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The War's Need of Christ 
 
 A PALM SUNDAY SERMON 
 
 hy 
 
 Shepherd Knapp 
 
The War's Need of Christ 
 
 A PALM SUNDAY SERMON 
 
 by 
 
 Shepherd Knapp 
 
 1917 
 
 The W. B. Crombik Company 
 
 Worcester. Mass. 
 

 Worcester, Mass., 
 
 April 3, 1917. 
 
 Rev. Shepherd Knapiv D.D. 
 
 8 Institute Road, Worcester, Mass. 
 
 My dear Dr. Knapp: 
 
 We were so impressed with your sermon last Sunday that we 
 feel it ought to be printed as a companion to the one which you 
 gave a few Sundays ago, which was put in print. 
 
 We should be very glad to take our part in having last Sunday's 
 sermon printed, if agreeable to you. 
 
 Very truly yours. 
 
 Arthur D. Butterfield, 
 Charles F. Fuller, 
 Clinton Alvord. 
 
The War's Need of Christ 
 
 I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the 
 stones would immediately cry out. — Luke 19: 40. 
 
 If on this first Sunday of April in the year nineteen hundred and 
 seventeen, when America stands on the very threshold of such 
 momentous decisions and events, some people should object that 
 it is inappropriate for the Christian churches to emphasize, as in 
 other years, the distinctly religious interests of the week which 
 leads up to Easter and includes Good Friday, answer might well 
 be made to them in the very words of this text.* 
 
 To-day the Christian churches are announcing to the world, 
 " This is the beginning of our Holy Week : this, men, women, 
 children, everywhere, is the week for thinking with special 
 earnestness of Jesus Christ, the memory of whose death and 
 passion makes this week holy, — Jesus Christ, the bringer of the 
 gospel ; Jesus Christ, the revealer of the heart of God ; Jesus Christ, 
 the Saviour of the world. Come, one and all, into closer, surer, 
 fuller fellowship with him this week than you have ever known 
 before. With heart and mind and will declare that he is the power 
 of God on earth, to save and complete the life of man." 
 
 Should Holy Week Be Ignored This Year? 
 
 But while the churches of Christ are thus speaking, there are 
 some Americans, even in the churches themselves, who say or 
 think, "That is no message for such a time as this. In other, 
 ordinary years of the world's history it was right enough to draw 
 men into communion with the loving spirit of Jesus Christ, at the 
 time which commemorates his final act of perfect love for man ; 
 but to-day, with the whole world in the grip of war ; with Christ's 
 
 Tor printing, the introduction to the sermon has been abbreviated, 
 
 3 
 
law of love held in obeyance, or denied and trampled on, over so 
 wide an area, among so many men ; with the deadliest conflict that 
 the world has ever known going on in France, in Russia, and on 
 the sea ; with our own nation deciding, this very week, what part 
 it must take in these bloody battles — Holy Week spent in a council 
 of war ; is there not something grimly preposterous in calling men 
 to special religious observances at such a time, in urging the world 
 at such a time to turn its face with one accord toward Jesus Christ ?" 
 As, on the first Palm Sunday long ago, some of the bystanders 
 were displeased at the public demonstration which was being made 
 in Jesus' name, and called on him to rebuke his disciples for their 
 misplaced enthusiasm, so to-day I can imagine some hard-headed 
 men among the world's respected citizens, lifting their eyes toward 
 heaven in impatient protest at the proposal to spend a whole 
 week, at such a time as this, in urging that the greatest need of 
 the world to-day is Jesus Christ. "Father," I can hear them 
 saying, " rebuke thy over-zealous servants." 
 
 Back to them, as formerly to those others, comes the instant 
 answer, "I tell you, if these should hold their peace, the very 
 stones would cry out." The very conditions of the world to-day, 
 which make Christ seem like a stranger here, are themselves 
 indisputable evidence of the world's utter need of him. If Christ's 
 own disciples should, indeed, fail at this time to place him in the 
 very forefront of the world's thought ; if, influenced by the feeling 
 that the times are out of tune with him, they should subside into 
 silence, and should desist from the attempt to make him supreme 
 in this warring and suffering world, would not this warring and 
 suffering world itself cry out its need of him ? When, therefore, 
 the world is in agony for the need of Christ, shall not Christians — 
 then of all times — urge him upon mankind as the Saviour of human 
 life, the power of God to free men from their sins and follies and 
 to keep them from despair in sorrow, pain, and death ? 
 
 1. Christ as the Ruler of Human Passions. 
 
 Think, first of all, of the need of Christ to counteract the 
 gathering bitterness and hate which this War has already created 
 in the hearts of the belligerent peoples, and is now rapidly 
 intensifying every day. 
 
In Belgium. 
 
 When you read, for instance, the first-hand reports of the 
 experiences of the Belgian people under the iron heel of Germany, 
 stript of their possessions, cut-off from all news of those who are 
 fighting for them against their conquerors, forbidden so much as 
 to speak of king or country, and forced at every turn to see, and 
 obey, and salute their persecutors, — what do you suppose is to 
 keep them from being consumed by hate — their own spirits burned 
 up in the fire of it — except the religion of Jesus Christ, the religion 
 of that brave cardinal of theirs, who loves God as truly as he loves 
 Belgium ? 
 
