THE PROPHETS 
 AND THE WAR 
 
 CHARLES C.ALBERJSON 
 
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THE PROPHETS 
 AND THE WAR 
 
 BY 
 CHARLES CARROLL ALBERTSON, D.D. 
 
 THE MERIDIAN PRESS 
 NEW YORK 
 
^ 
 
 
 Copyright, 1917, by 
 CHARLES C. ALBERTSON 
 
 OCT -8 1917 
 
 ©C!.A473889 
 
'Thine was the prophefs vision, — thine 
 The exultation, the divine 
 Insanity of noble minds, 
 That never falters nor abates. 
 But labors and endures and waits. 
 Or, what it cannot find, creates" 
 
 — ^Longfellow 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Since August 1, 1914, we have been living 
 in one of the most intense and critical periods 
 of history. It demands no freedom of poetic 
 license to characterize the duration of the 
 World War as "a grand and awful time." 
 There are those who see, on the battlefields of 
 three continents, only a welter of blood, mur- 
 der set to martial music, an abyssmal tragedy, 
 a riot of destruction. There are others who 
 see all this, and more. They lift their eyes, 
 and through brief breaks in the storm-cloud 
 that hovers over the sky of Christendom, see 
 the stars. The Hebrew prophets in their time 
 caught such glimpses of light in the heavens. 
 They too lived in dark days. Civilization, as 
 they knew it, seemed again and again upon the 
 brink of hopeless ruin. Yet not one of them 
 was hopeless for the future of the best ele- 
 ments of his nationality or for the future of 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 the human race. Because this is so, faithful 
 men have saved themselves from fear and 
 helped to save their age from wreck of faith by 
 shaping their course of thought and action with 
 reference to the truths and principles embodied 
 in the writings of the religious leaders of Judah 
 and Israel. 
 
 It is at once pathetic and encouraging that 
 in the present crisis in human affairs there are 
 so many serious minds looking for light and 
 leading, for help in the interpretation of cur- 
 rent history, for signs of an intelligent and 
 beneficent Force, able to establish the rule of 
 right in spite of the misrule of might. 
 
 The purpose of the following pages is not 
 the discussion of critical questions relating to 
 the authorship of books or the interpretation of 
 texts, but the apprehension of truths which 
 may enable us to discern "the inflow of God 
 into human events, and the outflow of human 
 events back to God, thus completing the cycle." 
 
 Charles Carroll Albertson. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I The Voice in the Wilderness . 
 
 . 1 
 
 II The Vision of God 
 
 . 20 
 
 III Suffering and Redemption ... 43 
 
 IV The Man Among the Myrtles . . 62 
 
THE PROPHETS 
 AND THE WAR 
 
THE PROPHETS AND 
 THE WAR 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 The voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye in the 
 wilderness the way of Jehovah, make level in the 
 desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall 
 be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be 
 made low; and the uneven shall be made level, and 
 the rough places a plain: and the glory of the 
 Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it to- 
 gether. — Isaiah 40: 3-5. 
 
 At the beginning of the study of any proph- 
 ecy it were well for us to know the real mean- 
 ing of the word "prophet." The Hebrew 
 sense of the title does not limit its meaning 
 to the ability to predict future events. It is 
 
 true the prophet was a seer, but not neces- 
 
 1 
 
2 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 sarily a foreseer. As a matter of fact he did 
 often foresee and foretell events in the imme- 
 diate and even in the remote future. But his 
 primary office was to see things as they were, 
 to institute a comparison between things as 
 they were and things as they ought to have 
 been, and to lay upon the consciences of the 
 people responsibility for that difference. The 
 prophet saw beneath the surface of things, be- 
 hind the face of things, the forces which were 
 at work, bearing nations down to destruction 
 or bearing them up to power. So the prophet 
 was a forthteller as well as a foreteller. 
 
 The first office of the prophet was to see, 
 and the second was to tell. So the proper 
 symbols of the prophet are an eye and a tongue. 
 The opening words of the text give us a portrait 
 of the prophet; he was "a voice" — sl voice, 
 not an echo. Most of us, as Carlyle once ob- 
 served, are not voices but echoes. We borrow 
 our opinions from other people, or absorb them 
 unconsciously. It is one of the primary dis- 
 tinctions of the prophet that, humanly, his 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 3 
 
 opinions are original and not derived. Only 
 humanly, however, for the prophet's opinions 
 are of divine origin. His voice is the voice of 
 a man, but his words are the words of God. 
 Or rather, his words are human, but the 
 thoughts they express are of heavenly birth. 
 "Preach the preaching that I bid thee," is 
 God's instruction to the prophet. "The voice 
 said, What shall I cry ?" See how the prophet 
 goes back to an Eternal Source for the con- 
 tent of his message. 
 
 To say that the messages of these old 
 prophets were derived from God is a strong as- 
 sertion. What evidence is there that this is 
 so? No direct evidence indeed, aside from 
 their own claims, but very conclusive presump- 
 tive evidence from other sources. Professor 
 Huxley, in an article in the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury^ in December, 1885, wrote: "In the eighth 
 century B.C., in the heart of a world of idola- 
 trous polytheists, the Hebrew prophets put 
 forth a conception of religion which appears 
 to me to be as wonderful an inspiration as the 
 
4 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 art of Phidias or the science of Aristotle." 
 This is strong praise, coming as it does from 
 one who rejects the supernatural. Let those 
 who neglect the study of the Hebrew prophets 
 confront such a testimony, and then justify 
 their ignorance of Isaiah if they can. 
 
