the bands of adventurers, the traders and owners and forestallers who betrayed mankind into this morass of hate and blood — in which our sons are lost — in which we flounder still." Such is my question, Are we worth dying for? And such is my answer! We are not worth dying for, as we stand to-day — either ourselves, or the world that we have made. Had we been worth dying for, there were no need to die! But death has come to others; and to us, the stay-at-homes, must come the stern resolve that it shall be not in vain. Like the Athenians of old, we may weU 154 The Soul of America in Time of War give heed to the words of Pericles, spoken over the bodies of the soldiers dead in the first year of the Peloponnesian War — "Each one having given his body to the common- wealth, they receive instead thereof a most remarkable sepulchre, not that wherein they are buried so much as that other wherein their glory is laid up, on all occasions both of word and deed, to be remembered ever- more. These who valiantly fighting have died, we must be zealous to emulate. For it is fit that every man of you that is left should be like-minded, ready to undergo all travail for the common good." INTERPRETING THE TIMES How is it that ye know not how to interpret this time ? — Luke xii. 56 ~W TEi are told that the owl of Athene, YY goddess of wisdom, flew only in the evening. If this were true and the whole truth, wisdom would be useless, for it would mean that while we have to hve forward, we can only understand backward. A far better appreciation of the nature of wisdom is expressed in the more modern definition: "Wisdom is knowing what to do next. Virtue is doing it." In its essential nature, wisdom is creative. It is not only a means of keeping life in touch with the past and of adjusting it to present situations, but through it we are enabled in increasing meas- ure to forestall the future, to determine what coming situations shall be and to bring about the reaHzation of our \4sions of human good. In this crisis of human history it is su- premely important that we shall be able to interpret this time, to see clearly what is at 156 The Soul of America in Time of War stake, and distinguish the great issues which de- mand immediate attention from the minor mat- ters which can be put off until the victory of our principles has been achieved. Clarity of vision is necessary if our people are to hold a great purpose resolutely to the end and achieve a victory which will be moral as well as material. And on the whole it is astonish- ing that there is so little confusion of thought. After three years of patient endurance of insult and injury, after being subject to a propaganda that affronted our intelligence, we have at last, as was inevitable from the beginning, entered into the great conflict. With no hatred of other peoples and no love of fighting in our hearts, with no designs upon the w^ealth, territory, or business of commercial rivals, but soberly and fully realizing that we must suffer vast losses of treasure and pre- cious life, and ruled by motives and principles that we can hold up before God, we have reverted to a type of activity which we had hoped would never again be needed in human history. May our hearts be as free from the distorting passions of hatred and fear all through the conflict and at the end as they are at the beginning! Interpreting the Times 157 The first condition of an understanding of this time is that it shall be considered in organic relation to the long past out of which it has grown. According to the scientists, man has been in Europe at least since the first interglacial period, that is from half a million to a million years. If, then, human- ity's day on the planet be represented by the twelve hours from midnight to noon, then it was but five minutes ago at most that Jesus appeared. How could the preaching of the Christian ideals be expected in so short a time to re-create a human nature that had been growing so long! Christianity has not failed. Those who think so are, for the most part, readers only of the newspapers and current literature, and so have not the habit of thinking in terms of history and the long ages of biological development. Small won- der that many have been appalled by this relapse from civilization and have been tempted to give up their faith in God. They have no intellectual preparation for seeing the present in its true perspective. The fact is that religion and ethics have not failed. The material which they have to reshape is far older and more refractory than 158 The Soul of America in Time of War was supposed, — that is all. Wliat Paul calls "the old man, whence come wars and fightings," was first in the field and can only gradually be displaced by "the new man, which after God is created in righteousness, knowledge, and peace." Our race was born and bred in an arena, our nature has been de- veloped in long ages when fighting was largely the business of life, and its transformation is a difficult business, as those who criticize the churches will discover soon after they cease to be spectators and become helpers. More- over, the Christian forces have not been unop- posed. The cynics, the believers in force and fear, the literary, philosophic, and educational representatives of "the old man," have been and still are active and influential. Whatever discouragement, pessimism, and despair there may be to-day is often a result of too great absorption in the present. The gloom due to the short sight is dissipated by the courage, hope, and faith that come with the long view. The transition of winter into summer is never perfectly gradual and even. There are late storms in spring which do more or less damage, but these temporary returns of winter do not make us despair Interpreting the Times 159 of the coming of summer. The occasional relapse of an advancing civilization is as natural and inevitable as are seasonal changes; nevertheless we are surely on our way to world organization, order, and peace. It must be remembered, too, that humanity does not go forward with all its various peoples abreast. It is rather like an army on the march; the pioneers are few, many are belated, and there are some stragglers. If one has a fair knowledge of history and the power to distinguish between the main cur- rent and the eddies, there is no diflBculty in determining the causes of the present conflict and in deciding who is chiefly respon- sible. There are some minds which have a genius for raising a dust and confusing the clearest issues. This is easy because, in one sense, the whole past of the complex universe is the real cause of the most unimportant event. And so we hear that armaments are the cause of this tragedy, or that com- mercial jealousy is responsible. But the main facts have long been clear to the observing, and the issue is understood by the American people through a sort of instinct. A few centuries ago, all the great nations 160 The Soul of America in Time of War believed in conquest as a means of wealth, prosperity, and national welfare. As a result of experience, France and Great Britain have learned better. But Germany, which was behind the other nations in political develop- ment and only recently attained national unity, retained the belief in the value and legitimacy of war which other peoples had outgrown. This is not altogether strange, for Prussia and modern Germany were built up by successful wars and, all the way from the taking of Silesia to the conquest of France, these wars have paid immensely. Even in Mirabeau's time he could say, — "War is the national industry of Prussia." The gold and territory won so quickly in 1870 appar- ently converted the entire nation to the belief in the policy that led to such results and have made it support the leaders who ever since that time have obviously been preparing a new stroke. Just when and where it would fall we did not know, but nothing has been clearer for many years than the fact that it would come when the preparations were completed. The situation for many years after 1870 was, briefly, this: France was menaced, with- Interpreting the Times 161 out allies and at strife with England and Italy. Meanwhile England and Russia were on bad terms, and Bismarck dominated Europe through the Austro-German treaty of 1879 and the Triple Alliance of 1882. At last France managed to escape from her isolation, signing an alliance with Russia in 1891, making a treaty of commerce with Italy in 1898, and coming to agreement with England in 1904. The Franco- Japanese and Anglo- Russian agreements were signed in 1907. How Germany met these changes may be understood by any one who will read the lectures given in 1908 in Harvard University by Andre Tardieu on "France and the Alliances." Germany's policy was to de- moHsh these combinations by menace if not by violence. "What she dreaded was not being reduced to solitude, but to see her neighbors issue from theirs." Extraordi- narily significant is the fact that the Russian defeats in the Japanese war were followed by German menace against France. In Febru- ary, 1905, the Russians were defeated at Mukden, and in the next month William II made his celebrated appearance at Tangier. Rodjestvensky was defeated in May, and on 162 The Soul of America in Time of War June 1, about a fortnight after, Germany forced France to sacrifice Delcasse, her Minis- ter of Foreign Affairs. It is clear, therefore, that certain incidents in the summer of 1914 were merely the occasion, but not the real cause, of the long and carefully prepared attack of a military feudalism upon its neighbors. The plan was, as we have since learned, more ambitious than we suspected. To drain France of her wealth, to strip her of mineral-bearing depart- ments, colonies, and channel ports and fleet, and then to break up and succeed to the British Empire, — this was obviously part of the great scheme to be attempted when the time was ripe. This being the fixed purpose of the ruling class who determined the policy and disposed of the resources of the German Empire, the only possible way in which this war could have been averted would have been for France and Great Britain to accept German domi- nation without a struggle. The choice was fight or submit. The fleets and armies of the democratic peoples were by no means the cause of the war. Rather have they been the salvation of Europe. At least, they must Interpreting the Times 163 think so who believe in democracy. Feudal- ism was useful once, in establishing order in Europe after the break-up of Charlemagne's empire, but America and her allies have discarded it and committed themselves to a democratic regime. A feudal state is not only governed from the top, but it involves a certain view of human nature. Its methods are coercive, and its ends concern the state rather than the individual. Democracy is based upon an idealistic, religious view of human nature. The theory is that if men are given freedom and education, they can be trusted to manage their individual and collective lives. The supremely precious thing being the concrete lives of men and women, the state is valued as a means of securing their welfare and the conditions of full development. Moreover, there is involved a new sense of personal dignity and worth which gives but also demands respect and to which coercion is *' hateful as the gates of hell." To people of this temper it is useless to talk of the material benefits of being controlled by the German Kaiser and the men about him. Few of us would care to live or leave children on an earth domi- 164 The Soul of America in Time of War nated by men who put their trust in frightful- ness and who have shown in Belgium, northern France, and on the sea the treatment they mete out to those who dare oppose their will. For this reason the American people, to whom all war is revolting, are resolute and whole-hearted in support of this war. The points of view are so opposed that understanding is very difficult. As our mo- tives are not felt by the Germans, are not motives for them, we seem to them hypo- critical. They can hardly believe that others are moved by considerations which do not appeal to them. On the other hand, we are shocked by their ruthless treatment of civil- ians and their disregard of ethical principles. And here we come upon what future historians will probably regard as the most important factor in the whole tragedy. Although other nations have engaged in conquest, they have generally been more or less conscious that they were not doing right. But the mihtary leaders of Germany have mobilized not only the man-power and material resources of the country; they have also enlisted the support of the intellectuals so that we have the amazing spectacle of university professors Interpreting the Times 165 and scholars justifying an imperial policy that shocks the moral sense of Christendom. They legitimatize this policy by trying to show that ethical principles do not apply in international relations, that right and wrong