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RELIGION AND THE WAR
RELIGION AND THE WAR
BY MEMBERS OF THE FACULTY OF THE
SCHOOL OF RELIGION, YALE UNIVERSITY
EDITED BY
E. HERSHEY SNEATH, PH.D., LL.D.
[Illustration]
NEW HAVEN
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
MDCCCCXVIII
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
PUBLISHED ON THE FOUNDATION
ESTABLISHED IN MEMORY OF
JAMES WESLEY COOPER
OF THE CLASS OF 1865, YALE COLLEGE
The present volume is the second work published by the Yale University
Press on the James Wesley Cooper Memorial Publication Fund. This
Foundation was established March 30, 1918, by a gift to Yale
University from Mrs. Ellen H. Cooper in memory of her husband, Rev.
James Wesley Cooper, D.D., who was born in New Haven, Connecticut,
October 6, 1842, and died in New York City, March 16, 1916. Dr. Cooper
was a member of the Class of 1865, Yale College, and for twenty-five
years pastor of the South Congregational Church of New Britain,
Connecticut. For thirty years he was a corporate member of the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and from 1885
until the time of his death was a Fellow of Yale University, serving
on the Corporation as one of the Successors of the Original Trustees.
Not in dumb resignation,
We lift our hands on high;
Not like the nerveless fatalist,
Content to do and die.
Our faith springs like the eagle's,
That soars to meet the sun,
And cries exulting unto Thee,
"O Lord, Thy will be done."
When tyrant feet are trampling
Upon the common weal,
Thou dost not bid us bend and writhe
Beneath the iron heel;
In Thy name we assert our right
By sword, or tongue, or pen,
And e'en the headsman's axe may flash
Thy message unto men.
Thy will,--it bids the weak be strong;
It bids the strong be just:
No lip to fawn, no hand to beg,
No brow to seek the dust.
Wherever man oppresses man
Beneath the liberal sun,
O Lord, be there, Thine arm made bare,
Thy righteous will be done.
--JOHN HAY.
PREFACE
Religious interests are quite as much involved in the world war as
social and political interests. The moral and spiritual issues are
tremendous, and the problems that arise concerning "the mighty hopes
that make us men,"--hopes that relate to the Kingdom of God on
earth,--are such as not only to perplex our most earnest faith, but
also to challenge our most consecrated purpose. It is the sincere hope
of those who have contributed to this volume that it may prove helpful
in the solution of some of these problems.
E. H. S.
Yale University,
August 21, 1918
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. Moral and Spiritual Forces in the War 11
Charles Reynolds Brown, D.D., LL.D., Dean of
the School of Religion and Pastor of the University
Church
II. God and History 22
Douglas Clyde Macintosh, Ph.D., Professor of
Theology
III. The Christian Hope in Times of War 33
Frank Chamberlin Porter, Ph.D., Professor of
Biblical Theology
IV. Non-Resistance: Christian or Pagan? 59
Benjamin Wisner Bacon, D.D., Litt.D., LL.D.,
Professor of New Testament Criticism and
Interpretation
V. The Ministry and the War 82
Henry Hallam Tweedy, M.A., Professor of Practical
Theology
VI. The Effect of the War upon Religious Education 105
Luther Allan Weigle, Ph.D., D.D., Professor of
Christian Nurture
VII. Foreign Missions and the War, Today and Tomorrow 122
Harlan P. Beach, D.D., F.R.G.S., Professor of the
Theory and Practice of Missions
VIII. The War and Social Work 141
William Bacon Bailey, Ph.D., Professor of
Practical Philanthropy
IX. The War and Church Unity 151
Williston Walker, Ph.D., D.D., Professor of
Ecclesiastical History
X. The Religious Basis of World Re-Organization 161
E. Hershey Sneath, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of
the Philosophy of Religion and Religious Education
I
MORAL AND SPIRITUAL FORCES IN THE WAR
CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN
In one of our more thoughtful magazines we were favored last February
with an article entitled, "Peter Sat by the Fire Warming Himself." It
was a bitter, undiscriminating arraignment of the ministers and
churches of the United States for their alleged lack of intelligent,
sympathetic interest in the war. It was written by an Englishman who
for several years has been vacillating between the ministry and
secular journalism, but is now the pastor of a small church in
northern New York. The vigor of his literary style in trenchant
criticism was matched by an equally vigorous disregard for many of the
plain facts in the case. His tone, however, was loud and confident, so
that the article secured for itself a wide reading.
"What became of the spiritual leaders of America during those
thirty-two months when Europe and parts of Asia were passing through
Gehenna?" the writer of this article asked in scornful fashion. And
then after listing the enormities of the mad military caste which
heads up at Potsdam, he asked the clergymen of the United States, "Why
were you so scrupulously neutral, so benignly dumb?" His main
contention was to the effect that the religious leaders of this
country had been altogether negligent of their duty in the present
world struggle, and that the churches were small potatoes and few in a
hill.