 Professor Huxley has quite correctly de- 
 scribed the times in which these prophets lived, 
 their social and religious environment. The 
 prophetic voice speaks out of the heart of a 
 moral wilderness. Not yet had Jesus come 
 to teach men the better way. Not yet had 
 democracy developed within the sphere of 
 civil government. Not yet was the human 
 spirit free of its fetters. It is true, here and 
 there were radiant spirits who looked out 
 upon the world from lofty altitudes, but 
 the masses of men were sunk in animalism. 
 The trail of the serpent was fresh in earth's 
 Eden. Some of these centuries in the thou- 
 sand years which preceded the birth of Christ 
 were brighter than others, but all were dark. 
 In the darkest of them, priests were corrupt 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 5 
 
 and judges were venal. In the brightest of 
 them, the people were all too easily blinded 
 by luxury, deceived by false teachers and sat- 
 isfied with superficial piety. Their perpetual 
 peril was the substitution of ceremonial de- 
 votion for vital religion. Into this slough 
 practically every generation of the people fell. 
 There was not one of the prophets, major or 
 minor, who did not warn them against it. 
 Every one of them was a voice crying in the 
 wilderness ; every one of them was a dedicated 
 personality seeking by constant protest to lead 
 the people out of the wilderness, to deliver 
 them out of the slough, to open up before them 
 paths which led to the highways of holiness, 
 the highway of their God. 
 
 The terms "major" and "minor," as ap- 
 plied to the Hebrew prophets, are unfortunate. 
 Originally used with reference only to the 
 length or the brevity of their writings, we have, 
 without reason, proceeded upon the assump- 
 tion that the minor prophets are of minor im- 
 portance. Not one of them was a minor per- 
 
6 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 sonality. Not one of them had a minor mes- 
 sage. This is not to say that we may not 
 properly prefer some of these prophets to oth- 
 ers, on the ground of their greater eloquence 
 or their closer approach to the doctrines of 
 Christ. Isaiah will continue to be a treasury 
 of precious promises pointing to Jesus. Eze- 
 kiel will continue to feed minds which are fond 
 of apocalyptic visions. But so will Hosea 
 continue to be the prophet of domestic sorrow, 
 and Micah will remain the prophet of the prin- 
 ciples of universal reUgion. Obadiah, with 
 but a single chapter to his credit, is as truly 
 a voice as is Jeremiah with his fifty-two chap- 
 ters. Habakkuk, in the seventh century B.C., 
 is as truly a voice as Isaiah in the eighth cen- 
 tury or Malachi in the fourth. What have 
 centuries to do with these voices? The voice 
 of prophecy is eternal. These men wrote im- 
 mediately for their times, but ultimately for 
 all time. They discussed conditions which are 
 not peculiar to any time and enunciated prin- 
 ciples which are applicable to all time. Some 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 7 
 
 of the conditions which the Hebrew prophets 
 confronted were so similar to conditions in our 
 day that it is not too much to say that not a 
 few of these prophecies might well be pub- 
 lished in the world to-day as "Tracts for the 
 Times." From the pulpit of St. Margaret's 
 Church in London, within the last twelve 
 months, a prophetic voice has claimed the at- 
 tention of the Enghsh Church in a series of 
 scholarly expositions of Habakkuk as an in- 
 terpreter of war. He who reads Isaiah with 
 care cannot fail to see how modern a spirit 
 Isaiah was and that, in deahng with the prob- 
 lems of his time, he anticipated the problems 
 of ours. 
 
 The words of the text suggest rather than 
 declare, but suggest very plainly, two or three 
 great propositions which we in this age are be- 
 ginning more or less clearly to apprehend. 
 They may thus be stated: The moral unity 
 of mankind, the ethical basis of national power 
 and greatness, and the civic value of moral 
 discipline. 
 
8 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 In the early stages of development, Israel 
 had but a faint conception of anything like the 
 organization of a national life. The Jewish 
 nation was coextensive with the Jewish race. 
 We use terms more correctly when we speak 
 of the Jewish nation and the Hebrew race. 
 The race existed long before the Jewish State 
 was organized. From Moses to David, a pe- 
 riod of say five hundred years, the Jewish State 
 was embryonic. Under David there rose a 
 strong compact State. But, strong as it was, 
 the nation, during a period twice as long as the 
 history of our Republic, was exceedingly nar- 
 row. We find little in the Psalms to indicate 
 that any Psalmist dreamed of a community of 
 nations, a sisterhood of states. 
 
 It is not strange that this was so. There 
 must be nationalism before there can be inter- 
 nationalism. But with the rise of the prophets 
 the people, who had so long been absorbed in 
 their own affairs, began to look out and see 
 themselves as a part of the great world. How 
 came they to their first dim vision of interna- 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 9 
 
 tionalism? War taught them. Assyria and 
 Babylon had risen, miUtary powers of the first 
 magnitude, eager for conquest. Nation after 
 nation fell before their arms. Statesmen in 
 Israel began to think of alliances with other 
 nations and leagues of nations. No one sug- 
 gested a league of nations to enforce peace, 
 but it was in more than one mind to form a 
 league of nations with which to curb the power 
 of Assyria and Babylon. Above all, it was in 
 the prophetic mind to preserve the alliance with 
 the God of nations. The Jewish Kingdom 
 had been divided after Solomon's death into 
 two Kingdoms. Normally, they were ene- 
 mies and rivals. In periods of great stress and 
 storm they thought more of their similarities 
 than of their differences. They cultivated re- 
 lations with other states — relations which 
 were fraught with moral danger. Israel, of 
 old, had a leaning towards Egypt. It was al- 
 ways easy for Israel to lapse into Egyptian idol- 
 atry. But association with other nations in- 
 volved much more than the absorption of inci- 
 
10 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 dental evils. It involved the absorption of 
 new ideas of culture and of commerce. So 
 upon the thoughtful mind in Israel there did 
 dawn in time gome conception of the moral 
 unity of mankind. And upon some minds had 
 dawned the still more startling idea, the devel- 
 opment of a supernationalism. 
 