have meaning only in the social life within a nation. This ethical cynicism in high places, this practical avowal that nothing done for the welfare of the state can be condemned or opposed because it is felt to be wrong, — this was one of the most portentous and alarming signs of the times just preceding the war. Although it was probably due to successful and lucrative violence in the past, it is now defended by a philosophy of the Neo-Darwinian type, kn American scholar. Professor Vernon Kellogg, who, as chief representative of the American Relief Com- mission, used to frequent the great head- quarters of all the German armies of the West, has had excellent opportunities for knowing the real convictions of the intel- lectuals — "men who had exchanged, for the moment, the academic robes of the Aula for the field-gray uniforms of the army." Their view is in substance as follows: 166 The Soul of America in Time of War "Human evolution is the result of natural selection in a struggle which is rigorous and ruthless. Within limited social groups, such as nations, it is possible and permissible to give some scope to altruism or the law of mutual aid, but the competition between these groups is of the exterminating kind and is not to be limited in any way." . . . "This struggle not only must go on, for that is the natural law, but it should go on, so that this natural law may work out in its inevitable way the salvation of the human species. That human group which is in the most advanced evolutionary stage as regards inter- nal organization and form of social relation- ship is best, and should, for the sake of the species, be preserved at the expense of the less advanced, the less effective. It should win in the struggle for existence, and this struggle should occur precisely that the vari- ous types may be tested, and the best not only preserved, but put in a position to impose its kind of social organization — its Kultur — on the others, or alternatively to destroy and replace them." That this justification of military aggres- sion is a misinterpretation of the process of Interpreting the Times 167 evolution is not hard to show, or would not be hard to show if reason were the court of decision. But the Germans have appealed to Mars. Let the conflict decide, they say. "If Germany is beaten, it will prove that she has moved along the wrong evolutionary line, and should be beaten. If she wins, it will prove that she is on the right way, and that the rest of the world, at least that part which we and the allies represent, is on the wrong way and should, for the sake of the right evolution of the human race, be stopped, and put on the right way — or else be destroyed as unfit." Precisely, and here is the moral danger of civilization. The Germans believe this, and if they win they will interpret their victory as nature's justification of their philosophy and their war of aggression and conquest. *'If nature and reahty be for us, who can be against us.'^" Who would ever dare in the future to assert that ethical principles apply in international relations? Not only does such a view lead men to defend the wholesale murder of the Lusitania passengers and the ruin of Belgium and northern France and pervert their moral judgment of the whole 168 TJie Soul of America in Time of War war, but it makes it impossible to hope to convince them by argument. When men say, "We appeal to struggle and wait for nature's decisions," other men can only fight or sub- mit. And no nation that sincerely holds this view will ever live peacefully with its neighbors if it thinks that in a war of con- quest its chances are good. The effect, then, of a Teutonic victory would be to confirm the Germans in their belief that ethical principles are restricted in their application within limited groups, and need not be regarded by nations in their dealings with one another. Moreover, similar conclusions would be drawn in other countries, and the demoralization would be widespread. That this was actually the effect upon Eng- lish opinion of the apparent prosperity of France under Napoleon the Third has been pointed out by John Morley in a memorable passage in his essay entitled *'0n Com- promise": "A minor event, which now looks much less important than it did not many years ago, but which still has real influence in deteriorating moral judgment, was the career of the late sovereign of France. Some appar- Interpreting the Times 169 ent advantages followed for a season from a rule which had its origin in a violent and perfidious usurpation, and which was upheld by all the arts of moral corruption, political enervation, and military repression. The ad- vantages lasted long enough to create in this country a steady and powerful opinion that Napoleon the Third's early crime was redeemed by the seeming prosperity which followed. The shocking prematureness of this shallow condonation is now too glaringly visible for any one to deny it. Not often in history has tJie great truth that morality is the nature of things received corroboration so prompt and timely." Then, after pointing out that moral prin- ciples record uniformities of antecedence and consequence in the region of human conduct, Mr. Morley rightly says that "Want of faith in the persistence of these uniformities is only a little less fatuous in the moral order than a corresponding want of faith would instantly disclose itself to be in the purely physical order. In both orders there is only too much of this kind of fatuousness, this readiness to believe that once in our favor the stream shall flow uphill, that we may live 170 The Soul of America in Time of War ill miasmatic air impoisoned, that a govern- ment may depress the ene^g^-, the self- reHance, the piibhc spirit of its citizens, and yet be able to coimt on these qualities when- ever the government itself may have broken down, and left the country to make the best of such resources as are left after so severe and prolonged a drain. This is the sense in which morality is the nature of things. The system of the Second Empire was in the same sense an inmioral system. Unless all the lessons of human experience were futile, and all the principles of political morality mere articles of pedantry, such a system must inevitably brmg disaster, as we might have seen that it was sowing the seeds of disaster. Yet, because the catastrophe lin- gered, opinion in England began to admit the possibility of evil bemg for this once good, and to treat ani/ rifcrcncc to the moral (Did political principles which condemned the imperial system, and all systems like it, beyond hope or appeal, as simph/ the pretext of a mutinous or Utopian impatioice.'^ Who can read these words without grati- tude to the writer for a statement of such incomparable clearness.^ The circumstances Interpreting the Times 171 are different, the conflict in this instance is on a colossal scale, but the principles involved are the same, so that we know perfectly well what will happen if Germany wins. This Xeo-Darwinian philosophy, which is not due to Darwin and is not accepted by representative biologists, but is merely the translation into intellectual terms of the lust for the wealth, trade, and possessions of others and of a brutal and merciless disregard of the rights of small states, will be trans- foi-med into a gospel. And the truth of this gospel will be widely supposed to be estab- lished by the decision of nature in its favor. Its apostles will be "Messieurs les ministres du culte evangelique de I'armee du roi de Prusse," and those who refuse to accept the faith will have a hard time. If, on the other hand, this long-prepared and thoroughly organized attack upon the democratic peoples meets with a decisive defeat, one great gain will result from the war. For the world can hardly fail to see that the complete moral isolation of Germany is a result of her policy, and that her failure is a result of this isolation. It will realize that no nation can prosper which ignores 17-2 The Soul of Americo in Time of War the moral order of the universe. If Germany, with the most perfect mihtan- and adminis- trative mechanism m all histon*, with all her resources mobilized in preparation for a struggle which other nations could hardly believe possible, with arrangements made for treason and revolution in other countries, — if with all this Germany fails, who can hope to succeed in such undertakings in the future? To make such an attempt will henceforth be recognized as suicidal; it is to collide with the nature of things. The greatest hope of the world's peace depends not only on a German defeat, but also upon the clear perception by \-ictors, vanquished, and neutral spectators of the reason why this outcome was inevitable. "We shall not feel seciu-e, or be secure, until this great nation enters with her sister nations into the way of international law and cooperation and peace, to walk henceforth therein, until all civilized peoples have the moral perception to see the signboard which stands over the entrance to evers' other road, — xo thokoughfare. The real nature of the great conflict, the prmciples involved, and the values at stake have been more or less clearlv seen bv the Inierpretitig ihe Times 173 intellectual leaders of the American people from the beginning. The people themselves felt the situation, and their reaction shows that their instincts are sound. Yet, to the future historian, one of the most remarkable phenomena of this time will be the peculiar attitude of a number of well-meaning minis- ters and teachers who, in the name of moral idealism and religion, are doing their utmost to discourage their fellow-citizens, to lessen their enthusiasm, and make them doubt the wisdom of supporting their country in the war. He will note the fact that the native judgment of the people was sounder than the pleadings of these doctrinaires. He will not take great account of the reasons the latter give for their action, least of all their insist- ence upon their conscientiousness and sin- cerity. He will say, — **It is not a question of your conscience, but of your intelligence. The fact renuiins that in one of the great crises in hunuin history you were chietly en- gaged in criticism and in raising objections." If these men had lived in Greece when the Persians tried to destroy the civilization which has been our teacher in science, art, and philosophy, they would have insisted 174 The Soul of America in Time of War that the Athenians themselves were not perfect and therefore had no right to defend themselves against the enemy. They would have been right in the minor things, but wholly mrong in the only thing that mattered at the time. If they had lived when the Christian armies were tr\4ng to save Europe from Moslem domination and women from the harem, they would have said, "Are our hands clean? Are we perfect? If not, we must not resist, for we have no right to fight against the invaders until we are." They would have been as conscientious then as they are now, yet their influence would have been exerted against the real interests of humanity. Charles Martel and his rough warriors were, indeed, far from perfect, but if they had lost, the Mohammedan regime that has cursed southeastern Europe since 1453 would have been extended over Christendom. These men who, in the name of Christianity and peace, include in one indiscriminate condemnation the German feudal organi- zation and the democratic peoples who are resisting a cold-blooded attempt at military domination are conspicuous rather than numerous. They are free to use their in- Interpreting the Times 175 fluence against those who are striving des- perately to preserve this very freedom of expression. They are adepts in the art of making difficulties, in confusing the situation by bringing up a multitude of questions whose solution must necessarily be postponed till after the war. A nation cannot solve all its problems at one time. It must deal with the most vital and pressing matters first. If we lose the war, and, as a result, are domi- nated by a power that aims at Weltmacht, or find ourselves under the necessity of maintaining a tremendous army and navy against it, the conditions of our life will be so changed that the minor values on which these objectors insist will be lost along with the greater. If we win, we can say to them, "We have preserved for you the country whose liberties you enjoy but which in its direst need you refused to help." The war is revealing in a vivid way the unity of men. This unity of social classes and individuals within the nation has been brought home to the consciousness of civi- lized peoples in their efforts, during the last few decades, to overcome vice, crime, and disease. We have found it impossible to 176 The Soul of America in Time of War make the boulevards secure while the humbler streets and alleys are neglected. Physical and moral infections spread from centres of vice and misery, and cannot be kept away from the homes of the successful and for- tunate. We are