It has been regarded as very good form in certain quarters to cast
aspersion upon the ministers of the Gospel. When the war came men
began to ask, sometimes with a sneer, and sometimes with a look of
pain, "Why did not Christianity prevent the war?" It never seemed to
occur to anyone to ask, "Why did not Science prevent the war?" No one
supposed that Science would or could. It was the most scientific
nation on earth which brought on the war.
It never occurred to anyone to ask, "Why did not Big Business, or the
Newspapers, or the Universities prevent the war?" No one supposed that
commerce or the press or education could avert such disasters. These
useful forms of social energy are not strong enough. They do not go
deep enough in their hold upon the lives of men to curb those forces
of evil which let loose upon the world this frightful war. It was a
magnificent tribute which men paid to the might of spiritual forces
when they asked, sometimes wistfully, and sometimes scornfully, "Why
did not Christianity prevent the war?"
The terrible events of the last four years have taught the world a few
lessons which it will not soon forget. They have shown us the utter
impotence of certain forces in which some shortsighted people were
inclined to put their whole trust: The little toy gods of the
Amorites--Evolution, with a capital E, not as the designation of a
method which all intelligent people recognize, but as a kind of
home-made deity operating on its own behalf! The Zeitgeist, the Spirit
of the Age, all in capitals! The "Cosmic Urge," whatever that
pretentious phrase may mean in the mouths of those who use it in
grandiloquent fashion! The "Stream of Progress," the idea that there
are certain resident forces in the physical order itself which make
inevitably for human well-being and advance quite apart from any
thought of God!
All these have shown themselves no more able to safeguard the welfare
of society than so many stone images. They broke down utterly in the
presence of those forces of evil which now menace the very fabric of
civilization. The forces of self-interest unhallowed and undirected by
any finer forms of spiritual energy have covered a whole continent
with grief and pain. They have written a most impressive commentary
upon that word of the ancient prophet, "The wicked shall be turned
into hell, and all the nations that forget God." Men are saying on all
sides that unless hope is to be found in religion, in the action of
the spirit of the Living God upon the lives of men, then hope there is
none. What other guarantee have we that the greed and the lust, the
hatred and the ambition of wrong-hearted men may not again wreck the
hopes of the race!
But still that question presses for an answer--Why did not these
spiritual forces for which Christianity stands prevent the war? I have
my own idea about that. It was because we did not have enough of
Christianity on hand in those fateful summer days of 1914, and what we
had was not always of the right sort. In certain countries the
churches had been emphasizing the personal and private virtues of
sobriety, chastity, kindliness and the like; they had been preparing
the souls of men for residence in a blessed Hereafter. But they had
not given adequate attention to the organized life of men in political
and economic relations. They had not sufficiently exalted the
weightier matters of justice, mercy and truth in the social organism.
These things they ought to have done, and not to have left the other
undone.
The founder of our faith in the first public address he gave there in
the synagogue at Nazareth struck the social note clearly and firmly.
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to
preach good tidings to the poor. He hath sent me to bind up the
broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, to set at
liberty them that are bruised, and to proclaim"--in all the high
places of the organized life of the race--"the acceptable year of the
Lord."
This was the platform on which he stood. This indicated the spirit and
method of his mission. Organized and corporate righteousness was to be
an essential element in the Gospel of the Son of God. The leaders of
our Christian faith should have been voicing that same demand for
social righteousness all the way from Berlin to Bagdad, and from
London to the uttermost parts of the earth. The only Christianity
which can avert similar disaster in the future is that Christianity
which, like the Apostles of old, goes everywhere, preaching and
practising the Gospel of the Kingdom, the sway and rule of the Divine
Spirit in all the affairs of men.
It was highly significant, however, that the one nation in Europe
which had gone farthest toward an atheistic materialism, toward a
philosophy of force, a complete reliance upon physical efficiency and
mental cleverness quite apart from any moral considerations, toward a
flat indifference to all those manifestations of the religious spirit
which are found in public worship, in missionary effort, and in the
cultivation of a humble, devout spirit--it was the nation which had
gone farthest in that direction which did more than any other nation
to bring on the war.
And, conversely, it was that nation which had gone farther than any
other nation in Europe toward making the religion of Jesus Christ a
power for good in public and in private life which did more than any
other single nation in those fateful July days to avert the war, and
when war came it was that same nation which did more than any other
nation to resist the encroachments of lawlessness and crime as we have
seen them in Belgium and in northern France. We have had abundant
reason to thank God for the Christianity there was in the lives of
such men as Herbert H. Asquith, Arthur J. Balfour, and David Lloyd
George, and in the lives of the brave men and women who have nobly
sustained them in their righteous contention. We could only have
wished that the world had been possessed of a hundred times as much of
that sort of Christianity; that would have prevented the war.