 This term "supernationalism" sounds 
 very much like supernaturahsm, and if it were 
 not an awkward phrase, we might speak of a 
 supernatural supernationalism. By it is 
 meant the operation of a universal Power in 
 regulating the influence of nations upon one 
 another. The figure of Cyrus the Persian, a 
 man who, seen from this distance, assumes 
 the proportions of a Caesar or a Napoleon, ap- 
 pears upon the horizon. The voice says, 
 "Cry!" and the prophet inquires, "What shall 
 I cry?" and God answers, "Cyrus is my shep- 
 herd." Nebuchadnezzar is to sack Jerusalem 
 and take Israel away into captivity. Cyrus is 
 to fall upon Babylon and befriend the cap- 
 tives. Is this man God's shepherd? Yes. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 11 
 
 It is the ministry of calamity. The wrath of 
 man, the ambition of man, the cruelty of man, 
 are to praise God. Israel is to be purged of 
 her iniquity. Her pride is to be brought low. 
 The altars of heathen gods upon high places 
 which have seen unspeakable abominations 
 are to be destroyed. The land the prophet 
 loves is to be left desolate. But when Israel 
 returns from captivity the altars of spiritual 
 religion are to be reerected, and the fires of a 
 holier patriotism will consume even the relics 
 of national dishonor. 
 
 Cyrus is to prepare the way of the Lord and 
 to help make straight in the desert a highway 
 for Israel's God. Cyrus is to level the moun- 
 tains and raise up the valleys. After him 
 comes Alexander, making straight in the des- 
 ert a highway for the coming of the Christ. 
 Down from the north comes Attila, the scourge 
 of God. Huns and Vandals dim the glory of 
 classic Rome, but as the glory of pagan Rome 
 fades away a new day begins to dawn over the 
 ruins of the Coliseum and Nero's palace. 
 
12 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 Christ's day is coming. A thousand years 
 go by and Napoleon appears. Repubhcan 
 France is the pioneer of a democratic Europe. 
 The mountains of Bourbon monarchy are 
 brought low. The valleys of common human- 
 ity are exalted. Napoleon makes straight in 
 the desert a highway, not for God immedi- 
 ately, but for the common people, God's favor- 
 ites. This is supernationalism, and the He- 
 brew prophets saw it from afar. And we may 
 see it now. Or if we may not see it, we may 
 feel it. Haig has been leading the British 
 armies, Petain the French, Hindenburg the 
 Prussian, but God is leading all the armies, 
 and things can never be the same in Europe or 
 America after this war shall end. Mountains 
 are coming down and valleys are coming up. 
 
 The ethical basis of national power and 
 greatness. There is not a social problem 
 which confronts modern civilization that has 
 not a moral basis. Economic problems stand 
 out against the moral background. These 
 Hebrew prophets are patriots, every one of 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 13 
 
 them. They long for the greatness of the Jew- 
 ish State. They have pride in its history and 
 hope for its future. But the hope of every 
 prophet for the future of his country rests upon 
 the abihty and the disposition of the people to 
 rid themselves of social wrongs and economic 
 injustice. Indeed, they appeal to the shrewd 
 worldliness of the Jewish mind all the more 
 powerfully when they show how questions of 
 morals may be looked at from the economic 
 point of view. The voice in the wilderness 
 cries, "Why do ye spend your money for that 
 which is not bread, and your labor for that 
 which satisfieth not?" Such a voice might 
 have cried out, prior to August, 1914, on the 
 streets of London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, 
 "Why do ye spend your money for that which is 
 not bread, and your labor for that which satis- 
 fieth not?" 
 
 Such a voice is needed in New York. What 
 would Isaiah say on Fifth Avenue, or at New- 
 port, or Bar Harbor? What would he see? 
 Exactly what he saw in Jerusalem in the eighth 
 
14 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 century before Christ. Exactly what Jesus 
 saw eight hundred years later. Exactly what 
 George W. Cable saw in New Orleans, in 1860 : 
 "Men getting money, and women squandering 
 it. Gold pouring in at the hopper and out at 
 the spout. Thousands for vanity, thousands 
 for hidden sins; a slender fraction for the 
 wants of the body; less for the cravings of the 
 soul. Lazarus paid to stay away from the gate. 
 John the Baptist in broadcloth, a circlet of 
 white linen about his neck, his meat, strawber- 
 ries and ice-cream. The lower classes scorned. 
 Awkward silences and visible wincings at allu- 
 sions to death. Converse on eternal things 
 banished as if it were the smell of cabbage." 
 
 This was Rome during the reign of the 
 Caesars. It was every European capital before 
 the Present War. And we called it civiliza- 
 tion. But, as a great international lawyer said 
 at a meeting of the American Bar Association 
 not many years ago, "Civilization is not do- 
 minion, wealth, material luxury, nay, not even 
 a great literature and education widespread, 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 15 
 
 good though these be. Civilization is not a 
 veneer; it must penetrate to the very heart 
 and core of societies of men. Its true signs 
 are, thought for the poor and suffering, chiv- 
 alrous regard and respect for woman, the frank 
 recognition of human brotherhood, irrespective 
 of race or color or nation or religion, love of 
 ordered freedom, abhorrence of what is mean 
 and cruel and vile, ceaseless devotion to the 
 claims of justice." 
 
 Every Hebrew prophet saw clearly, and we 
 moderns, whether Hebrews or Christians, must 
 see that religion and patriotism alike demand 
 that we be no longer indifferent to social sin 
 and misery. "Prepare ye the way of the 
 Lord." This means that we must develop a 
 new conscience, a commercial conscience, a 
 corporate conscience, a civic conscience, and a 
 new heart for poor humanity, remembering 
 that "poor humanity" is not merely humanity 
 strugghng with poverty, humanity poorly clad, 
 but that it describes all humanity which lacks 
 anything of mental horizon and moral strength. 
 