all tied together and will be saved or lost together. The unity of men is absolute. The brotherhood of men is a fact. Moral and social efforts do not pro- duce it. What they do is to reveal it and save us from the consequences of ignoring it. Herbert Spencer spoke profoundly and truly when he said we are all so closely related that no one can be free till all are free, no one can be good till all are good, no one can be happy till all are happy. If, therefore, we really care supremely for the development of ideal human lives, we must not forget that "given the laws of life as they are, a man of ideal nature cannot be produced in a society having natures remote from the ideal. As well might we expect a child of English type to be born among negroes, as expect that among the organically immoral, one who is organically moral will arise." And if he should appear he would perish immediately, for "an abso- Interpreting the Times 177 lutely just or perfectly sympathetic person could not live and act according to his nature in a tribe of cannibals. Among people who are treacherous and utterly without scruple, entire truthfulness and openness must bring ruin. If all around recognize only the law of the strongest, one whose nature will not allow him to inflict pain on others must go to the wall. There requires a certain con- gruity between the conduct of each member of a society and others' conduct. A mode of action entirely alien to the prevailing modes of action cannot be successfully persisted in — must eventuate in death of self, or pos- terity, or both." This is generally recognized now, and the result is an effort to clean up our cities, physically and morally, and to afford for all the children of the country favorable con- ditions for a healthy, useful, and happy life. But the unity of nations is just as real, as the war is showing with frightful clearness and force. Humanity is complex, and many stages of development proceed concurrently with inevitable misunderstanding, friction, and occasional collision. The advanced are imperilled by the belated. They cannot real- 178 The Soul of America in Time of War ize their ideals of freedom and peace so long as others linger in a feudal or militant stage of development. They are compelled to do their work with the sword in one hand or by their side. This has been so since the first nomads settled and became prosperous in agriculture and trade. And when they have been unable to defend themselves from predatory tribes they have been swept away, and a beginning had to be made somewhere else. Every peace-loving nation is, therefore, united in the closest of bonds with every other nation, and should be profoundly inter- ested in its philosophy, its view of life, and its national ideals. No nation is secure as long as some other believes in war as a legitimate means of advancing its interests and as sanctioned by nature or God. Lincoln saw that this country could not live and peace- fully develop half slave and half free. It is equally true that civilization is insecure so long as some of its peoples are democratic while others retain a feudal organization. Each regime will always feel the other to be a menace. It is to be earnestly hoped that some means may be found for securing Interpreting the Times 179 something like equal political, moral, and social development among the great peoples of the earth, in order that they may under- stand and sympathize with one another and have substantially the same ideals. Until this time comes we shall always be in danger, and shall have to put up with necessary failure to realize many dreams of social betterment in our national life. For it is true, as Mr. Spencer has said, that "while war continues and injustice is done between societies, there cannot be anything like com- plete justice within each society. Militant organization no less than militant action is irreconcilable with pure equity; and the inequity implied by it inevitably ramifies throughout all social relations." At present what we have to do to protect our civiliza- tion in the stage it has reached prevents us from advancing it as rapidly as would other- wise be possible. The war is thus forcing us to see the re- lations which we have ignored, the unity of humanity which can be disregarded only at the price of suffering. "It is ignorance and the lack of love and of the insight which love brings that conceal the connections of 180 The Soul of America in Time of War the world." There can be no peace or happy life for men until they discover the moral order of the world, "obey its laws and make themselves its willing instruments." Nor is it enough that some or most should see this; all must see it. Otherwise it will always be possible for some powerful nation that does not see or believe it to force the interesting and beneficent rivalry of nations down to the level of unreason and war. The public moral sentiment of the civilized world must reach the point where it will say to a nation which thinks that force is the only argument that is respected, — "Force is the only argument that we do not respect, and we will all unite against any nation that outrages humanity by attempting to use it." The war has made clear also that the new internationalism which must come will be built, not upon anti-nationalism and anti- patriotism, but upon a patriotism and nation- alism which is supremely intelligent and which has become all-inclusive in its sympathies. As in our country all our families are blest, so in the civilized, federated, cooperative humanity that is to be, all our national families will be blest. Meanwhile, we rejoice Interpreting the Times 181 that in spite of all the crudeness and imper- fection that linger in our midst, our country, after seeking in every honorable way to avoid the hard necessity, has at last entered into the great conflict inspired by no base or selfish purpose, but purely out of loyalty to the ideals which are our life. "O Beautiful! my country! . . . What words divine of lover or of poet Could tell our love and make thee know it, Among the Nations bright beyond compare? What were our lives without thee? What all our lives to save thee? We reck not what we gave thee; We will not dare to doubt thee, But ask whatever else, and we will dare ! " RELIGION IN ACTION The Lord 'preserveth the faithful, and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer. — Psalms xxxi. 23 THE Psalms are not doctrinal, they do not formulate a creed or elaborate a philosophy. They are lyrical, — the ir- repressible outcries of the soul under pressure of experiences common to all men. In them we have the plain facts of life as life must be lived, facts which, if they are to take on any order to the mind or satisfaction to the heart necessitate some kind of real religion, as distinguished from the outward insti- tutions or the temporal explanations of reli- gion, "our little systems" which "have their day and cease to be." Every once in a while we get down to these facts, and all that is mere theory, subject to dispute and difference, falls away. Many souls across the world to-day are facing that kind of fact which searches the soul, and it is a singular soul in which such a search does not discover real religion at last. Religion in Action 183 This to me is the significance of what we are told of the great cathedral churches of France in these days of war, — that they are thronged, except at the hours of regular service. People bring to these shrines their unformulated experience, and seek in these shrines immediate personal communion with a present, living God. They resent the intervention of anything merely traditional or formal. Life is too vivid, both in its agonies and its exultations, its despairs and its beliefs, its unyielding claims and its ungrudging renunciations, to suffer cramping by customs and formulas. The knowledge possessed by the past, upon which depend many of the creeds and theologies, is not adequate to interpret the life of to-day; but the men who raised the masterpieces of Gothic art in the ecstasy of religious faith and the glory of a spiritual vision builded better than they knew, builded not for a day, but for all time. Even so the singers of the great lyrics of any nation create a refuge, a tabernacle for the heart of humanity in the presence of God. Follow me now from the general truth to the particular instance which also, it 184 The Soul of America in Time of War seems to me, illumines the way the souls of men and the peoples of earth are treading at the present hour. The thirty-first Psalm is a faithful record of a series of vivid, intense, actual momentary experiences. It is not an attempt to arrange a course of conduct or a line of thought beforehand, or to explain a series of experiences that are past. It just reveals a soul in the process of living moment by moment, step by step. When you reach the end of the process, and only then, you discover that the soul has moved, the life has developed; you discover whither it has moved and into what kind of life it has developed; you discover how souls move and whither life tends, — and that is religion; religion, if you will, in terms of science and scientific method, experimental, not theo- retical or dogmatic; religion which shall grow with the growing world, grow in the storm as in the calm, in the winter of the world's agony as in the summer of its content, in the darkness as in the light. Here in the thirty-first Psalm you have a picture of the moving life. Its movement constitutes its religion. It moves through the inevitable exigencies of the world a step Religion in Action 185 at a time. It is stopped by none, but it escapes and avoids none. It never takes more than a step and it never realizes the nature or the destination or the significance of the last step until the last step is taken. Indeed, taken by itself, unrelated to all that went before, the last phase, the last step, would appear to have as little significance, certainly as little religious significance, as the first. The thirty-first Psalm pictures a soul which begins in utter dependence, un- questioning belief that relief and safety will come at call, passes through doubt and despair, and issues in confident pride. Now what I want to point out to you is that because a man sometimes apparently loses faith, sees no light, it by no means follows that he is irreligious, that he has lost touch with God, or God has lost touch with him. This, by the way, on the one hand. And, finally, on the other hand, that some- "times an active pride may be a far better instrument for the expression and further- ance of true religion than is a passive humility. This is my reading of a great human document, a faithful transcript of human experience, in the light of the great crisis in 186 The Soul of America in Time of War human history and human progress which is impending for this day and generation. Despair, I say, may be a part of religious, as well as of irreligious, experience. *'I said, in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes!" No doubt the psalmist believed just that and meant it when he said it. It is a comfort to me, I know, a lessening of my burden of self-reproach, to remember that he who is the founder of my faith once cried out in his agony, *'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" But pride! Is not pride the very antith- esis of the mood of the religious heart .f* Is not the whole trend of Christian thought and tradition against the idea that God uses as his chosen instrument "the proud doer".'' When "pride rules our will" can we be in the hands of God.^ Well, put in that way, with the meaning of pride implied by that way of putting it and with the further implication that there is no other meaning for pride, no other kind of pride, there would seem to be but one answer to that question, and but one issue of life following on that answer. Under those circumstances, under that impression, Religion in Action 187 the religious man, or the man who thinks he is religious, either unresistingly yields place and the pride of the world rides over him, or he flees from the world and repudi- ates its obligations and burdens. "Good-by, proud world, I'm going home!" cried the youthful Emerson. But there is another way of putting it. Take Longfellow's familiar poem of *'The Village Blacksmith." The whole atmosphere of the poem is one of sturdy independence, love of work, and pride in good workmanship. "Each morning sees some task begun. Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose." These lines for me are the focal centre of the picture. And what is it but the picture of "the proud doer".