And when war came these spiritual forces still had something to say
for themselves. Christianity had been pressing home upon the hearts of
men those more vital principles until nine-tenths of all the earth was
ashamed of the war. Not a single nation was willing to stand up and
accept responsibility for bringing it on--not even Germany. That
military caste in Potsdam has tried by all manner of intellectual
shuffling to save its face by seeking to make it appear to its own
people that the war was one of self-defense thrust upon them by
unscrupulous enemies. The claim was so absurd that the whole world
laughed it to scorn, even before the striking revelations were made by
Prince Lichnowsky, the German ambassador at London in the summer of
1914. The effort did, however, serve to make plain the fact that the
German Government has not entirely lost the power of being ashamed of
itself.
One hundred years ago it was not so. The Napoleonic wars dragged out
their weary length for twenty-two sad years, but it never occurred to
Napoleon or to France to apologize for those wars which were, for the
most part, frankly wars of aggression and conquest. War was taken as a
matter of course. It was costly, irrational, inhuman, then as it is
now, but it did not have arrayed against it the moral sense of the
race as that moral sense has come to be arrayed against this method of
settling international difficulties in this twentieth century. In
these days war is looked upon by all right-minded nations as the
devil's own business, only to be accepted by right-minded nations as a
last dire necessity when thrust upon them by governments which scruple
not at either honor or right. It is something for the spiritual forces
of earth to have accomplished that.
Moreover, when the war came never before in all its history had the
world seen so much done in the way of humane service. It has been done
to relieve the pain of wounded soldiers and to meet the necessities of
those helpless people whose homes have been destroyed by the ravages
of war. It has all been done in the name of the Red Cross--the name is
significant, as is the spirit behind it. It is the flowering out, not
of Buddhism or Mohammedanism, not of some fancy brand of atheism or
some philosophy of force--men do not gather grapes of thorns nor figs
from thistles. It is the flowering out of the religion of him who died
for men upon a cross.
The people of this country alone came forward and in a single week by
voluntary contributions gave one hundred millions of dollars for this
humane service. Then within less than a year the same people
contributed a further fund of one hundred and seventy millions of
dollars for the relief of wounded soldiers and for the relief of
stricken people in Belgium and Poland, in Serbia and Armenia, whose
names we do not know, whose languages we cannot speak, but whose
sufferings we have made our own in warmest sympathy. It was the
response of a nation to the words of its Master--"I was hungry and ye
fed me. I was naked and ye clothed me. I was sick and in prison and ye
visited me. I was a stranger and ye took me in." It is something for
the spiritual forces to have thus enthroned the spirit of humane
service in the hearts of men.
More than that, never before in military history has so much been done
to safeguard the moral welfare of the young men who have been called
to the colors. The officers of our own army and of those armies with
whom we are allied have by personal example and by public utterance
struck a clear, firm note for sobriety and clean living, which cannot
be matched in the history of any other war.
The Young Men's Christian Association by its work for the soldiers has
leaped at a bound into a place of national and international
significance. And the Young Men's Christian Association is simply the
Christian church functioning in a particular way. Its honored head,
John R. Mott, was converted in and is now a member of the Methodist
Episcopal Church. Its secretaries and other workers are drawn, all of
them, from the membership of our churches. And the money which makes
possible its world-wide activities is given mainly by the people of
the churches. The people of this country were asked for thirty-five
millions of dollars, and in a single week they oversubscribed the
request, giving fifty millions of dollars to carry on this fine form
of Christian effort. It was the act of a nation saying to the young
men under arms, "Fight your good fight but keep your faith, and finish
your course with honor, that there may be laid up for every man of you
a crown of rejoicing."
And more than that, the spiritual forces at work in this broad land
have kept the motives of our country high and fine. We have not
entered into this war with any selfish desire for conquest--as God
knows our hearts, we do not covet an acre of territory belonging to
any other power on earth. We have not entered this war with any sordid
desire for material gain. We were already becoming disgracefully rich
in the manufacture of munitions and in furnishing supplies to the
belligerent nations. If they could have fought it through without our
help, it would have been money in our purse to have stayed out--as it
is, it will cost us no one can say how many billions of dollars. We
have not entered this war in any spirit of touchiness because our
national honor has been offended--it has been offended most
grievously, but we are too strong and too sane to plunge a whole
country into war for that.
We are not undertaking to punish Germany, greatly as we believe the
present government of Germany needs punishing. We remember who it was
who said, "Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord," and we
are content to leave the matter of penalty in his powerful hands. We
are not undertaking to dictate to the German people what sort of
government they should have. We are willing they should have any sort
of government they like, so long as they keep it for home consumption.