16 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 If the Hebrew prophets have any message for 
 the world in the year of our Lord 1917, it may 
 be thus summed up: "The fate of civiliza- 
 tion is to be ultimately decided upon moral 
 grounds," Belgium, raped and robbed, has 
 promise of better permanence than Prussia — 
 though that may not be saying much! Right- 
 eousness, like truth, though crushed to earth 
 shall rise again. 
 
 "Prepare ye the way of the Lord" is a call 
 to national service by the path of moral dis- 
 cipline. The world's deserts are mostly in 
 men's minds. The high mountains which 
 must be brought low in order to make a high- 
 way for God and for God's purpose are moun- 
 tains of ignorance and mountains of prejudice 
 and mountains of selfishness. The valleys 
 which must be exalted are the valleys of low 
 thoughts, of sordid impulses; valleys of sloth 
 and slippered ease; valleys in which we live 
 who are perfectly content with enough to eat 
 and enough to drink and enough to wear. 
 "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 17 
 
 years." So Europe was saying to itself when 
 the tempest of war broke. And where is Eu- 
 rope's surplusage of goods to-day? So we 
 were saying to ourselves a little while ago. 
 Now comes the storm. Excess profits are to 
 go into the common treasury. Large incomes 
 are to be heavily taxed. Even small incomes 
 must be divided for the common good. What 
 we would not do for education or charity or 
 missions, we have got to do for war. 
 
 In the light of the burdens which have been 
 laid upon us, nay, in the light of the burdens 
 we have willingly, almost gladly, assumed, we 
 read anew the word of God, "Ye are not your 
 own." It is a fact, we are not our own. 
 Nothing we have is our own. The State has 
 a perfect right to take all we have, if it be neces- 
 sary to save the State. Our sons are not our 
 own. Our lives are not our own. America 
 has never before known the meaning of self- 
 surrender as fully as we know it now, or shall 
 know it soon. And is all this loss? Nay, 
 come what may of necessity for sacrifice, we 
 
18 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 shall find ourselves richer than ever before in 
 all that goes to make up abundant life. Fam- 
 ily life may be enriched by the enforced absence 
 of a dear one. What we have left, when 
 every tax is paid and every voluntary burden 
 borne, will weigh more than all our fortunes 
 devoted to selfish ends. Britain and France, 
 Italy and Russia were never so rich as now, and 
 we shall be none the poorer for sharing our 
 wealth with them. "The glory of the Lord 
 shall be revealed," says the prophet. And 
 what is the glory of the Lord? The glory of 
 the sun is to shine. The glory of the earth is 
 to yield her increase. The glory of the Lord 
 is the glory of the Supreme Giver. And the 
 glory of the nation, like the glory of the Church 
 of God, is to exhaust itself in giving. 
 
 I had a field, and lent it 
 
 To one who had no land to cultivate. 
 
 He turned the soil and found a treasure there; 
 
 Never before had I such yield. 
 
 I had a house unoccupied; 
 I lent it to a homeless man, 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 19 
 
 And lo! the value of the house I occupied 
 Increased in double measure. 
 
 I had a jewel, bright and rare; 
 
 I sold it that the price thereof 
 
 Might feed the famine of a multitude; — 
 
 My starving soul was kept alive 
 
 By human fellowship with those my gift had fed. 
 
 I had a life to live ; I sought 
 
 To live it to the full — ^to reach the heights; 
 
 I threw my life away — 
 
 I cast it in the balance of a noble cause; 
 
 That day I first began to live. 
 
II 
 
 THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord 
 sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his 
 train filled the temple. Above him stood the sera- 
 phim: each one had six wings; with twain he cov- 
 ered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, 
 and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto an- 
 other, and said. Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of 
 hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And 
 the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice 
 of him that cried, and the house was filled with 
 smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am un- 
 done; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I 
 dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for 
 mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts. 
 
 Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having 
 a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with 
 the tongs from off the altar: and he touched my 
 mouth with it, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy 
 lips; and thine iniquity is taken away and thy sin 
 forgiven. And I heard the voice of the Lord, say- 
 ing, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? 
 
 20 
 
THE VISION OF GOD 21 
 
 Then I said, Here am I; send me. And he said, 
 Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but un- 
 derstand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.— 
 Isaiah 6: 1-9. 
 
 While it is true that the terms "major" and 
 "minor" as applied to the Hebrew prophets do 
 not justify us in regarding the minor prophets 
 as of minor importance, nevertheless one at 
 least of the major prophets must ever be ranked 
 first in the goodly fellowship of the prophets. 
 All the Hebrew prophets are as stars in the 
 firmament of religious history, but "one star 
 differeth from another star in glory." There 
 is a branch of astronomy, known as celestial 
 photometry, which deals with light-ratios of 
 stars. The faintest stars visible to the unaided 
 eye under favoring atmospheric conditions are 
 of the sixth magnitude. It requires one hun- 
 dred such stars to give as much light as a star 
 of the first magnitude. Sirius, the Dog-Star, 
 "the glory of our winter skies," is the brightest 
 star in our heavens. What Sirius is in the 
 sky, Isaiah is in the firmament of prophecy. 
 
22 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 Of noble if not of royal birth, of lofty imagina- 
 tion, gifted with clear insight into politics as 
 well as with exalted ideas of morality and spir- 
 ituality, richly endowed with the genius of 
 poesy, a master of the arts of verbal symbolism, 
 devoted alike to the culture of unselfish patriot- 
 ism and pure rehgion, his name shines with a 
 luster that the ages cannot pale. 
 
 Isaiah is not first of Hebrew prophets in 
 point of time. He is not first indeed in that 
 great group of prophets who arose after the 
 division of the Solomonic kingdom. Hosea 
 and Amos preceded him. These two ap- 
 peared in the northern kingdom of Israel, ex- 
 posing present evil conditions and preparing 
 the people for impending perils. They were 
 of the few who saw clearly the tendencies of 
 their times. Within ten years the king of 
 Israel became a vassal of the Assyrian king, 
 A little later the northern part of Israel was in- 
 corporated as an Assyrian province and it was 
 not long until the political kingdom of Israel 
 had ceased to be. 
 