^ After all, "the proud doer" was the ideal of the New England of the nineteenth century, of the original New England stock. This was the essential gospel of its real religion, whether or not that gospel found expression in its institutional religion; its real religion which found issue in its creation of character, the kind of men and 188 The Soul of America in Time of War women by which New England was best represented. And Emerson, let us remember, who, in his inexperienced and sometimes morbid youth, — and all youth has its morbid inter- vals, — dreamed of escaping from the world, after he had come up against some of the world's actual browbeating demands, wrote his challenging essay on Self-reliance, which rang like a trumpet note, a challenge to conflict, a defiance to militant worldliness by the valorous un worldliness of indignant youth. The very battle-cry of "the proud doer" is this essay on Self-reliance. "So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must!* The youth repHes, 'I can!'" In one of the English parish churches is a tablet commemorative of a young ofiicer who fell early in the present war, the inscrip- tion on which begins as follows: "In proud and loving memory ..." (here follow the name and rank and record). Does any one pretend to say that there is anything irreli- gious or unchristian in the use of the word Religion in Action 189 "proud" in that connection, or that such pride and such love are inconsistent with each other? No! this is the greatest love of all, the love of which religion is made, the love to dwell in which is to dwell in God. I find the parallel of that thought of Emerson's about the voice of duty and the heart of youth in the story of the two young men, John and James, whom Jesus asked, *'Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink of and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" and they say unto him, "We are able." I know Jesus must have gloried in that answer. Moreover, take the whole life and example of Jesus, the life of Jesus as an example, and, while it has its episodes of humility, and even its moments of despair, its main current runs in the channel of manly pride, confident power. So evident, so incontro- vertible is this, indeed, that those who can think of religion only in the guise of sub- missive humility have found in the self- assertion of Jesus the evidence of his Deity. No mere man, they have claimed, has a right to speak as he spoke. But I claim his pride was a manly pride; I claim that he 190 The Soul of America in Time of War came and lived and taught to give his fellow- men the right to speak as he spoke, or rather to reveal to them the sources of that right, the justification for speaking with that author- ity, and not with the dependence of the Scribes or with the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Jesus was gloriously human. It is our fault if we are ingloriously human, if we are content to fall into the weaknesses of human nature and never exert ourselves to rise to the higher levels of human strength. The arrogant pomp of worldly pride — selfish, cruel, relentless — is not to be done away by opposing to it himiility; by giving place, by keeping silent, by deferring to it, by allowing it room and yielding it means for growth. Not so is evil overcome by good. Evil pride is to be conquered only by good pride; the assertion of a self that is malig- nant, only by the assertion of a self that is humane. Now good pride may be summed up in one word, faith. But faith without works is dead; faith necessitates faithfulness in the face of actual emergencies. And so we come back to "the proud doer" as the accepted minister and messenger of God, God's own child himself accepting and using Religion in Action 191 his inheritance, conscious of his kinship with God, proud of his kinship, and determined to prove himself worthy to be called a son of God. "Wherefore is God not ashamed to be called their Father." The evil in the world is active. You have got to oppose it by action, not by mere theory, still less by a mush of concession. I believe there may be something finer than brutal worldliness, I believe there may be a legitimate spiritual insight, behind the com- mon contempt for any one who takes a blow against his higher interests, "lying down." Again, evil is organized. Therefore good must be organized against evil. Good un- organized in fellowships, neighborhoods, nations, is helpless against evil rallied about local, race, family, pride. There is a national, as well as a personal, pride, which is justified and not condemned by religion. The inscription on the memorial tablet of which I have spoken, beginning with the words, "In proud and loving mem- ory," closes with a splendid Latin phrase, Gloriam quwsivit patriw, Dei videt — "He sought the glory of his native land, he shall see the glory of God." 192 The Soul of America in Time of War There are times when rehgion and patriotism are inseparable, when the first duty of the church is to inspire service of the nation; when the liturgy of prayerful devotion, of uplifted eyes and folded hands, is superseded by the liturg;y" of deeds — no, not superseded, but justified and glorified as the river of life flows out from its pure springs beneath the throne of God into the wills and the works of men. In the wilderness, with food and strength failing, with the hosts of pursuing Egyptians pressing them hard, the people of Israel turn to Moses, and he cries out in agonized prayer to Jehovah. But the answer to his prayer is not as a sound of harps in places of heavenly rest, but as the sound of a trumpet rallying the hosts of good against the powers of evil. "Wherefore criest thou unto me.'^ Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward!" Such a time is the time in which we live. Such a call comes to us to-day, a call to action. Our highest happiness, I had almost said our only happiness, lies in our ability to do something in the service of our country, in Religion in Action 193 the service of what our country stands for to the cause of humanity. And our pride may be honest pride in being given the opportunity of doing anything, the smallest task, in a cause so noble; in having a share in shaping the world at so great a time to such momentous issues. At such times the preservation of the faithful is in the encompassing faith that lifts him out of himself, causes him to forget himself and all his tremblings for the body's sake in the absorption of a love that casts out fear. At such times the reward of the proud doer is in the deeds that he is proud to do, which he can do unashamed. At such times a man is privileged to discover a still greater joy in the pride that looks out at him from the eyes of kindred and friends who rejoice in their kinship and friendship with him. At such times the only escape from discontent, from shame, from misery, is in finding something to do and in doing it with all our heart and mind and soul and strength. At such times, thank God, every one who so seeks shall find. There is something for each and all of us to do, young and old, strong and weak, man and woman and child. 194 The Soul of America in Time of War Rightly we place on our Rolls of Honor and symbolize in the stars of our Service Flags those who are privileged to give most of all in camp, on shipboard, in hospital and battlefield; the youth of the church, who give what youth alone can give. But back of that gallant line, if it is to push on to victory, must lie the devotion and self- sacrifice of older men, fathers and friends, and of women of all ages, mothers and sisters, wives and sweethearts, who to the same cause give their lives also in constant self- forgetful consecration of time and treasure and strength; and, in giving, know the same joy and win the same reward, the reward of the faithful heart, the joy of the proud doer. THE CREATIVE PURPOSE OF THE LORD OF LIFE The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear ? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I he afraid ? Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident. — Psalms xxvii. 1, 3 COMPLYING with a good custom of the hour, we of this household have to-day unfurled and dedicated a service flag — a mark of our remembrance of those connected with this congregation who are now enlisted in some arm of the service. This congregation would honor those for whom the stars in this flag stand. But in doing so we honor ourselves. And so, also, the dedication of this flag will be of little avail unless we rededicate ourselves. If we are to rededicate ourselves, it is fitting that we should once more and at this time try to make clear what this war means. 196 The Soul of America in Time of War What is its providential place in history? \ATiat will it achieve for the good of humanity? For if we cannot answer these questions our morale will fail. I am a Christian minister. I cannot and you will not expect me to answer these questions in any other light than that light in which alone we can see light. I shall not therefore bring you any new doctrine. It is a doctrine as old as the sun and as new as the morning; as old as the air and as new as the sea breeze. For even older than the sun and than the air, and newer than dawn and ocean-breath is the Lord of life — his purpose and his power! The questions which beset us in these days, therefore, are not merely for closet and cloister, nor ought the answers to be too good for human nature's daily food. They are questions that the common man ought to ask and they require answers that the common man can understand. Because if the sacrifices are vain, if our hoped-for victory is nothing more than a victory of armed force, if the war cannot be turned to good, if the tragedies of the human struggle cannot serve any sovereign purpose, if the The Creative Purpose of the Lord of Life 197 Lord of life has no plan nor power — then why strive, why care? I. What, then, is the divine purpose in histdry? What is the far-off goal toward which creation moves? What is the plan of the Lord of life? I reply: It is the development of a perfect social order; it is, to employ the phrase which Professor Royce has made familiar, the development of a great commmiity of loyal souls — loyal to each other, and each loyal to all, and all loyal to each, and each and all loyal to the spirit of the great com- munity. The great community is not to be held together by force, whether of kings or of popular majorities. Its liberties are not merely political, nor merely economic. It is a community possible in this world but not bounded by this world. There is in the great community but one final liberty and one real bond, and that is the liberty of the spirit and the bond of the spirit. We can the more readily believe that this is true, because our own consciences bear us witness that no other goal is good. No other final purpose is worthy of the his- toric process. For if the Lord of life has for 198 The Soul of America in Time of War his purpose the creation of a horde of mutually exclusive, mutually antipathetic, mutually alienated individuals, then, to my conscience, he is a maniac, himself the victim of all that seems to me opposed to life. Such a lord of life shall not be lord of my life — and would seem to me to owe apology to every decent and manly conscience in earth below or heaven above. We shall be still further justified in believ- ing that the development of the great com- munity is the divine purpose if we examine for a moment the complaint we make so frequently when we declare that in civic affairs evil men pull together and good men pull apart. For in so saying we ignore the fact that the tie which binds the selfish is temporary. The selfish in their conspiracy continue selfish and the end and aim of their union is not the union nor its good, but the selfish self of each conspirator; whereas, the very force which divides for a time the good may be a loyalty not to self, but to a higher good, and so to the good of all. So that the union which binds evil men to some selfish end tends, by the inexorable laws of the mind, to resolve into selfish units, and ' The Creative Purpose of the Lord of Life 199 that which sometimes separates good men does in the very nature of the case tend to resolve into higher forms of unity, into stronger bonds of fellowship, into genuine community. Given time enough, therefore, the forces of sympathy, justice, and loyalty will win over the forces of barbarism, cruelty, and treachery. The defeats of the former are temporary, the defeats of the latter are permanent. It is only a question of time, though it may be a long time, when humanity shall attain to a free, just, loyal community, a great society of friendly spirits, in whom the spirit of the great community shall find perfect satisfaction, and in whom the com- munity shall find peace; where all shall suffer with all who suffer and all shall rejoice with all who rejoice. I call this ideal of humanity a great society, or society of friends, following Royce again, the beloved community. But I call it also the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. I call it also the church universal. I call it also the communion of saints. I call it also, what has never yet had real existence on the face of the earth, a free and 200 The Soul of America in Time of War holy catholic church; I call it