We believe here that all governments derive their just powers from the
consent of the governed. We confess to a frank preference for the
methods of democracy, and we could wish no happier lot for any land
than to live under the reign of the common people. We like to remember
that in the year of our Lord 1815, Great Britain and her Allies put a
certain island on the map--they put the island of St. Helena on the
map by banishing to that island the disturber of the peace of Europe.
And if in the year of our Lord 1919 the United States and her Allies
should in similar fashion put some other island on the map by
banishing to that island the present disturber of the peace of Europe,
nine-tenths of all the human race would rise up and thank God.
We entered upon this war because we were not willing to stand by and
allow other nations to be crippled and broken in the resistance they
were offering to lawlessness and crime, and in the defense they were
making for those principles of justice and freedom which are the glory
of our own national history. And so we have come forward to do our
part and to fill up that which is lacking in the sacrifices which
other nations have been making for the sake of principle.
As I move about among my fellow citizens, north, south, east and west,
these are the questions which I find engaging their minds: Is might to
be allowed to usurp the place of right, or are we here to see to it
that in the long run right is the only might? Is international good
faith only an empty phrase, or is it a magnificent reality in the
moral world to be upheld at any cost? Is that body of usages and
agreements slowly built up by centuries of effort, which constitutes
our international law, to be trampled under foot by any nation for the
sake of some immediate advantage, or is it meant to be obeyed? Is the
whole world to be permanently at the mercy of any military caste which
may undertake to impose its will upon the rest of mankind by the
practice of frightfulness, or is there possible some such World League
of Nations as shall have both the mind and the power to keep the peace
and good order of the world?
These are moral questions. They are religious questions, where there
is a will of God to be ascertained and realized. And because our
people have vision for the full recognition of the place spiritual
forces have in the making of history, this struggle enlists the
complete moral support of the nation.
It was the moral idealism of the war which brought Great Britain and
all her distant colonies promptly into line the moment the moral
quality of the German Government stood revealed in all its hideousness
by its outrage upon Belgium. It was the moral passion of Britain which
enabled her to raise by voluntary enlistment an army of more than five
millions of men.
It was the moral idealism of the war which brought all sections of our
own country strongly to the support of the President when the fact was
made plain that it was a fight for the right of free peoples to live
and move and have their being in honor. It was the moral idealism of
the war which brought the choicest youth of our land, the sons of good
fortune and the sons of toil, the young men of the colleges and the
young men less privileged, to stand shoulder to shoulder in this
struggle for righteousness. We have seen it on the Campus here at
Yale, as other men have seen it in all the colleges and universities
of the land. The spirit of our youth has been nobly expressed in those
lines on "The Spires of Oxford":
I saw the spires of Oxford
As I was passing by,
The gray spires of Oxford
Against the pearl-gray sky;
My heart was with the Oxford men
Who went abroad to die.
The years go fast in Oxford,
The golden years and gay.
The hoary colleges look down
On careless boys at play;
But when the bugles sounded war
They put their games away.
They left the peaceful river,
The cricket field, the quad,
The shaven lawns of Oxford
To seek a bloody sod;
They gave their merry youth away
For country and for God.
God rest you happy, gentlemen,
Who laid your good lives down,
Who took the khaki and the gun
Instead of cap and gown.
God bring you to a fairer place
Than even Oxford town.
It was a great Christian statesman, it was William Ewart Gladstone,
prime minister of Great Britain, who said more than thirty years ago,
"The greatest triumph of the twentieth century will be the
enthronement of the idea of public right as the governing idea in the
affairs of Europe." We are here this day to assist with the last ounce
of our strength and with the full might of our moral purpose in the
enthronement and the coronation of that idea of public right as the
governing idea in the affairs of the whole world.
The moral values which are at stake in all this national and
international action have been made so clear in the fierce red light
which has beat upon the world that the very conscience of the country
has put on khaki. The moral sense of the whole nation has become
militant. The brave men and women of this land are working and
fighting for human betterment with their eyes upon that social order
which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God. And because we
feel that our cause is just, we feel in our arms and in our hearts,
each man of us, the strength of ten.
May we not believe that this country, strong and brave, generous and
hopeful, is called of God to be in its own way a Messianic nation in
whose mighty unfolding life all the nations of the earth may be
blessed? Hear these words of an ancient prophet and make them your
own! "What people has God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is in
all things that we call upon Him for? Has God assayed to take him a
nation from the midst of another nation by signs, by wonders and by
war, as the Lord hath done for you? Did ever a people hear the Voice
of God speaking out of the midst of the fire as thou hast heard? What
nation has statutes and judgments so righteous as the law which I set
before you this day? Keep therefore and do them, for this is your
wisdom and your understanding among the nations."