THE VISION OF GOD 23 
 
 About 779 B.C. Uzziah ascended the throne 
 of Judah and reigned for nearly forty years. 
 His was a prosperous and successful reign. 
 New trade routes were laid out connecting with 
 Egypt and the Persian Gulf on the south and 
 east and with Phoenicia and Damascus on the 
 north. Reforms of administration were insti- 
 tuted and the natural resources of the land 
 were developed. But, as wealth accumulated, 
 manhood decayed. The numerous wars of 
 preceding generations had resulted in the loss 
 of so many of the bravest and most ardent 
 spirits of the nation — and this is one of the 
 curses of war, a biological fact with far-reach- 
 ing moral consequences — that the character of 
 the people could not resist the temptations 
 which naturally accompany prosperity. Un- 
 scrupulous men acquired immense holdings of 
 land; wage-earners were oppressed; society 
 ran greedily after illicit pleasures, and the fu- 
 ture of rehgion seemed dark indeed. A storm 
 was gathering in the sky which only two men 
 in all Judah clearly perceived; one of these 
 
24 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 men was Isaiah, and the other was Micah. At 
 the very time when the nation needed a strong 
 hand at the helm, Uzziah was stricken with 
 leprosy, and king though he was, became an 
 alien in his own palace until death brought him 
 merciful release. 
 
 "In the year that king Uzziah died" — the 
 year of multiplying perils and gathering tem- 
 pests, the year in which, if all the facts had 
 been known, weak men would have fainted 
 with terror and even the strong would have 
 trembled at the thought of doom; in the year 
 of all years calling for wide vision of thought 
 and well directed vigor of action — in the year 
 that king Uzziah died, a young man dreamed 
 a dream and saw a vision. This was the be- 
 ginning of Isaiah's prophetic ministry. This 
 was the call, and the ordination was soon to 
 follow. 
 
 All that this vision meant to Isaiah we may 
 not know. Whether it came by day or night, 
 waking or sleeping, we cannot tell. But, 
 since a cause must be adequate to the effects 
 
THE VISION OF GOD 25 
 
 it produces, and since the result of this vision 
 molded the whole future course of this high- 
 born youth, there can be no doubt that it was a 
 vision splendid, vivid, graphic, realistic, deeply 
 and indelibly impressive. As he describes it 
 we recognize the Oriental metaphors, the rich 
 parable of throne and temple and winged ser- 
 aphim, which imagination fails to reproduce 
 for us of the Western world with our Western 
 modes of thought. We do not understand it, 
 just as we do not understand Pentecost with 
 its rushing mighty wind and its lambent 
 tongues of fire. But, as we perfectly under- 
 stand that Pentecost marks the entrance of a 
 new and mighty spiritual Force into the world, 
 so in this vision of Isaiah we recognize an 
 event in the life of a man in the light of which 
 life can never be the same, in the light of which 
 henceforth he sees forces at work in the State 
 and in the Church, forces active in the world 
 at large, to which he has been blind before. 
 Jacob had such a vision at Peniel, and Peter at 
 Joppa. Augustine had such a vision amid 
 
26 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 the paling splendors of a declining world em- 
 pire, and Bunyan had such a vision in the midst 
 of the corruption and intolerance of the most 
 profligate age that England ever saw. 
 
 Jacob's vision was of an opening heaven; 
 Peter's vision was of an inclusive spiritual king- 
 dom ; Augustine's vision was of the New Jeru- 
 salem; John Bunyan's vision was of the Chris- 
 tian's pathway Home; Isaiah's vision was, first 
 of all, of God. The supreme hour of any life, 
 the rarest pearl of hours, is when God is first 
 thought of as real, when He is seen, in the 
 mind of the dreamer, the thinker, as He is. It 
 may be we have thought of God as an imper- 
 sonal Power, an impenetrable Mystery, a 
 Stream of Tendency, an Infinite Unknown or 
 an Infinite Unknowable. It may be we have 
 imagined Him as a great King, sitting on His 
 throne of power, hurling thunderbolts at His 
 enemies. It may be we have pictured God a 
 stern Judge with instruments of vengeance in 
 His hands, ready to strike through with prongs 
 of pain the luckless sinner who stands before 
 
THE VISION OF GOD 27 
 
 Him. But when one who has held such a view 
 of God sees Him as He is — the God who is bet- 
 ter than our best thoughts of Him can be, more 
 patient than any teacher, more pitiful than any 
 father, more comforting than any mother, more 
 sovereign than any monarch, yet still not per- 
 mitting His sovereignty to impair His father- 
 hood — that is the day of our inward illumina- 
 tion, that is the birthday of our hope; and if 
 we be not too selfish, it is the begininng of our 
 real ministry. 
 
 I have somewhere in the world to-day a 
 friend, a wanderer on the face of the earth, a 
 homeless man "without chick or child." He 
 is a dreamer of great dreams, and you have 
 read some of his dreams in poetry. His 
 dreams have been of beauty and of truth, but 
 generally of truth impersonal, and unsatisfac- 
 tory because impersonal. Not a great while 
 ago he had a new vision, and it was like Isaiah's 
 in this respect — he got a new view of God. I 
 have in his handwriting the first expressed rap- 
 ture of his soul after he saw God. Because of 
 
28 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 what he saw in God, poverty, pain, homeless- 
 ness, deferred hope, ill requited labor have all 
 been less a burden to him than they were once. 
 Thus he writes, and not Isaiah speaks more 
 certainly than he: 
 
 I know Thee, God! 
 
 Thy vastness I see; 
 The stars and the sod, 
 
 All life, tell of Thee. 
 
 I know Thee, God! 
 
 My Father, my Friend; 
 Thou liftest the rod 
 
 A gift to extend. 
 
 I know Thee, God! 
 