also a free, loyal, and sacred brotherhood; all names for a social life and order in which all that kills shall be dead and all that makes alive shall have vindicated its immortality; all names for what we may well believe is the creative purpose of the Lord of life. And yet, before I leave this belief in the purpose of the Lord of life and before coming to our second question as to the meaning of the war in the light of that purpose, there is one insistent question touching the purpose of the Lord of life which ought to be answered: Why is the divine triumph post- poned? Why is the process slow? Why must there be a triumph at all? That is to say, why does anything exist that has to be triumphed over? Why are there defeats? Is the Lord of life really Lord of life? This question in all its forms and phases is unanswerable if the Lord of life is an absolute autocrat, omnipotent in the annihi- lating force of his compulsions. If the Lord of life is indeed an omnipotent autocrat, then I am forced to the amazing opinion that I or almost any human being is spiritually of a higher order than deity — a counsel of The Creative Purpose of the Lord of Life 201 pessimism and despair; for what lesser spirit could ever prevail against such a monarch? But what if, instead of a monarch who could immediately stop all evil but does not, we could believe in a Spirit, supreme in all that is true and good and beautiful, working as Lord of life in and through all souls; who would immediately stop all evil and create all good, but who cannot; who cannot because he cannot skip moral processes; whose work in and for man is normal to man's own spiritual possibilities! To believe in God in any other way is to reduce moral heroism to an absurdity; and so, also, of all self-sacrifice, loyalty, justice, hope, and final spiritual beauty. That which seems best and highest to the enlightened conscience of man may well be nearer to the divine than anything we know. But that very thing which seems best to the enlightened con- science is not in line with an absolute monarch, but only with a striving spirit of loyalty. That spirit reveals itself in humanity and in human history as a striving for right against wrong, of good-will against malice, of fidelity against treachery, of pity against cruelty. It reveals itself as a power often 202 The Soul of America in Time of War defeated but never conquered and ever des- tined for final victorj% ever toiling, ever suffering for the final redemption and final atonement of all souls. It reveals itself as a power working in and through your life and mine, but only completely when you and I heed, consent, cowork. I and you can rebel against that spirit, that spirit of the great community, or we can adore r.nd practise that spirit. But the spirit is always there, seeking those who in every part and action of their lives will worship him. That the Lord of life has a creative pur- pose in human history; that his purpose is to bring about its consummation through processes consistent with the fact that human beings are moral beings capable of good or evil; that this purpose looks to the establish- ment of the brotherhood of man — that is the truth which I said was as old as the sun and as new as the morning; that is the truth in whose light we are to seek the winning of the great war in which we are now as a people engaged. II. I proceed, then, to inquire, secondly: How will an allied victory contribute to that divine purpose? The Creative Purpose of the Lord of Life 203 It will contribute to the divine purpose by arresting a diabolic purpose; for the purpose of official Germany, and of the Germany of to-day to the extent that she has been thus officialized, is not a divine purpose, but the very contrary. I say this, God being my witness, in no swashbuckling spirit. I am not laboring under the delusion that all the evil is on one side and all the good on the other. I am prepared to find when archive graves give up their dead that Russia and Serbia were not wholly without fault at the inception of the war. It has already been shown by the Bolsheviki that Italy entered the war upon terms that were not entirely creditable either to Italy or the allies. I am ready to acknowledge that the democracy of our own country and of our allies leaves much to be desired in the direction of eco- nomic and other social reform. But with due weight given to all these abatements, I still say in full and clear conviction — Germany must be arrested. A step at a time, the real nature of the war has revealed itself — gradually the main issues have cleared until there can no longer remain any doubt in our minds. We are 204 The Soul of America in Time of War confronted by a condition and a theory which make resistance necessary. Ask your- self what would happen if at this moment all the entente allies should suddenly become extreme nonresistants. What sort of resist- ance were the passengers on the Lusitania offering when they were murdered? What kind of ordnance were Armenians firing when they were massacred — between 500,000 and a million of them? What were the common people of France and Belgium doing that they should be forcibly deported and put to enforced labor? — "But Daddy, Mother didn't do anything wrong." To German and Turk- ish military officialdom a nonresistant is easier to kill than a resistant; and therefore at the present time and in the present emer- gency nonresistance offers no hope. Germany and the central powers must be arrested — that, first of all, is what our part in the war means, and that is the way our part in the war will abet the divine plan. For Germany has broken treaties; she has criminally and brutally flouted the laws of humanity; she has been guilty of world-treachery, and the monstrous ambitions of her ruling house and all who had become infected with the same The Creative Purpose of the Lord of Life 205 mania must be arrested — and this cannot be until resistance has been successful and righteous peace terms have been agreed to. III. But what peace terms will best serve the divine purpose .f^ For it goes without saying that all that would be gained by arresting Germany and the central allies will be rendered useless and perhaps worse than useless if the peace terms are not just terms. By just terms I do not mean payment in full by Germany for all the wrong she has done, but terms that will come as near as possible to the establishment of a permanent world order on other principles than world domi- nation or than "balance of power." Such a free order can be established only on terms that have been repeated again and again by the nation's spokesman: Treaties must be public, not secret; treaties must be inviolable, and their inviolability sanctioned by properly constituted and legalized international force; the sea must be free for navigation and for access; small countries must have their rights guaranteed, and a general league must constitutionalize international relations and give forcible sanction to the same. There should be no changes on the map made in 206 The Soul of America in Time of War the spirit of conquest, and only such changes as are inherently just to the people chiefly concerned. Our own country in its part in the war is above suspicion of selfish purpose, and ought to endeavor with all its power to bring all the allies to a like-minded elim- ination of wrongly selfish design. IV. And, finally, the way in which the war as a whole will serve the divine purpose is indicated already by the way in which almost the entire world has been drawn together, not only in the brotherhood of arms and of common physical distress, but chiefly in the brotherhood of chivalrous purpose, intimate sorrow, and moral anguish. The world is learning, as it has never learned before, that in every tragedy, personal or social, there is always hidden a providence of God. That is an evident law of personal ex- perience, because there are spiritual values that no man can know or practise until he has first experienced real sorrow. Many a man has been able to say, "I did not wish for the calamity that came into my life, nor do I wish it to happen to me again or to any man; and yet I desire that all men should possess in their lives that which I now possess, that which The Creative Purpose of the Lord of Life 207 neither I nor any man can ever possess upon any other terms than those which I met and answered to in the discipHne of personal grief." It is just so with the world. I am con- fident the time will come when men can say, *'God forbid that the world should ever have to go through such a stupendous tragedy again, but God be thanked for what the war has given us and for what nothing but such a calamity could give us!" Nor have we learned one of the lessons of all history, if we fail to reckon with the simple though awful fact that the war was not a strange and unaccountable visitation, but the natural consequence of national and personal materialism and selfishness, of the world's fatuous idolatries. It was the coming to the surface of something that was already there — in the system. It is possible that nothing less could ever so radically have convicted the world of its sins until their true ugliness and virulence broke out and took shape in outward consequences. So again history teaches us to expect that conquered peoples often conquer after all in unexpected ways. The world to-day, in much of its better life, is influenced by 208 The Soul of America in Time of War Judea, Galilee, Greece, and Rome, and largely, perhaps more than can be estimated, just because the secular ambitions of these peoples were defeated. Suppose, for example, that Germany's defeat and desperation should compel her people to such economic experi- ments as would offer hope of solution to our present economic maladjustment. Nor is it even necessary to suppose any new discovery to add to the amazing achievements of the German people. Is it not conceivable that what is sweet and true and civilizing in the best of German life and character will really have a freer course everywhere when her garish and wooden modernity and her mili- tary schrecMichkeit and her brutal imperialism have been put where they belong? And time would fail me if I tried to count such far-reaching events as the Russian revo- lution and other upheavings of the peoples. And still, again, we must count the far- reaching moral reaction, whereby, as time goes on, the barbarities and cruelties and treacheries of the war will be remembered as abhorrent and to be avoided by all men and nations; and all the loyal and chivalrous deeds will be remembered for the world's The Creative Purpose 0/ the Lord of Life 209 continuing inspiration. The vast forces of social approval and disapproval will do their efiFective work as history goes on. Thus all too briefly, though I trust not without some helpful suggestion, I have shown why with good conscience we rededi- cate ourselves to the task before us. The Lord of life has a purpose in the history of the human race. That purpose is to bring about a true spiritual brotherhood. The assault of Germany was an assault on that purpose. Our part in the war is to help arrest that assault. But we have a greater part when it comes to the insistence upon international justice, international law, and international reconciliation, and in learning for ourselves, and in helping others to learn the war's deeper and more far-reaching les- sons. If freedom and progress are to be genuine, offences must needs come, but woe unto them by whom they come. The war seems to have cleft the world in twain. But in the end it will be counted one of the facts that has drawn the world together until vanquished and victor shall possess what they never could have possessed without this ex- piatory suffering and sacrifice. 