It is for this country to keep its motives high and fine, to set its
affections upon those principles of action which are above the dead
level of self-interest, and to so bear itself in the service of the
higher civilization that in its purposes and methods all the nations
of the earth may be blessed.
O beautiful my country, ours once more,
What were our lives without thee,
What all our lives to save thee!
We reek not what we give thee,
We will not dare to doubt thee,
But ask whatever else and we will dare.
II
GOD AND HISTORY
DOUGLAS CLYDE MACINTOSH
Most urgent among the religious problems of the day is the question as
to the relation of God to the events of current history. As was to be
expected, many erroneous notions are prevalent concerning divine
providence and the present war. Some of these errors are owing to
intellectual confusion; others, however, impress one as due to an
almost wilful perversion of the impulses of religious faith. In any
case, most conspicuous among the erroneous doctrines of the day with
reference to divine providence is that voiced by the German Emperor,
in speaking of the Teutonic triumph over disorganized Russia. His
words are reported as follows: "The complete victory fills me with
gratitude. It permits us to live again one of those great moments in
which we can reverently admire God's hand in history. What turn events
have taken is by the disposition of God." One could scarcely be blamed
for inferring that the Kaiser imagines, or affects to believe, that
the Almighty has entered into a favored-nation treaty of some sort
with Germany. But even this would seem to fall short of what is
claimed. We quote further from the same theological authority. "The
year 1917 with its great battles has proved," he asserts, with almost
incredible simple-mindedness, "that the German people has in the Lord
of Creation above an unconditional and avowed ally on whom it can
absolutely rely." This curious reversion to religious tribalism in the
case of the German Emperor is not without its parallel in the belief
of his subjects. Assiduously taught, as they have been, that they are
fighting a justified defensive war, and praying, as they have been,
for victory over their enemies, their conviction has come to be,
pretty generally, what a German-American in the early days of the war
expressed in these words, "If Germany doesn't win this war, there is
no God!" Well, in view of what the world knows as to the causation and
the conduct of this war on the part of Germany, the only answer so
preposterous a doctrine deserves is that given by ex-President Taft,
"Germany has mistaken the devil for God!"
But the Germans are not the only ones who are cherishing mistaken
notions as to the providence of God in human affairs. We and our
Allies reject the idea of a national God, and any notion of the "Lord
of Creation" being our "unconditional ally." The morally perfect God
is too just and impartial to have any favorites among the nations,
whether Jewish, or German, or British, or American. Might does not
make right, we know; and no more is might an infallible index to God's
will. God is not necessarily "on the side of the heaviest battalions."
On the contrary, the true God, as the God of righteousness, must be,
we feel sure, on the side of right and justice, whichever side that
may be. Being confident, therefore, of the justice of our cause, we
feel that we have the best of reasons for believing that we are
fighting on the side of God, as well as for the true well-being of
humanity.
So far, good; but many among us proceed to put two and two together
and find that they make five. If we are on the side of human rights
and the will of God, and if God is sufficient for our religious needs,
is it not clear that we may be absolutely certain of winning the war,
whatever temporary reverses may have to be encountered? Moreover,
especially since we have had our days of prayer for victory, are we
not entitled to sing,
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,
And this be our motto, "In God is our trust"?
Indeed, so satisfied are we with the logic of our position that
multitudes of us would agree with the sentiment expressed by a
British-American in the early days of the war, "If Germany wins this
war, there is no God."
But there are reasons for doubting the correctness of this view. Right
makes God's will, surely enough; but is it certain that the side whose
cause is just will win the war, simply because it is the side of right
and of God? Ultimately, we may be sure, right must prevail, for wrong
is not the sort of thing that can permanently succeed; it contains
within itself the germs of its own ultimate destruction. But nothing
in history can be surer than that this ultimate judgment upon evil
does not necessarily involve the defeat of all unjustified military
undertakings. The side with the greater moral justification has not
always won its battles, nor even its wars. It is not enough to have
justice on our side; we must use our might on the side of right. Right
has to be worked for, and sometimes it has to be fought for. That is
the kind of world that--not unfortunately for our development,
probably--we are living in. And the fighting is no sham battle. Its
issue is not predetermined. It is being decided while the fighting is
going on.
Moreover, with reference to prayer as a military factor, it is only
fair to note that in the present war many sincere and believing
prayers for victory have been offered on both sides. It is not
intended to deny that religion of a certain sort is an important
military factor; sincere and believing prayer for a cause that is
regarded as sacred and just undoubtedly helps morale, both in the army
and throughout the nation. But it is a factor which in this war has
operated on both sides. Man has the capacity for misusing not only
physical, but even spiritual forces. But, on the other hand, when
prayer and religious faith encourage an easy-going attitude, and are
thus made to some extent a substitute for effort, such prayer and
faith cannot but prove a serious military hindrance, no matter how
just the cause may be that they are designed to support. They may even
conceivably make enough of a difference on the wrong side to lead to
the defeat of righteousness.