 Almighty, All-kind; 
 In gloom though I trod. 
 
 My way was defined. 
 
 I know Thee, God, 
 
 And know all is well. 
 Though fate may be shod 
 
 In sandals of hell! 
 
 I know Thee, God! 
 And Thou knowest me; 
 
THE VISION OF GOD 29 
 
 I move at Thy nod 
 For what is to be. 
 
 For good and not ill 
 
 The long road I plod, 
 To work Thy great will — 
 
 / know Thee, God! 
 
 My poet's vision was of God in Hir relation 
 to a personal life. Isaiah's vision was of God 
 with reference to a country of the long ago, a 
 kingdom whose days were numbered, but a na- 
 tionality which still persists. The Hebrew na- 
 tion has ceased to be, but the Hebrew nation- 
 ality, like the Gulf Stream in the ocean, flows 
 on unmixed with other currents and unde- 
 flected from its course. 
 
 The effect of Isaiah's vision most concerns 
 us. We too need to see God. And we are 
 coming to see God. Our eyes have been 
 opened in recent days. Not yet perhaps is the 
 vision splendid; not yet is it restful; not yet is 
 it reassuring. Perhaps it cannot be restful 
 and reassuring until it is first to us what it was 
 to Isaiah, piercing, discomfiting. Surgery 
 
30 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 must sometimes precede healing. Bones must 
 sometimes be broken before they can rejoice. 
 "Faithful are the wounds of a friend." 
 
 The first effect of Isaiah's vision of God is a 
 very painful consciousness of self. A Psalm- 
 ist said, "In Thy light shall we see light/' and 
 he might have said, "In Thy light shall we dis- 
 cern darkness." We all know how, often. 
 Scripture is a mirror of the soul in which we 
 see our own disfigurements. The sight of God 
 caused this noble-minded and high-living 
 youth to see his own corruption and the cor- 
 ruption of his age. Do we of this age see our- 
 selves as God sees us? It is to be feared not 
 many of us have that vision. Here and there 
 prophets have it, and they have been preaching 
 to us for a generation the necessity for self- 
 examination. City after city in America in re- 
 cent days has spent large sums in social and 
 sanitary surveys. Not a few of our great mu- 
 nicipalities have instituted commissions on 
 morals. The leaders of us, the real moral 
 leaders, have been trying to induce us to look 
 
THE VISION OF GOD 31 
 
 at ourselves. Only since the war has there 
 been any general disposition to take an inven- 
 tory of our human resources. The vast ma- 
 jority of us have yet to see in what we are 
 really rich and in what we are truly poor. 
 
 Nations are rich or poor according to the 
 wealth or poverty of their ideals. Where are 
 our social ideals ? Who are the people we pay 
 most to see or hear? Whom do we put into 
 palaces and whom do we consign to hovels? 
 A moving picture hero gets — it is said he 
 earns — $700,000 a year. A gifted singer is 
 enabled out of his receipts to indulge his taste 
 for costly gems and rare curios of the Orient. 
 A popular comedian takes back with him from 
 America, as profits and royalties of a single 
 season of "entertaining," a sum not less than 
 the salary of the President of the Repubhc for 
 a quadrennium. Organizers and executives 
 of industrial enterprises can have what sal- 
 aries they please, while two of our great re- 
 ligious denominations are making painful ef- 
 forts to raise the average salary of their minis- 
 
32 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 ters, in one case to a thousand dollars a year, 
 and in the other to twelve hundred. The 
 average wage of the public school teacher — it 
 is not sufficient to justify the title "salary" — is 
 considerably less than a thousand dollars a 
 year. In short, we pay vastly more to be en- 
 tertained than we do to be educated or to be 
 inspired or to be improved in mind or morals. 
 There is a new branch of science known as 
 Eugenics. Comic papers poke fun at it and at 
 people who talk about it. But the plain facts 
 are that we have bureaus of animal husbandry; 
 we have endowed departments of research into 
 improved methods of breeding poultry, swine 
 and cattle; we spend vast sums on the improve- 
 ment of draft horses and race horses ; we have 
 invested in the manufacture of motor vehicles 
 in twenty years more money than we have in- 
 vested in colleges in a century. And what do 
 such facts signify? Only this, but plainly 
 this, that our ideals — and there is little dif- 
 ference between an ideal and an idol — are in 
 need of revision. We are better builders of 
 
THE VISION OF GOD 33 
 
 machines, weavers of cloth, diggers of canals, 
 creators of commerce, than we are builders of 
 manhood, protectors of childhood, redressers of 
 wrongs. 
 
 Isaiah bemoaned the fact that he dwelt 
 among a people of unclean Ups and that he 
 himself was a man of unclean lips. The sight 
 of God, the right thought of God, the concep- 
 tion of God as Infinite and Perfect Righteous- 
 ness, led him to profound dissatisfaction with 
 his age. But no amount of dissatisfaction 
 with our age is of any practical worth in the 
 way of reform if the unit of dissatisfaction be 
 not dissatisfaction with one's self, and if the 
 willingness to reform begin not close at home. 
 Some time ago a brilliant young student of 
 irregular habits sought an interview with a 
 prominent pastor, a leader of great movements, 
 and laid before him in glowing terms his 
 scheme for social reform. The pastor heard 
 him patiently and then with rare tenderness 
 said, 'Tour plan is a good one, and it would 
 be a great boon to humanity if it might be car- 
 
34 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 ried out, but do you not think it would be wise 
 for the reform to begin in your own life ? You 
 know there must be a unit of reform to begin 
 with," The young man had sense enough 
 and grace enough to see the point. 
 