210 The Soul of America in Time of War To see and practise these things will be to rededicate ourselves to the great cause, to the far and near purpose of the Lord of life. It will mean for each one of us more of personal sacrifice and common effort; more of patience and self-control; more of good-natured acquiescence when petty incon- venience is demanded of us; more of quiet home service for some for whom the path of glory would be the easier way; more firmness of will in the hour of adversity and calamity; more elasticity of mind to meet new con- ditions. It will mean a changed mentality with windows open to the eternities. It will mean a disposition to forgive and to be recon- ciled when that shall become possible. It will mean penitence for our own sins and crimes, personal and national. It will mean creative remembering and creative hoping, for all of us. It will mean a vastly increased spirit of friendliness and cooperation. It will mean a new social frame of mind. It will mean a new world vision and a deeper devotion. These great meanings are wrapped up in any such genuine rededication of our- selves — in any such rededication as befits The Creative Purpose of the Lord of Life 211 this occasion, this solemn unfurling of the flag of service. May this congregation and church house- hold experience a revival of devotion to the abiding and deathless spirit of the beloved community. May this church by all its ministrations, its prayers and sacraments, its deeds of helpfulness and its fair example, ever set forth the life of its Master "until he come," ever heeding and ever more faithfully practising the purpose of the Lord of life until that spirit which was in Christ, that spirit which is Christ, that spirit of the loyal community, shall be adored of all and practised by all, the world over. THE USES OF FAITH IN WAR TIME Thou unit keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. Trust ye in the Lord for ever: for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength. — Isaiah xxvi. 3, 4 WHAT are the uses of religion in war time? WTiat are those uses at any- time? They must be much the same now, though in the nature of things our need for the inner strength and support which reHgion gives has grown in some ways more urgent in these tragic days. The state of war, in which we are, means for all of us greater unrest and uncertainty. It means for some of us enforced separation from children whom we love, with the ever- present possibility of harm to them, and bereavement to our homes and hearts. We feel naturally more concern, anxiety, and dependence on an uncertain future, now than in normal times. The difference between war times and peace times is that danger, The Uses of Faith in War Time 213 though it always exists, is on a larger scale, and so more likely to come home to us. The great change is, of course, that in war it is the young, the strong, those with the fullest and finest possibilities of life, who are mostly taken. War turns life inside out and puts the seamy side outside. We need religion to keep life before us in its true proportions; to show us the pattern of the whole; to sug- gest that, though there are dark places in the pattern, still God is weaving it, and is able — he helping us, and we helping him — to weave in the brighter threads, and bring at length, with righteousness, a just and honorable peace. The war now being waged is in many ways unprecedented — in extent, in cruelty, and in fiendish contempt for law, human and divine. It seems to have brought all that is diabolical in human nature uppermost. We had not suspected that so much of primeval savagery was left in modern men and peoples. Thus, besides the private anxiety which we cannot help but feel, such a war raises deep questions as to the fatherly love and good- ness of God, and his providential care for his children. We read almost with a sense 214 The Soul of America in Time of War of mental confusion the saying of Jesus, that "not a sparrow falls to the ground without your Father." How can we apply a saying like this in a time when the finest manhood of all the leading nations on earth is being mowed down by millions, and yet the heavens remain, as they have been from the beginning, cold and imperturbable as if made of brass? The problem of divine providence in its relations with human evil is too profound and far-reaching to be dealt with in the com- pass of a sermon. One thing, however, remains clear. Without the comfort and strength which come with religious faith and trust, we are left quite helpless. "I have to get away from it all," said a friend to me; "I cannot endure to keep my mind on it all the time." But how and where shall we get away? We have, as I see it, two resources in this regard. There is, first, mere recreation, dis- traction, something or anything to bring temporary forgetfulness. We may take up an absorbing book, or go to see an interesting play, or lose ourselves for an hour in the blessed ministry of music. That, surely, is well enough, and is a genuine help. But The Uses of Faith in War Time 215 it is only temporary, and it leaves us just where we were before. There is a second and better resource, that of religion — simple, utter trust in God and daily, hourly reliance on him. This, I think, is the only thing that permanently helps, as all experience of mankind in its greater crises seems to show. A very striking fact emerges from our study of religion in the past. It is that religion largely came to be because men had to have recourse to a spiritual power above and beyond themselves. This may not be the whole explanation of the existence of religion, but I am convinced that it accounts for a large part of it. Thus, the religion of the Old Testament sprang out of a crushing national defeat. If Israel had been able to triumph over its enemies, and erect the great militant imperialism over other peoples of which some of its leaders dreamed, its talents would have been turned in other than reli- gious directions. But it was not so to be. The affirmations of moral and spiritual truth which come to us from Israel's prophets, the "Short swallow-flights of song that dip Their wings in tears, and skim away'* 216 The Soul of America in Time of War of Israel's psalmists, arose from an undaunted hope and confidence which had no basis in earthly success. It is the same with the religion of the New Testament, centering in the preaching of the Cross. It sprang out of a seeming personal defeat. If Jesus had lived to a good old age and died in his bed, is it proba- ble that the world would ever have heard of him? Men turned with gladness to the Gospel of the resurrection because in that dark and turbulent time they had nowhere else to turn. We all are, or ought to be, more religious than we were in that now far-off world of before the war. There may be an absence of outward signs of this, for it is of the nature of religion that it works inwardly. An ear- nest writer in the Atlantic Monthly for Febru- ary, 1918, severely criticizes the churches and ministers of the United States for luke- warmness and lack of prophetic utterance since our country entered the conflict. The critic assumes an omniscience to which he is not entitled. His criticism is in the main unjust, and largely overlooks the indispen- sable influence religion is all the time exerting. For one thing, the loyalty and readiness for sacrifice of those who are leaving all The Uses of Faith in War Time 217 that they care for behind them, and going into the trenches to endure peril, wounds, and death, is rehgious in the highest sense. When was rehgion ever more self-forgetful than as it is being manifested in the unosten- tatious sacrifice made by thousands of the young men of America? Then the great work being done here and abroad by the Red Cross, the Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation, the Young Men's Hebrew Association, the Knights of Columbus, and many other organizations is truly religious. It would be impossible but for the devotion of the churches and religious people here at home. The pulpits are not evading the issue, but meeting it squarely, as they have done from the beginning. Few churches there are of any name but have their service flags, with the stars that represent those who are at the front or on their way thither. Those of us who are left behind have our part to do, also. It is to "carry on" here at home those essential activities which alone enable us to have homes and a country worth dying for. This humdrum but yet inspiring task is one for which we need the constant support of religion. 218 The Soul of America in Time of War Let me go on to specify certain special and direct helps which religion brings to us. It serves to steady us, when we need steady- ing most. We cannot see far, or accomplish much, but religion reminds us that not we alone are at work. Somehow even this hor- ror of great darkness has to be taken up and is being taken up into God's great plan of the whole. Especially now, when our need is so very acute, shall we not have full con- fidence, in spite of anything that can happen to ourselves or to those dearest to us, that "Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own".'* Again, religion supports us. It may do so especially just now by helping us to feel that we can be, in Paul's stirring words, "fellow- workers with God." He is not trying to do it all. This perhaps sheds a ray of light into the dark mystery of his providence. A share in working it out is assigned to us. It is not enough to hug our care and concern to our- selves, meanwhile doing nothing. That is the blankest irreligion, in a time when all hands are needed and all hearts should be eager to do whatever comes nearest to be done. The Uses of Faith in War Time 219 Still, again, when the ultimate need is ours, — if the loss and sorrow that we dread indeed come to us — then religion, as nothing else can do, comforts us. It helps us, as it has always helped the weary and heavy- laden, to bear our cross. Here we need only contrast it with the utter helplessness of irreligion. That simply has nothing to offer! Any loss is a dead loss, with no compensation. All that one can do is to grit his teeth, and take up life maimed and forever desolated. Religion gives us the infinite comfort of its future hope; and also, even if the prophetic words of my text cannot be realized easily or all at once, it gives us when we rise to its fullest height a present peace beyond human understanding. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. Trust ye in the Lord forever: for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength." That admirable and, though eminently practical, yet also deeply religious woman, Alice Freeman Palmer, once at her summer home in Boxford, Massachusetts, after a heavy thunder-storm, in the course of which it had seemed as if the house must surely 220 The Soul of America in Time of War be struck, wrote a little psalm of trust which she called "The Tempest." Here is her poem: "He shall give his angels charge Over thee in all thy ways. Though the thimders roam at large, Though the lightning round me plays, Like a child I lay my head In sweet sleep upon my bed. "Though the terror come so close, It shall have no power to smite; It shall deepen my repose, Turn the darkness into light. Touch of angel hands is sweet — Not a stone shall hurt my feet. "All thy waves and billows go Over me to press me down Into arms so strong, I know They will never let me drown. Oh! my God, how good thy will! I will nestle and be still." Can we not take that deep assurance to ourselves, now that a world-tempest is abroad and one of its erring shafts may strike our home and cleave our heart .'^ So religious men and women have ever done, and found that their religion was not in vain. It is perhaps The Uses of Faith in War Time 221 only such heavy trial and utter testing that can ever bring to us the perfect peace and inner strength that stands unshaken, though the foundations of the great deep may be broken up. Then, when nothing else is left us, we can say with Israel's psalmist in one of the darkest and most forsaken moments of his people's life — " Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee." Finally, when the stress and strain of war time are over, and the need comes, if not for forgiveness of that which has been almost too awful to forgive, at least for a work of reconciliation; when we and the allied nations and the Teutonic powers must somehow take up together again the healing of a broken world, where but in our common Christianity can we find the grace and the spirit to dwell together once more as brethren? THE BOW IN THE CLOUD And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud. — Genesis ix. 14 FOR nearly four years the civilized world has been under the shadow of a great war. Month after month it has dragged its weary length along with no signs of an immediate end. Instead we have an increase in both the intensity and the area of the conflict. We read of advances and retreats upon the various fronts, we scan the details of the peace plans and war aims which ema- nate from the chancellories of Europe or the Vatican at Rome, and we ask, "Where is the bow in the cloud? Where is the promise of the cessation of this terrible struggle.'^" Our answer as a people is the redoubling of our efforts so to equip and train our young men and so to coordinate our moral and mate- rial resources that we may not be ashamed of the part which we are to take in the fray. The Bow in the Cloud 223 At such a time I find a parable in a recent experience. It was near the conclusion of one of the terrible storms which were so frequent during the past summer. It seemed as though the elements were trying to repro- duce the lightning flash and the reverberating thunder of the great guns across the sea. As the storm lifted I went to the door and there, completely overarching the sky, with one foot resting on the mountain and the other buried in the mirror-like surface of the lake, was a gorgeous rainbow. It seemed to say, in the words of the text, "And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that a bow shall be seen in the cloud." Yes, every cloud has its bow of promise. The most tragic event in human history is not without its compensations. No great crisis in the affairs of men or nations is without its message. Blessed are they who have eyes to see and ears to hear, minds to inter- pret and souls to understand and appreciate its deeper meaning. Is that true of the cloud which hangs over the world to-day.