These notions as to God's providence in war, which we have criticized
as manifestly mistaken and dangerously misleading, are symptomatic of
confused and muddy thinking on the whole subject of the providence of
God in human history. How does God secure his adequate providential
control of the course of history? One theory is that he has secured it
by having absolutely predetermined from the beginning all events of
nature and history, so that all process is the simple unfolding of
what has been eternally decreed. There are the strongest ethical and
religious reasons for refusing to accept this unproved and unprovable
dogma. On the one hand, it would mean that man's consciousness of free
agency and moral responsibility would have to be regarded as quite
illusory, since what has been decided and made inevitable before man's
life began cannot have been originated by man himself. On the other
hand, this predestination doctrine would mean that God should be
regarded as the real and responsible cause of all evil, including what
we call human sin. No such God would be moral enough to be trustworthy
or deserving of human adoration.
Another theory as to how God secures his adequate providential control
of the course of events is that it is by various sorts of arbitrary or
unconditioned interventions in external nature, as well as in human
life, in order to realize the ends he may desire to accomplish from
time to time. It has often been suggested, for instance, that a
miracle of this sort took place at the Marne, preventing the German
entry into Paris. But this theory is open to the objection that it
raises three unanswerable questions. In the first place, how can we be
sure that such interventions have taken place, particularly in the
external world? How do you suppose it will ever be established
sufficiently for confident rational belief, that only by special
miracle were the German armies turned back from Paris in 1914? In the
second place, if such special miraculous interventions do take place
for the sake of preventing evil, why do they not take place oftener,
especially in these times of unprecedented disaster to human life? A
miracle like that of the Marne, such as would have turned the Turks
back from the helpless Armenians, would have been much appreciated.
But, for a third question, if such miracles were to take place as
often as this theory of providence would seem to call for, what would
become of the order of nature, and how could man learn what to expect,
or how to adjust himself to his environment?
As against these theories of absolute predetermination and arbitrary
intervention, we may point out that God secures his adequate
providential control of the course of history in two principal ways,
viz., by _enough_ predetermination of events to give man a
dependable universe to live in and learn from, and by _enough_
intervention to admit of a response to man's need of the religious
experience of salvation, that is, of being inwardly or spiritually
prepared to meet in the right way and with triumphant spirit the very
worst that the future may bring. The predetermined order of the laws
of nature and mind exhibits the _general providence_ of God. By
means of this order, or in the light of consequences, God is teaching
man both science and morality, that is, how to adapt means to the
realization of ends, and what ideals and principles of action must be
employed if the most desirable results are to be obtained. The
"intervention enough" of which we spoke--if indeed it is to be called
intervention--or, in other words, the response of the divine Reality
to the right religious attitude on the part of man, is an exhibition
of the _special providence_ of God. When one has found the right
relation to God and gained access to the divine power for the inner
life, one is virtually prepared for whatever can happen to him. But,
as we have indicated, his preparedness is primarily inner, spiritual.
He is in a position to meet danger with moral courage, to gain the
victory over temptation; to make the most of opportunities for
service; to endure hardship, pain and privation, as a good soldier,
with patience and cheerfulness; to face death--his own or that of
others--and whatever there may be after death, with faith and
equanimity.
There are two possible ways, then, in which God may exercise his
providence in the events of human history. There is his shorter and
preferred method, and his longer and more roundabout method. If the
individuals concerned come into the right relation to God, there is
the best possible guarantee that they will be made ready for all there
may be for them to do and to experience, and thus conditions will be
most favorable for the speedy realization of the will of God. But if
this shorter, preferred method cannot be employed, because men fail to
rise to the occasion as they might if they would rightly relate
themselves to God, the divine providence will still be exercised,
although necessarily in the less desirable, more roundabout way. God
will let man choose the wrong way, through thoughtlessness or
wilfulness, and then let him take the bitter consequences of failure,
that he may finally learn to guard against similar mistakes and faults
in the future.
Let us now return to the more particular question of the relation of
the providence of God to the present war. Before discussing again the
question with which we started, viz., as to the final outcome of the
conflict, we may deal with some other aspects of the problem. In the
light of what has been said of the two possible methods of divine
providence, it may be denied that the war was providentially caused by
God in order to curb other evils, such as softness and idleness, or
the selfish pursuit of wealth and pleasure, or drunkenness and vice,
or thoughtlessness and irreligion. It is true enough that in the face
of war conditions some of these evils have been decreased, and the
martial qualities of self-sacrificing courage and fortitude have been
stimulated. But it is notoriously true that the advent of war
introduces a host of evils, in some cases necessarily, in others
almost as inevitably. Drunkenness tends to increase greatly, unless
stern measures are taken for its repression. Vice, with the resulting
transmissible diseases, ordinarily becomes much more prevalent.