 In Germany. 
 
 Or, when you realize that the whole German people, shut in 
 behind that impenetrable wall of censorship, are taught to believe 
 that this War is to be laid entirely at the door of Britain, and that 
 Britain, in her modes of warfare, is like a savage beast ; for it is 
 evident, from all the information we can get, that the mass of the 
 German people have been effectively taught to regard the blockade 
 of Germany by Britain's navy, and the consequent threat of 
 starvation, as a much more fundamental iniquity than Germany's 
 own submarine campaign — when you realize this, and learn that 
 even the Christian preachers of Germany — some of them — are 
 preaching from their pulpits the doctrine of implacable severity, 
 do you not groan within you at the thought of this winning over 
 of a whole great people to the passion of hate ? Can Christianity 
 afford to sleep or to take a holiday, in the face of the need of such 
 a work of regeneration as awaits her there ? 
 
 In France. 
 
 And what of France, what of the soldiers and people of France, 
 as they enter that reconquered strip of soil, but now evacuated by 
 their invaders? There, in that shell-wrecked fragment of their 
 sunny land, when they find, not only the inevitable havoc of 
 modern warfare, but the savage and pitiless destruction of an 
 
enemy who has cared for nothing save to make himself feared, 
 what are the passions that will flame up in the breast of returning 
 France? Can any one with human instincts blame them, if they 
 see blood ? But what shall be the consequence of this ? When 
 France has thrust the enemy at last beyond her borders, and finds 
 herself on German soil, shall she exact her pound of flesh ? Shall 
 she herself do there the same deeds, for which on her own soil 
 she has declared her foe accursed? Shall France, that gallant 
 nation, which has shamed us for our former thought of her as a 
 shallow, scoffing, pleasure-seeking people — shall France, swept 
 away by the passion of revenge, drag her honor in the mud beyond 
 the Rhine ? God forbid ! Christ forbid ! And how shall Christ 
 forbid, save through the living, active, unfailing, unresting power 
 of his religion in the world, knocking without cessation at the 
 hearts of men ? 
 
 2. Christ to the Rescue of the War's Victims. 
 
 Think, in the second place, of what a wealth of Christian love 
 is needed in order to arouse enough benevolence to meet and relieve 
 the unprecedented mass of human misery in the world to-day, created 
 by this War. Surely we have all realized by this time that, much 
 as we have heard and read and thought about it, we are as yet 
 beholding it all from afar off. We hear some pitiful tale, from 
 Armenia, or Belgium, or Persia, and we say, " This is far worse than 
 we had imagined ; this is almost too horrible to listen to ; it would 
 be altogether too horrible, were it not that, in response, we can give 
 something to help relieve the suffering." 
 
 Then we make a gift, or we adopt a plan for making repeated 
 gifts of certain designated sums : and then, after that, when we 
 read in the papers that the hunger in Turkey or Poland is greater 
 than ever ; or when the reports reveal the fact that some new 
 nation is starving, like Greece, for instance, held in duress by the 
 Allies, and whipt into obedience with the whip of hunger ; or that 
 the beginnings of scarceness have reached still farther a field, as in 
 Spain or Sweden, we say, " This is indeed terrible, but I am already 
 doing something toward feeding the world's hungry, and clothing 
 the world's naked," and on the strength of that, we do not deem 
 
it necessary to feel too keenly these new appeals to human charity. 
 We do not let ourselves realize in a definite practical way that for 
 each man or woman or child who is hungry, hunger means hunger, 
 emptiness of stomach, wasting of body, loss of vitality and of 
 resistance to disease. We do not let ourselves realize that for the 
 latest victims, as well as for those whose misery first awakened our 
 sympathy, cold means cold, sickness means sickness, despair 
 means despair ; that the latest reports of want and suffering and 
 death, though they have lost much of their news value for the 
 papers, and no longer claim the big head-lines and the front-page 
 columns, are nevertheless just as much the want and suffering and 
 death of actual individual people as they were at first. 
 
 What Is to Be Done about it? 
 
 Are we to be blamed because our imagination grows thus 
 sluggish in responding to the hundred-times-repeated story of 
 destitution, because, after giving sums which, three years ago, 
 we should have conceived to be beyond the realm of possibility, 
 we are slow in deciding that we must manage somehow to give 
 even more, and to keep on giving? I do not believe that God 
 himself is regarding us from that point of view. It is no longer 
 a mere question of blame or praise in this utterly abnormal state 
 of things in which the world of men finds itself today; it is just 
 a question of how to get the thing done, which must somehow be 
 done, how to arouse our jaded sympathies to a still greater 
 intensity, how to make the channels of benevolence flow still 
 broader and fuller and further. 
 