^ Were this not my assured conviction, I should not have ventured to raise the question. I should not have dared 224 The Soul of America in Time of War to awaken hopes and longings which could not possibly be satisfied. Even a world war is not without its message for mankind. It speaks to us of the presence and the power of an infinite being who will yet make the wrath of man to praise him, while the remain- der of wrath he will restrain. Clouds and darkness are round about him, but they cannot shake our faith in his existence or our con- fidence in his ability to achieve his ultimate purpose. "For right is right, since God is God, And right the day must win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin." If we turn for a moment from the consider- ation of national boundaries and battle lines and ask what good is being gleaned from the midst of so much evil, we shall not only detect the bow in the cloud, but also learn that it can be resolved into its seven primary elements, each a sign of promise in itself and all combining to make the pure white light of our present-day hope and faith. I. First of all we can look to that new conception of moral and spiritual values The Bow in the Cloud 225 which is being forged in this fiery furnace of affliction. Not long ago we feared that the world was growing careless and indifferent concerning the things that are true and honorable and of good report. Truth was held supreme as long as it did not thwart our ambition or desire; when it did, falsehood and deceit were extenuated and condoned. Righteousness was regarded as imperative as long as it did not interfere with our pleasure or profit; when it did, an unrighteous policy was allowed to usurp the place of a virtuous principle. The trouble with secret diplo- macy was not that it was secret, but that it was not sincere. All this was before the war. Then, on a fateful morning, we read of a great nation breaking its plighted word, of a noted statesman speaking of a solemn treaty as *'a scrap of paper," of a highly disciplined people violating the neutrality of a little nation which it had sworn to protect, and at once we beheld a world in arms. These were values which might be lightly regarded, but they could not ruth- lessly be set aside. Already millions of men have given their lives and other millions are preparing to make the great sacrifice in 226 The Soul of America in Time of War order that our faith in these great eternal verities may be preserved. We have learned the significance of the cartoon in Punch in which the Kaiser taunts the Belgian king with having lost everything. *'No," replied King Albert, "I have saved my soul." Who shall say that he did not choose the better part? For what can it profit a nation if it gain world dominion and forfeit its moral and spiritual integrity.^ In this new appre- ciation of moral and spiritual values we have something which augurs much for the future of the race. II. Again, we may look to the new con- ception of humanity which is being wrought out in the midst of this struggle. While many of our theories have been based upon the worth of the common man, much of our practice has been based upon the assumption of his comparative worthlessness. If mili- tary nations have regarded him as suitable fodder for cannon, industrial nations have looked upon him as convenient material for exploitation. We may denounce the un- patriotic activity of the Bolsheviki and the I. W. W., but we must not forget that their propaganda would be powerless to harm if it The Bow in the Cloud 227 were not addressed to men and women who have been made to feel that they are the helpless victims of social injustice and oppres- sion. The facts upon which this conviction is based are the result of the assumption, on the part of the more fortunate minority, that humanity may be divided into a superior and an inferior class, and that it is the func- tion of one to minister to the prosperity and happiness of the other. And yet when the great war lifted its ter- rible head above the horizon, these common men, by the hundreds of thousands, leaped forward to interpose their frail bodies in the path of this world menace. Men who lived in wretched hovels in congested slums and to whom the government had always been an instrument in the hands of the exploiting class went forth without a thought to fight for home and country. From among these despised masses have come men whose deeds of hero- ism and self-sacrifice have shamed their sup- posed superiors. In the words of a young ofiicer, quoted by Donald Hankey, "They make you feel that you're not fit to black their boots." And those who have witnessed this spectacle and recognized the pathetic in- 228 The Soul of America in Time of War congruity of it all have been the first to insist that the old mistakes shall not be repeated. Already they are planning so to reorganize social and industrial life as to do away with its glaring inequalities, and to give men who have distinguished themselves in war, when given a chance to be men, the oppor- tunity to gain a similar distinction in time of peace, with the expectation that the same miracle of transformation will be wrought. In this we have an assurance of better days to come. III. In the third place, we can look to the growing sense of unity, of racial solidarity, which is the inevitable outcome of this conflict. Already it has forced a recognition of the interdependence of nations and of the obligations which it involves. Never were so many nations, standing as one body, ready to make the supreme sacrifice in defence of the rights of a common humanity. The selfish individualism which has long been the curse of society has had its counter- part in a selfish nationalism which has been the curse of international relationships. Be- cause one nation thought it possible, and therefore justifiable, to impose its will upon The Bow in the Cloud 229 its sister nations and so achieve world domin- ion, Europe is drenched in blood, and our own sons are numbered among the slain. Taking for its battle cry, "World-power or Down- fall," it dared to challenge the combined power of the free nations of the world. Only recently have we seen its aspirations after world-power thwarted and its downfall as- sured. And yet, out of this struggle there is coming a sense of international dependence and fellowship such as the world has never seen. Not only can we foresee a more inti- mate relationship between the great English- speaking peoples, but also we can predict a closer affiliation between all the nations which cherish the same ideals of liberty and justice and peace. Henceforth there cannot be one law for individuals and another for nations. One cannot find its ideal in social service and the other in self-interest. Both are under the same great law of brotherhood, a brotherhood of men wuthin a democratic state, a brotherhood of states within a feder- ated world. IV. Again, we may look to the new spirit of human sympathy and compassion which is being exhibited on every hand. Can we 230 The Soul of America in Time of War witness the great outpouring of generosity and benevolence of which the war has been the immediate occasion and not appreciate its significance? We have given with one hand for the purpose of securing a more energetic prosecution of the war, and with the other for the purpose of alleviating the sufferings which it has entailed. And the end is not yet. Even after peace is declared we shall be called upon to provide for the maintenance of stricken people and for the rehabilitation of devastated regions. If we cannot interpret the spiritual significance of the response to such appeals, then we are blind indeed. Just as our young men are offering their lives in defence of the liberties of nations, so others are dedicating their means to the great task of safeguarding democracy throughout the world. Each is anxious to do his bit and so hasten the con- summation for which we devoutly pray. V. Again, we may look to the new concep- tion of God which is being wrought out in the midst of this mighty conflict. The God of our fathers has proved inadequate to the task. Men ask, "If there is an overruling power, as we have been taught, why doesn't The Bow in the Cloud 231 he step in and end this war?" Such a ques- tion rests upon a conception of God which cannot possibly endure. The reason God does not step in and end the war is that he is already here, doing the best that he can with the stubborn and refractory material with which he has to work. If we think of him as an overruling power, interfering with the world only occasionally and then to correct some defect in its organism or mechanism, then there was never a more urgent demand for divine intervention than there is to-day. But if we think of him as an indwelling spirit, working in and through the life of the race, bound to respect the laws which he has ordained and not to violate that freedom of the will with which he has endowed his children, then we can cherish no such expec- tation. We shall realize that it is only through the cooperation of men and nations that God can achieve his highest purpose. It was in the absence of such cooperation that the great war had its origin, and it is in the achievement of such cooperation, God working with man and man with God, that it must have its end. Just as the absentee landlord of the great 232 The Soul of America in Time of War landed estates in Europe is destined to be re- placed by the resident owner, so the thought of an absentee God is gradually being replaced by the thought of God as a resident worker, everywhere present and everywhere operative. As we try to steady ourselves in these days of conflict and strife, we must believe that God is fulfilling himself through the activities of men to-day just as truly as in days of old. When our hearts burn within us at some fresh tale of wanton outrage and aggres- sion, it is the indwelling God registering, through us, his disapprobation. When we find ourselves moved to unexpected heights of generosity and love, it is the indwelling God expressing, through us, his sympathy and compassion. And if the time comes when our young men are called upon, as they are to-day, to live out the whole of life in one brief mo- ment of patriotic devotion, we must comfort ourselves with the assurance that it is none other than the indwelling God who impels them to this heroic act of self-sacrifice and say, with Lincoln, that his judgments are true and righteous altogether. It was Mr. Britling, a typical Englishman, writing to the father of Heinrich, a typical German, who coined the The Bow in the Cloud 233 phrase, "Our sons, who have shown us God.*' It is the quahty of life, not its quantity, which reveals its essential Godlikeness. VI. Once again, we may look to the gradual emancipation of religion from dogma and tradition and its vindication as a spirit and a life. Nothing in all the years has done so much to facilitate this process as this titanic struggle in which we are engaged. On all sides men are expressing dissatis- faction with the traditional beliefs and con- ventional church activities, not because they have lost faith in God, but because they see that these do not express adequately his character and purpose. Mr. Wells may doom the church to extinction, but the majority of men are demanding its rehabilitation. The Countess of Warwick may proclaim a new religion, but the great mass of her fellow-countrymen and ours insist that first among the processes of reconstruction which we have a right to expect after this war must be the reconstruction of religion. Already we are beginning to realize how petty have been our little controversies over forms and creeds. The men who are fighting in the trenches do not ask whether their comrade- 234 The Soul of America in Time of War in-arms is orthodox or heterodox, Christian or pagan. They ask, "Is he a king's son or a craven?" The men and women behind the Hnes who are trying to bind up the wounds of the war-ravaged nations are learn- ing the same lesson. They know that love wears no label, and that sympathy knows no creed. Can we think of those who have passed through these great experiences, who have seen God face to face and lived, ever again doubting his reality or questioning his power.'' As soon think of them doubting the reality of the air they breathe or of the light by which they see. Out of this baptism of blood there must come a new baptism of the spirit, the result of which will be such a revival of spirit- ual religion as the world has never known. VII. Last of all, we may look to the new conception of human life and destiny which is being