Hatred, cruelty, and even the most fiendish brutality are given ample
opportunity to develop, and in many instances they become relatively
fixed attitudes and attributes of character. So far from the
biologically fittest tending to survive, under modern war conditions
these are the very ones who, for the most part and to the incalculable
detriment of the future of the race, are killed off, even granting
that of those who are "fit" enough to get to the front, the weakest
are those who have the poorest chance of survival. And finally, when
the stress of war conditions becomes acute, innumerable enterprises
for social betterment are constrained to be given up, at least for the
time being. In view, then, of all this, not to dwell upon the
unspeakable suffering, physical and mental, on the part not only of
combatants, but of noncombatants as well, and considering the merely
problematical nature of the good to which the crisis involved in a
state of war may prove a stimulus, it must be regarded as incredible
that a God good enough and wise enough to be worthy of absolute
dependence and worship could have ordered so stupendous a catastrophe
as a possible means of human salvation. Neither is it reasonable to
suppose that God is prolonging the war, in order that some social
evils, such as drunkenness, may be eradicated before victory is
finally secured. This might, perhaps, be the outcome, if the war were
greatly prolonged; but it could not be at all certain beforehand that
any such improvement would be permanent enough to offset the evils
involved in the continuation of the war. We cannot suppose anyone who
was wise enough and good enough to be God would be so far below our
best human standards as to will either the existence or the
continuation of the war as a whole, with all its attendant evils, in
order that final good might abound. Any God who might be thought of as
doing so would be a false God; his condemnation would be just.
Understanding, then, that in so far as human hatred, selfishness and
stupidity have been factors in leading to the war, it has been
originated, not by the will or in the providence of God, but against
his will and providence; understanding also that in so far as it has
been prolonged by human inefficiency or stupidity, or by the
efficiency of evil wills, or of wills in the service of wrong, its
continuation has not been in accordance with but in opposition to his
will and providence, let us turn to the more positive aspect of the
divine providence in connection with the war. It may be said to begin
with, that in so far as going into this war has been correctly judged
by any party to it to be the necessary alternative to national
perfidy, or ignoble servitude, or any other evil greater than those
involved in passing through the ordeal of war, and in so far as the
task has been accepted as a solemn duty and entered upon in brave and
self-sacrificing spirit, the act of going to war is to be regarded as
in accord with the will of God. Indeed, if we may regard the divine
spirit as immanent where we find the divine qualities present in human
life, we may go further and say that such righteous participation in
the war is the work of God within the soul of man, fighting against
the forces of evil. Moreover, in so far as the war is prolonged by the
fortitude of men of good intentions and their fidelity to a just
cause, the war may similarly be said to be prolonged in accord with
the will and even by the work of God in and through the good will and
work of men.
But of providence in relation to the war as a whole, it can only be
said that man's evil choice has compelled God to use the long,
roundabout method. It is the second best method, although the best
possible under the circumstances. The sinful choices of men and
nations were not, of course, divinely predetermined. What has been
divinely predetermined, we may well believe, is the law-abiding order
of nature and of individual and social mind, according to which the
disasters and sufferings incidental to war are the inevitable
consequences of certain forms of individual and corporate wrong doing.
In this roundabout way certain reforms may be providentially forced
upon the nations by the war. The evil consequences of certain former
evils tend to be more acutely felt under the strain and stress of
severe and prolonged warfare. Let us suppose that in order to win the
war we and our Allies may yet find it necessary to take drastic steps
to eradicate drunkenness with its attendant evils, or even to prohibit
the waste of food-stuffs and fuel involved in the manufacture of
alcoholic beverages. This would not mean that the war had been
divinely caused in order to realize this end, but only that it was and
always is the divine will that man should learn the lessons of the law
of consequences, which lessons are in some instances more readily
learned in time of war.
But what God is teaching most directly through the law of consequences
in connection with the war is the necessity of correcting certain
immoral international relations. He is teaching the nations through
bitter experience how imperative are international righteousness and
some practicable and adequately democratic scheme of world-government.