 What power is going to accomplish this hereculean task? 
 What power is equal to this, except the power of Jesus Christ, 
 which has already given to the world, at many turning-points of 
 its history, blessings that had seemed completely out of reach, 
 power for good that no one had believed available ? That is 
 the force which must now be drawn upon anew. That, just that, 
 is what you and I need today, as we need nothing else, to enable 
 us to do that for which the world holds out to us appealing 
 hands. We need to apprehend, for the first time, "the breadth 
 and length and height and depth of the love of Christ." Oh, for 
 
the sake of the world's misery, that all the hungry may be fed, 
 and all the cold and naked given clothes and shelter, and all the 
 orphans cared for, and all the blind men saved from the despair 
 of darkness, and all the sick and wounded nursed to health, or 
 eased in dying — for this, must the Christian churches preach 
 their Christ with new faith and passion, the message of that great 
 love — which gave generously, shall we say, and worked tirelessly 
 for men ? — oh, far beyond that, which made the greatest sacrifice 
 of all on their behalf, and died for them on Calvary. 
 
 3. Christ as America's Leader in the War. 
 
 Think, finally, of the need for Jesus Christ of us Americans, 
 who now stand, ourselves, on the very brink of the War, and who 
 look at that hideous conflict as one to which our nation, our 
 people, our lives and fortunes, may tomorrow be committed. 
 Was there ever a time in our history when we needed Jesus 
 Christ as we do for the period extending from to-day to the day 
 when this war comes to its final end, to keep us, as a nation, 
 clean, just, patient, merciful, singleminded in the pursuit of 
 righteousness, while we do our part in a War in which all the 
 passions of the human heart, lowest and highest intermingled, are 
 fiercely active ? 
 
 The War's Conflict of Good and Evil Forces. 
 
 We cannot forget, we have no right to forget, that the motives 
 and causes of this war, with the Allies as well as with the Central 
 Powers, have their deepest roots in the old pagan notions of 
 national and international life, which have always produced hate 
 and war, and always will, as long as nations are guided by them. 
 The nobler ideals and purposes, which the War has called forth, 
 which have done so much to defend and further it and lift it up, 
 cannot disguise the fact that this War itself is the corrupt fruit 
 of an evil tree. 
 
 Nor dare we lose sight of the fact that in almost all the warring 
 nations there are influential bodies of men — wholly dominant in 
 
Germany, it would appear ; only partly so in the nations of the 
 Allies— who purpose that the result of the War, if their side 
 wins, shall not be merely the ending of the menace of future 
 wars and reparation for the invasions and atrocity of this one, 
 but also the further enrichment of their own nation at the expense 
 of others. China knows this well enough, and we have the hu- 
 miliating spectacle of that pagan nation casting in her lot with 
 half of Christian Europe, in order that, when peace comes, she 
 may be one its negotiators, instead of a part of the spoils 
 which it divides. 
 
 It is a War with this intermixture of existing and threatened 
 evil, that we are being drawn into, as well as a War which resists 
 the policy of murder by submarine, champions invaded Belgium 
 and massacred Armenia, and fights the cause of democracy against 
 tyranny and militarism. 
 
 Shall we, when we are in the War, be able to pursue only the 
 good in it, and eschew the evil? Shall we be able to keep our 
 motives pure, our passions noble, our hands clean ? When the 
 die for America has been cast, and the crisis brings together in 
 our national cause all who are loyal to America, whatever their 
 ideal for America may be, whether high or low, whatever their 
 standard of national and international morality, will the nobler 
 element in American life be able then, in the heat and strain of 
 war, to guide, and check, and use for its own higher purpose the 
 lower elements? 
 
 Christianity Can Keep Us True. 
 
 It seems a task almost beyond the power of human nature. It 
 is beyond the power of human nature. No power of man alone 
 can possibly achieve it. America, if she would succeed in this, 
 must seize, for use in this hour of her critical necessity, the power 
 of God. And that power of God, made available for actual human 
 use, is Jesus Christ— the principles, the ideals, the guiding laws 
 of his religion. Do we know this well enough, can we be made 
 to know it well enough, can the belief that Christ is right, and 
 that he has the power to enforce the right, be driven deep enough 
 into the heart, the mind, the conscience, the will of us Americans, 
 
to give him the victory in this new epoch of our nation's life on 
 which we are about to enter? 
 
 When to-day and repeatedly in the months to come we in this 
 place sing "America", may this be to us not merely an act of 
 patriotism, but a token that we are striving with all our souls to 
 consecrate our patriotism and the land we love by the power of 
 our religion. When we sing of that "freedom" which is the 
 burden of our national hymn, freedom which resounds "from 
 every mountain side," whose song rings sweetly " from the trees," 
 and in whose praise "the rocks their silence break" — yes, the 
 very stones cry out — freedom, whose " holy light " we pray " our 
 father's God" to pour upon our land, may we not merely be 
 remembering America's freedom from old oppressions, freedom 
 from outward invasion and inward tyranny, but be praying and 
 seeking on our land's behalf for freedom from evil passion, 
 freedom from evil purpose, freedom from evil action, the freedom 
 of righteousness and truth and love. 
 
.PR 2:) 1917 
 
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