THE WAY OF PEACE
The supreme need of the world to-day is peace. Europe is sinking into
the morass of despair because across their frontiers a dozen nations
drilled and armed are watching each other with sullen eyes. From the
shores of the Pacific to the long wash of Australasian seas everywhere
it is the same. Civilisation is perishing; but it is a civilisation
armed to the teeth that is awaiting its obsequies. Every newspaper
proclaims the one need is Peace. The Conference on disarmament has but
one word to express the sum of all its desires--Peace. There must be
some stupendous barrier in the way when all this yearning and endless
talking fail to reach the goal of humanity's striving. However eagerly
the nations pursue it, peace seems to be for ever a receding horizon.
If on one spot of an anguished world statesmen confer as to the things
that make for peace, yet behind their fortified frontiers the nations
are still sharpening their swords. It is, as it has ever been, a mad
world.
I
There must be some hidden cause of this failure of humanity to work out
its own deliverance. And our duty is to find out that cause. It is
quite possible to make an idol even of peace. Peace is not necessarily
the supreme good. If there have been wars which call for repentance
and humiliation on the part of those who waged them, there have been
again and again periods of peace which call for even deeper humiliation
and keener repentance. If we have waged war when we ought to have been
at peace, we have as often been at peace when we ought to have waged
war. Time and again, a generation ago, we heard of Armenians being
massacred. But we kept the peace. There never was a more disgraceful
peace in the history of the world, and awful has been the price that we
have paid for it. To keep the peace when the innocent are being
massacred is damnation. Peace is not then the supreme word in man's
vocabulary. By mouthing it man often falls into the mire. There is a
greater word by far, and that is--righteousness. The only peace worth
having is the fruit of righteousness. That is why peace flies faster
than its pursuers. The votaries of peace have forgotten that fruit
does not grow without roots and soil. Eloquence can do much, but it
cannot grow grapes without vines deep rooted in the soil. And peace is
a fruit of the spirit deep rooted in righteousness. And the nations
pursuing peace have forgotten that pilgrimages to Washington or The
Hague may be good, but the supreme need of humanity is to go on
pilgrimage to the fountains that will cleanse the heart. The
deliverance of the world is not by way of renewed or remodelled
treaties, but by the old, old way of renewed and converted souls.
II
How has peace ever come to men? It has come in one way only--the way
of the renewed spirit. I have been reading again the wonderful story
of this Scotland of ours, and that old, simple truth has come home to
me afresh. The problem that confronted Scotland in the dawn of its
history was how to unify and pacify warring tribes that were
ceaselessly drenching the land with blood. And the way the problem was
solved here is the way in which alone it can be solved on the greater
stage of the whole world. Fourteen hundred years ago there was no
Scotland anywhere on the map. There were four kingdoms in North
Britain--the Picts north of the Grampians, the Britons in Strathclyde,
the Angles in the Lothians and southward to the Tweed, and in Kintyre a
small and feeble colony of Scots who had crossed from Ireland. (In
those days a Scot was invariably an Irishman.) In those distressful
days wars in North Britain were as common as strikes are now, and women
went forth to battle along with the men. And they were wars of
extermination--without mercy. Out of that welter how did unity and
peace come? The uniter and pacifier came out of Ireland. The Scots in
Kintyre were Christians, and the pagan Picts under King Brude inflicted
on them a shattering defeat. It looked as if Christianity were on the
eve of being stamped out in Kintyre. To Columba in Ireland there came
the cry of his kinsmen's woe--'Come over and help us.' To a man
burning with ardour and longing for new fields to conquer for his
Master, that cry was like a bugle summoning to battle. He came to
their help, but not with spears and arrows. He came with the might of
the Cross. The greatness of the man is revealed in the fact that
instead of material weapons he went straight to the fountain-head of
the misery. He realised that there was only one way of salvation for
the Christian Scots in Kintyre, and that was by converting to Christ
the wild people in the North that had braved the Roman arms and were
still in their primitive savagery. In those days to convert a clan one
had first to convert the chief; to convert a nation one had first to
convert the king. The goal towards which St. Columba set his face was
the castle of King Brude at Inverness. Iona was but the base for the
great campaign that was to make North Britain safe for Christians. If
to-day the problem be how to make the world safe for democracy (though
the problem is really greater--how to produce a democracy worth the
sacrifice of making the world safe for it), in the sixth century the
problem was how to make Scotland safe for Christ.
III
The greatest story in our history is that which tells how Columba made
his venture of faith and conquered. He never lacked courage this man.
'Do you think, Columba, shall I be saved?' asked the King of Ireland.
'Certainly not,' answered Columba, 'unless you break off from your
sins, repent, and be converted.' The courage wherewith he faced his
kinsfolk, with that same courage he now faced his enemy. We can see
his galley sailing up Loch Linnhe with the Cross at the masthead, and
the face of the leader set like a flint. He would go to the stronghold
of paganism. Up the great glen the little band trudged with death
lurking behind every bush, but there was never a thought of faltering.