 Isaiah saw the uncleanness of his own lips 
 before he saw the uncleanness of the lips of 
 the people. His first exclamation, after the 
 sight of Infinite Righteousness, is "Woe is me! 
 for I am undone; because I am a man of un- 
 clean lips." There is great hope for any re- 
 form which begins in the heart of the pros- 
 pective reformer. This was the early fault of 
 Moses. He began his crusade by murdering a 
 cruel taskmaster. His act of rashness de- 
 feated for a time the very will of God. In the 
 lonely years which followed the murder of the 
 Egyptian Moses had time to cleanse his own 
 stuffed bosom of the perilous stuff which ob- 
 structed the thought of God as it sought to find 
 a channel in the swift current of Moses' life. 
 Isaiah was wiser than Moses in that respect, 
 and we must be; surely the race has learned 
 
THE VISION OF GOD 35 
 
 something in the centuries which have passed 
 since God called Israel out of Egypt. His- 
 tory's lessons must not be lost on us. 
 
 A thoughtful student of current history 
 pointed out to us two years ago that while our 
 national weakness has sometimes been in de- 
 lay, quite as often it has been in an inconsid- 
 erate demand for what may be called "in- 
 stancy." It is this impulse, he reminds us, 
 which makes America the greatest purchaser 
 of cure-alls in the world, which makes Amer- 
 ica peculiarly prone to demand political pan- 
 aceas. We believe in social salvation by a 
 word, a battle-cry, rather than by a process. 
 We are blind to ways and means. Neither 
 free silver nor free trade; neither Government 
 ownership nor socialism can save the State. 
 The people must be lifted one by one. We are 
 inclined to make even religion a matter of 
 forms and symbols, relying upon things rather 
 than upon thoughts. If the thought of God 
 as Righteousness brought intense conviction of 
 sin to the mind of the prophet, the thought of 
 
36 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 God as Infinite Patience must have corrected 
 in him his youthful impulse to precipitancy. 
 How shall we reconcile such apparently con- 
 tradictory admonitions as "The King's busi- 
 ness requireth haste" and "He that believeth 
 shall not make haste"? By preserving our 
 mental poise, by carrying out the sentiment of 
 the poet, "without haste and without rest." 
 
 These many days the air has been full of in- 
 sistent demand for preparedness, but what 
 have the people meant by "preparedness"? 
 Some have meant one thing and some have 
 meant another. But the modern prophet, the 
 successor of Isaiah and Micah, has seen that 
 there must be a proper balance between mili- 
 tary preparedness and moral preparedness. 
 Dr. John Finley speaks of the mobilization of 
 the moral forces of the nation, the mobilization 
 of the interior forces of our manhood. Ten- 
 nyson sings of one "whose strength was as the 
 strength of ten because his heart was pure." 
 Pure hearts, pure motives, lives stripped of 
 selfish aims and ends, a people with desires 
 
THE VISION OF GOD 37 
 
 purged of unworthy passions, a national soul 
 "dowered with the hate of hate," — such a 
 power is invincible and unconquerable. Such 
 a force thrown into the world struggle will lift 
 the balance into which it is cast, however wav- 
 ering that balance may be now, will lift it to un- 
 challenged victory. But victory, after all, is of 
 the spirit. The great victories of history have 
 been moral rather than material. This is as 
 true of the Marne as of Marathon and Bunker 
 Hill. Liege, Louvain and Namur may be rep- 
 resented in sculpture by that figure called 
 "Gloria Victis," a winged woman's figure bear- 
 ing aloft a youth who has received a mortal 
 wound in combat. The youth faints, droops, 
 but still clings to his broken sword. This is 
 the very essence of conquest, "the spirit of 
 the unconquerable." 
 
 To Isaiah and to his compatriots, contem- 
 porary and succeeding, the vision of God 
 brought not alone soul-searching and soul- 
 cleansing but immeasurable motive. "And I 
 heard the voice of the Lord saying. Whom shall 
 
38 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, 
 Here am I ; send me." This is the justification 
 of the vision. The Mount of Transfiguration 
 has little value unless we carry with us from 
 the heights, when we descend into the plain 
 of the commonplace, the glory we have beheld. 
 The prophets employ a very significant phrase 
 to describe the habit of church-going. They 
 call it "temple-treading." To what end is the 
 vision of the temple-treader if he leave behind 
 him as he passes out through the Beautiful 
 Gate into the unbeautiful city the image of the 
 heavenly city whose splendor smote him as he 
 laid his gift upon the altar ?, 
 
 Let us read again these first four chapters 
 of Isaiah. We may have to read them many 
 times before we see what one of our great mod- 
 ern expositors points out, that the prophet had 
 a vision of three Jerusalems — the ideal Jeru- 
 salem; Jerusalem as it was, cobwebbed with 
 reUgious neglect and littered with social wreck- 
 age, and Jerusalem as it was to be, less perfect 
 than the ideal Jerusalem, but more perfect than 
 
THE VISION OF GOD 39 
 
 the Jerusalem of his day. The prophetic soul 
 can see three Americas — the ideal America, 
 America as she is, and America as she is to be, 
 cleansed by the fire of sacrifice and strength- 
 ened with the might of chivalrous manhood. 
 The prophet of God sees the modern city, first 
 as God would have it built ; then as the modern 
 city is; then the city of to-morrow, the city of 
 our children and our children's children, not 
 yet the New Jerusalem, but something vastly 
 better than the city that we know. Tennyson 
 had a prophetic vision when he wrote, sixty 
 years after his first "Locksley Hall": 
 
 Is it well that while we range with Science, glory- 
 ing the time, 
 
 City children soak and blacken soul and sense in 
 city slime? 
 
 There among the gloomy alleys, Progress halts on 
 palsied feet, 
 
 Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thou- 
 sands on the street; 
 
 There the master scrimps his haggard seamstress of 
 her daily bread; 
 
 There a single sordid attic holds the living and the 
 dead; 
 
40 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 There the smoldering fire of fever creeps across the 
 
 rotten floor 
 And the crowded couch of incest in the warrens of 
 
 the poor. 
 