But we must not close our eyes to the possibility that through our
failure to do our part, God may be forced to take the long, sad,
roundabout way of exercising his providence in connection with the
end, as he had to in the beginning of the war. What we must wake up to
is this, that _in spite of the justice of our cause, in spite of its
being the cause of humanity and in essential accord with the will of
God, and in spite of our days of prayer and our optimistic religious
faith_, GERMANY MAY WIN THIS WAR! If our consciousness of
being right and our religious optimism make us so complacent that we
shall fail to exert our utmost strength on behalf of our righteous
cause, they may be the very factors that will turn the tide of war
against us. We have resources enough for the winning of victory. If we
fail it will be a moral failure. If we fail to rise to the moral
demands of this great occasion, God may have to let us fail to win the
war and then learn what we can from the bitter consequences of this
failure. We and future generations may have to learn through tragic
experience how imperative it is that right be not left to enforce
itself, but that we devote our full might to the cause of right, and
that before it is too late.
At the time of writing these words--in the early days of May,
1918--it seems not yet too late, however critical the situation,
for the winning of victory for the cause of liberty and justice.
But the surest way of providing for success would be for all who
recognize the right so to surrender themselves to the will of God
for self-sacrificing service, and so to depend upon the indwelling
power of God for inner preparedness for whatever may have to be
faced and whatever may have to be done, that their whole might may
be made use of in this warfare for the right. Our primary need is
_morale_--morale in the government, morale in the shipyards,
morale in the munitions factories, morale among all our people in
their business and home life, as well as fighting spirit in our
army and navy abroad. Enough religion of the right sort may make
enough difference in morale to make all the difference between
defeat and victory as the outcome of this war. And if in this way
victory for the right should come as a result of religion, it would
be not only a crowning example of the short and preferred method of
divine providence; it would be, literally speaking, victory by the
Grace of God.
In any case, the situation for the Western Allies is such that neither
faith without works nor works without faith can accomplish what waits
to be done. There must be, if we would win, faith and works together.
Before leaving this topic of God and history, a word may be said on
the question of what, on this interpretation of providence, we may
expect to be the final outcome of this war for the future of the race.
Will the result be more harm than good, or more good than harm? It is
very certain that the war will need to be the occasion of an immense
amount of good to balance up to the race the evils that have been
involved in it thus far and that will be involved in its prolongation.
Much possible evil will be avoided if the immoral Prussian
militaristic ideal is finally crushed. Moreover, there will be the
tendency for humanity to learn, at least temporarily and as an
intellectual conviction, the undesirability of war and of the
conditions that make for war. But attention and moral effort will be
necessary to retain this lesson with sufficient impressiveness, and to
put it into effect, and the best power of thought will be needed to
determine just how this putting it into effect may be most fully and
lastingly secured. There seems real danger that the human race on
earth will be permanently poorer and worse off, spiritually and
socially as well as biologically and economically, as a result of this
nearest approach to racial suicide. Undoubtedly it will be so, if the
nations fail to learn and to put into effect the lesson of the
necessity of international righteousness and a just and efficient
system of world-government.
It is perhaps still possible for the race to learn enough from this
period of strife and carnage for the resultant good to out-balance the
total evil. But even then no one would have the right to credit the
war with having been the means of greater good than _could_ have
been accomplished without it. All its moral evil at any rate will be
regrettable forever. And the only possible way of guaranteeing
beforehand greater good than evil as an outcome of the war, even
supposing the side of justice and liberty to be victorious, will be
for individuals and groups so to relate themselves to truth, to right
and to God that flagrantly immoral international relations will become
practically impossible. The only safety of the race lies in an
essentially Christian international morality, and the only adequate
guarantee of this is an essentially Christian personal religion. The
only failure of essential Christianity of which the war may fairly be
regarded as evidence was its failure to be given an adequate trial;
which means, of course, not a failure of Christianity as an ethical or
as a religious system, but a failure of the human will to be
adequately Christian.
III
THE CHRISTIAN HOPE IN TIMES OF WAR
FRANK CHAMBERLIN PORTER
Of Paul's three things that abide, hope is the one of which we are now
most conscious of our need. Never before in our experience has hope
been so much the center of our inner life and the heart of our
religion. Our mood alternates between hope and depression, hope and
fear; and we look to our religion to make hope strong, and turn to our
sacred book to seek secure grounds and satisfying expressions for our
hope. We hope for the winning of the war. We hope for the safety and
the home-coming of those we love. We hope for a new world-order
organized to make war impossible, inspired by a spirit of cooperation
and good will between classes and between nations. We hope as never
before for an assured and abundant life after death. We put these
hopes in some relation to each other, weighing one against another,
subordinating one to another. And when we seek their right
relationship and look for their ultimate grounds, we ask what
Christianity has to say and to do about them. What is Christian in
these hopes that are filling the mind and heart of the world? The
importance of this question is very great. The future of the world
depends on the truth and the strength of the hopes that now inspire
and direct men's purposes and efforts. The future of the Christian
religion turns in no small measure on its ability now to keep the hope
of mankind high and pure, free from self-seeking and from material
interests, and true to the ultimate reality of things, and to give
this hope confidence and prevailing strength.