In vain did King Brude bar his gates against him. No walls can shut
out the Spirit, no gates of iron can debar the Word living and
powerful. Outside the gates Columba and his band begin to chant a
Psalm--'We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us,
what work Thou didst in their days ... how Thou didst drive out the
heathen with Thy hand....' And as that voice of his rolled like
thunder the King and the people 'were affrighted with fear
intolerable.' The gates were flung open and King Brude surrendered to
the ambassador of Christ. The wild race, whom the legions of Rome
could not subdue, were conquered by an unarmed man. What a light must
have been in that man's eye: what a fire in his heart! From that day
Scotland was safe for the followers of Christ, and the little band of
Christians in Kintyre could now sleep peacefully at night, for King
Brude was learning the law of love and the way of peace. From that day
the good seed was sown broadcast over all the land. That dauntless
messenger traversed sombre, uncharted gulfs, trod his way along
rock-strewn sounds, and the darkness of the centuries faded before the
Cross that gleamed at the masthead. The Picts became Christians, and
in due course united with the Christian Scots in Kintyre, and Scotland
found a name. In time the Angles and Strathclyde were merged in the
unity of the Kingdom of Scotland. There came first the unity of one
ideal, of one law, of one faith--and out of that there came the four
kingdoms merged at last in the unity of the one Kingdom of Scotland.
Until at last, after weary centuries, the sounds of war hushed into
silence: clan no longer lifted up sword against clan; brethren in
Christ could no longer slay one another. Peace lay at last like a
golden shaft across all the land. One fearless unarmed man faced a
king with the weapons of the Spirit, sowed the harvest which we are now
reaping.
IV
It is only by that road that humanity can come at last to the great
goal of universal peace. It is the road that nations are unwilling to
tread. They still are following the mirage that has strewn the deserts
of time with the bleached skeletons of those who set out to reach it.
The mirage is salvation by treaties. That idol has had hecatombs
offered on its altars, and unless there comes a change it will have
hecatombs in the future. If there be no truth and righteousness in the
heart that signs, then treaties are valueless. The history of the
centuries is the proof of their futility. The treaties of to-day can
no more save than the treaties of all the yesterdays. For the nations
that sign cannot trust each other. In the hearts of the nations there
is not throned that righteousness which can be trusted.
The world's sickness is of the soul. What the nations need is that
truth and righteousness be enthroned in their midst. Without that,
peace is only the scum on the surface of the foul and stagnant pool.
And the witness of the centuries is that righteousness is the fruit of
the vision of God. The foundation of righteousness is the realisation
of the ceaseless operation of the laws whose source is God. If only
the vision of God could blaze forth before the eyes of democracies as
it blazed forth before the eyes of King Brude, then the way of peace
would open up for groaning humanity. How can there be lasting peace in
a world of conflicting ideals? Can Christianity be at peace with
Mohammedanism stained with the blood of millions of Armenians; with
paganism still brooding over the ideal of an empire based on force?
Can the ideals of unselfish service and of pride and greed lie down in
peace together? There can be no peace until humanity is brought into a
unity of the soul--of allegiance to one King, of obedience to one law.
The only hand worthy to wield the sceptre of the world is the hand that
was nailed to a Cross. What the world has to realise is that the
Manger overthrows the Caesars, and that the road leading to a Cross is
the way of peace. When we shall send forth over all the world men
endued with the spirit of St. Columba, then there will be hope of the
world. But that is the last thing we think of. We fondly believe that
while we ourselves are sinking back into the mire we shall be able to
lift the world up into light; while we ourselves turn our backs on the
Prince of Peace, that we will bestow peace on the world. It is the
weirdest of all obsessions. When William Ewart Gladstone was once
asked how a man of his intellect could listen to such dull sermons, he
answered--'I go to church because I love England.' There is a wider
motive--'I go to church because I love the world, because I can hear
there a law that men should love one another with a love that stoops to
a Cross, by which alone the world can be saved.' It is vain for
nations that forsake the worship of a God of love to spend their days
devising schemes for bringing peace to a ruined world. For there is no
way of peace save one--the way of love. No nation has as yet tried
that way. And there is no sign that they mean to try it. The world
waits for the man who will convince it that the new order must be based
on fraternity and not on fighting. But the world will applaud him
instantly. Fraternity--that's the word! Most excellent! But when the
new Columba will go on to show that fraternity without a Fatherhood to
rest on is meaningless and powerless; that humanity can only realise
its brotherhood in a common Father--even God. Then the world will once
more shrug its shoulders. 'This is the same old wheeze,' it will
say--and go its way. For we have no longer any use for God. That is
the root of our misery.