formulated in the midst of this struggle. The war has shattered our faith in some of our most cherished institutions, but it has confirmed our faith in the immortality of the soul. Under no other hypothesis can we reconcile ourselves to the sacrifice of the flower of youth in all of the embattled nations. We must assume The Bow in the Cloud 235 " That not one life shall be destroyed, Or cast as rubbish in the void When God hath made the pile complete." In the words of an English reviewer, "The war has made multitudes of us more acutely aware that personality is a gigantic fact. And it has made many of us newly aware that it is a spirit fact, and that that which is vspiritual must be eternal." It was Florence Nightingale who pointed out the fallacy of basing our behef in immortality upon our instinctive yearning for it. As she said, "It is only when we remember that it was God himself who called the yearning into existence and planted it in the human breast that we have an argument that is both valid and unanswerable." If we are immortal, it must be because we are partakers of the eternity of God. Henceforth he must be the major premise in every syllogism of the religious life. Because he is, we are. Be- cause he is, we cannot believe that the world in which we live can be anything but good or that the destiny which he has in store for us can be anything but kind. Having given us every other good and perfect gift, 236 The Soul of America in Time of War we cannot believe that he will withhold this last best gift of all, the gift of eternal life. Combine these elements of our present-day faith and we have a bow in the cloud which may serve to reconcile us to the unexpected duration and unprecedented ravages of the storm. We can look up out of this world catastrophe and say that God still lives, and the fabric of the world's civilization is secure, for it is founded upon those principles of righteousness and truth and love which are the highest attributes of God and the surest evidence of his purposes for humanity. Thus "the thickest cloud earth ever stretched'* is not without its bow of promise, an assur- ance of the better things in store for us when the storm has spent its fury and the clouds have rolled away. PEACE ON THE EARTH Peace on earth, good will to men. — Luke ii. 14 THESE days are beset by problems such as no one of us ever knew before. But since Christianity dreamed of a universal empire of peace and love, the conditions of the earth were never nearer its attainment than they are to-day. For there was never a time when so many people felt its need so deeply. Whether in alliance or in enmity, all the nations of the earth are thinking hard upon the one problem. I believe we dare claim that the kingdom of peace — a peace with marks of permanence, — is within our reach, because the things that make such a peace possible and to be desired are becoming clearer to the mind of the world. And this not in spite of, but because of, this terrific war. For it is disclosing to us the charm of harmony and the vulgarity of strife. We are learning again the strange mystery of God's way with men. Whether we like 238 The Soul of America in Time of War it or not; whether it agrees with our logic or not; the world always has to pay a heavy price for progress. If you look down the galleries of history, you find that every for- ward step of peace was purchased at great cost. That is what the theologians have always meant — however they expressed it — when they have proclaimed that the soul's safety is purchased at a great price. And we are summoned now to a very profound sacrifice, in order that whatever forces still bar the way of peace shall be overcome. For just now it may be that by the conduct of America, the dream of a lasting peace and good-will amongst men may come close to its fulfillment. In his message to Con- gress our President uttered words like these: "You catch with me the voices of humanity that are in the air. They grow daily more audible, more articulate, more persuasive, and they come from the hearts of men every- where. They insist that the war shall not end in vindictive action of any kind. . . . We shall be free to base peace on generosity and justice to the exclusion of all selfish claims to advantage, even on the part of the victors. ... A supreme moment of his- Peace on the Earth 239 tory has come. The hand of God is laid upon the nations. He will show them favor, I devoutly believe, only if they rise to the clear height of his own justice and mercy." What might it not mean to you and me, if it were committed unto our nation to lead the world in such a lofty vision! Must we not all pray in a time like this that such shall be our destiny! There is something very wonderful in the heart when a man or a people have the consciousness of a great destiny. It was this consciousness above everything else in the heart of the Hebrew prophet that has kept him the symbolic leader of the world's right- eousness, — this, and the fact that the destiny of his people was bound up in the life of truth. It was not that the nation was always on the side of right, or that the life of the people was ever above reproach. With a bitter condemnation of Israel for her selfishness and disobedience and sin, the prophet yet caught the vision in the sky of the nations' ideal and cried: "It shall come to pass that the mount of Jehovah's house shall be at the head of the mountains . . . and all nations shall flow unto it." 240 The Soul of America in Time of War Can we realize, do you realize, that the time has come when our nation stands between the nations of the earth like a mountain lifted up? Can it be possible that out of our Zion shall go forth instruction; and the word of the Lord out of our Jerusalem? It is no less a destiny than this to which I would summon you to-day. For if I understand it, our nation, consecrated to a unity of purpose no one of us had fully realized before and ready to give every resource within it- self for the cause to which it is committed, enters the contest not as a champion of one nation or another, not as the foe of one nation or another; but devoted to an ideal, conscious of a destiny, a servant of God for the establishment of righteousness in the earth. Can you bear the test? Can you live a life of righteousness? Can you wor- ship ever at the shrine of justice? Can you hold your destiny with clean hands and a pure heart? Or shall you turn and cry, "Alas! I am undone"? The destiny of our nation lies upon your heart and mine! Can we face it and bring new life to the world? Some sort of a conviction of destiny has Peace mi the Earth 241 always taken close hold upon men and nations in the great hour of their conscious strength. Nations always have their great ideals and a deep sense of the part they are to play in the world. Their leaders become inspired; their citizens are in a transport; their poets sing and their musicians play and in the day of their national glory their men of thought and learning react out in their eager imagination to disclose the evidence of their power. These are the emotions and the passions that fill the literature and the poetry of human confidence and hope. It is perfectly natural for the citizens of any country to give themselves up in patriotic devotion to the destiny of their nation. But right across these visions of a national destiny there runs the line of a divine re- straint. There is something greater than destiny, and that is the divine law of right- eousness. It must be destiny of the right kind. The dreams of any people must be subject to the will of God. Just because a nation has a mighty sense of its place and part in the world, that is no proof that its vision is a righteous one and will prevail. There are false prophets as well as true 242 The Soul of America in Time of War in the world. Prophecy may rise even to a devoted passion and yet the whole form and substance of the prophecy be false. How clearly this appears in the history of ancient Israel, whose experiences, so tragic and again so lofty, fill up the background of our religious traditions. How often the whole early vision of destiny was a strange misunderstanding of the righteous law. In the book of Judges we read: "In those days the tribe of the Danites sought a place to live in; and they sent out five men to spy out the land and search it. And the men came to Laish, and saw the people that were there, how they dwelt in security after the manner of the Sidonians, quiet and secure. And they returned unto their brethren and said, Arise, and let us go up against them. . . . And they came unto Laish unto the people quiet and secure and smote them with the edge of the sword. And they burned their city with fire." It was not because such national dreams as that were multiplied and repeated that an- cient Israel became the true prophet of the soul. It was only when such conduct was absolutely destroyed from among them that Peace on the Earth 243 the vision of their real destiny dawned in their sky. It was only when the true proph- ets came and Hfted their dreams of destiny and taught that their fighting should be for righteousness and that they should arm themselves in defence of mercy and truth; and that they should rather lose the whole world than sacrifice their souls, — it was only then that the destiny of Israel became the prophetic example for the world. I think such history as this is being re- peated before our very eyes. Certain powers in Europe had a sense of destiny, — strong, absorbing, consecrated, wrought into the very fabric of their common life. Much of it was glorious, much of it was noble. It com- manded in almost perfect limits the devotion, the service, the resources, the life or death of their citizens. But it was not founded in righteousness. It was a stranger to mercy. Justice was not even mentioned and the rights of feeble races were never for a moment considered. The whole earth was laid under tribute to do homage to that dream of des- tiny. We, who believe in righteousness, trust that such a vision of destiny shall pass away. But what most concerns us is another 244 The Soul of America in Time of War side of this problem. Is it the destiny of your beloved land and mine, gloriously inter- preted and made clear to our hearts, to be able to correct in love and power this whole sad tragedy of our modern life? Can we view this mighty struggle, whose many arms reach out and lay hold upon everything we see and know, through eyes of justice and mercy first? Can we behold our destiny in such a case as this from the lofty vantage- ground of a pure and perfect prophecy, so that even while we fight, no selfishness,' no greed, no bitterness, no revenge, no envy, or final spirit of harsh judgment shall have any place within our hearts? God grant we may! You and I gather here in worship as at a shrme of all we hold most sacred. We are face to face with our destiny. Shall we see it pass as the destiny of so many nations has passed forth before the world; and we not catch and consecrate it to what is all-highest m the service of religion on the earth? It is no common problem that besets us. It is no ordinary earth we live in. The very streets of our city become ways of light. The trees call out the truth to us. The Peace on the Earth 245 sky drops down righteousness. The winds blow mercy. The very food we eat and the clothing we put on have a kind of conse- cration when we regard the thousands who stand in need of just such things. Our comfort becomes a holy sacrifice before the vast discomfort on the earth. Our rest is a blessed trust in the presence of the world's restlessness. If there is anything that can keep us serious and restrain us and direct our paths in truth, this age of earth and these strange experiences around us must have their influence on all alike. We recall how Jesus went up before his death to the city of Jerusalem and when he saw the city he wept over it and said, ''If thou hadst known in this day, even thou, the things that belong unto peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes . . . because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation." Exactly such a spiritual tragedy is pos- sible for you and me to-day! a tragedy under which we may fail to know our destiny in righteousness, allow power to destroy mercy, the love of control to stifle freedom, the confusion of conflicting interests to blind the path of justice. Oh! let us who worship 246 The Soul of America in Time of War here in a house dedicated to God, where we would learn to find his will for our souls, regard our life again before this vision of our nation's destiny, — the destiny of holding up before the world the dream of a righteous peace on earth and a lasting good-will among men Deacidified using the Bookkeeper procej Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: u w 2001 PreservationTechnologie A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIC 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberfy Township, PA 16066