 Dr. David Gregg twenty years ago wrote a 
 book called Makers of the American Re- 
 public^ in which he gives vivid pen-pictures 
 of the Virginia colonists, the Pilgrims, the 
 Dutch, the Puritans, the Quakers, the Scotch 
 and the Huguenots. The book embodies the 
 result of extensive historical research, but is 
 still more valuable because so highly suggest- 
 ive of American history yet to be written. We 
 are the makers of the Republic of to-morrow. 
 Right rapidly are we making history in these 
 days. "We have seen a fiery gospel writ in 
 burnished rows of steel." We have seen every 
 nation in Europe drinking the vintage of the 
 grapes of wrath. We have dared to take the 
 cup into our hands, though not yet have we 
 raised it to our lips. We are yet to taste its 
 bitterness and perhaps to drain its dregs. But 
 we shall learn, by so much as we seek to square 
 
THE VISION OF GOD 41 
 
 our purposes to the mind of God; by so much 
 as we cast down our golden idols and cease to 
 worship in our high places of pleasure, by so 
 much as we lift the conflict out of the arena of 
 self-interest and achieve the secret of spiritual 
 alliances, by so much as we rise above merce- 
 nary living and settle down to simple earnest- 
 ness and even to severity of life, that a nation 
 may prove its soul even while it treads the path 
 to its Gethsemane. It is not necessary that we 
 should be conveniently environed, or that we 
 should be rich and increased with goods, or 
 that we should command the commerce of the 
 world, or play a great part in world politics; 
 but it is necessary that we should scorn the 
 tricks of petty politics ; it is necessary that the 
 statesmen of the South should be ashamed to 
 say to the people of the North, "You have 
 clamored most loudly for preparedness, you 
 must pay the greater part of the war taxes"; 
 and it is necessary that we should keep our 
 minds as free from fear as from foolish optim- 
 ism. Only so shall our swords be bathed in 
 
42 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 heaven. The nation that shrinks from plain 
 duty loses its soul — if it have left a soul to lose. 
 The nation that resorts to injustice is forging 
 the weapons of its own destruction. The na- 
 tion that forgets God is doomed to rot and die. 
 This was Isaiah's message to Judah and Jeru- 
 salem and, we believe, it is the prophetic mes- 
 sage to America to-day. "He that hath ears 
 to hear, let him hear." 
 
Ill 
 
 SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 
 
 Who hath believed our message? and to whom 
 hath the arm of Jehovah been revealed? For he 
 grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root 
 out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeli- 
 ness ; and when we see him, there is no beauty that 
 we should desire him. He was despised, and re- 
 jected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted 
 with grief: and as one from whom men hide their 
 face he was despised; and we esteemed him not. 
 
 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our 
 sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of 
 God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our 
 trangressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; 
 the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and 
 with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep 
 have gone astray; we have turned every one to his 
 own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity 
 of us all. 
 
 He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he 
 
 opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the 
 
 slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is 
 
 dumb, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression 
 
 43 
 
44 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 and judgment he was taken away; and as for his 
 generation, who among them considered that he was 
 cut off out of the land of the living for the trans- 
 gression of my people to whom the stroke was due? 
 And they made his grave with the wicked, and with 
 a rich man in his death; although he had done no 
 violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. 
 
 Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him; he hath 
 put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an 
 offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall pro- 
 long his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall 
 prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of 
 his soul, and shall be satisfied: by the knowledge 
 of himself shall my righteous servant justify many; 
 and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will 
 I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall 
 divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured 
 out his soul unto death, and was numbered with 
 the transgressors : yet he bare the sin of many, and 
 made intercession for the transgressors. — Isaiah 
 53. 
 
 In its liberal sense, redemption is the recov- 
 ery of what has been lost. Differ as we may 
 concerning the doctrines of original sin and 
 the fall of man, it requires only a superficial 
 knowledge of humanity to convince us that, in 
 a very real sense, we are members of a lost race. 
 
SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 45 
 
 A thing is lost in so far as it fails or is unable to 
 fulfill the purpose of its maker. A locomotive 
 that leaves its track is lost — until it is restored 
 to normal condition. A sick body is lost un- 
 less medical or surgical science shall cooperate 
 with nature in restoring it to its natural func- 
 tioning. What shall it profit a man to gain 
 the whole world — to gain all worlds — if his 
 own soul be lost? What is a lost soul? A 
 soul off the track, a soul helplessly sick, an in- 
 valid soul, a soul which is lost in respect of its 
 proper use. In all these senses — and in 
 more — the world is lost, and hence is in need 
 of redemption. A locomotive, its trucks 
 buried in the soft earth, calls for the wrecking 
 crew. A stricken body calls for the physician. 
 A lost world calls for redemption. 
 
 There were three men in Rome at about the 
 same time, Nero, Seneca and Paul. Nero was 
 a hedonist, Seneca a soldier and Paul a Chris- 
 tian. Nero saw the world as the subject of 
 pleasure. Seneca saw the world as the subject 
 of reflection. Paul saw the world as the sub- 
 
46 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 ject of redemption. But Paul was not the first 
 to have this view of the world and humanity. 
 The Hebrew prophets had been given the same 
 vision. This it is which redeems their writ- 
 ings from absolute despair. Theirs is 
 
 the patriot's dream 
 That sees beyond the years 
 The alabaster cities gleam, 
 Undimmed by human tears. 
 
 But no one of them saw redemption immedi- 
 ately. They saw it as we see the golden-tipped 
 spires of airy temples in the sunset clouds, or 
 as we see the palms and fountains in a desert 
 mirage. (There is justification of the use of 
 such a figure in speaking of prophecy, in the 
 very word Isaiah uses in that wonderful thirty- 
 fifth chapter, in which he says "the glowing 
 sand shall become a pool." His word for 
 "glowing sand" is Kterally "mirage." So the 
 mirage, a thing utterly unreal, is to become 
 real, the vision is to be fulfilled.) 
 
 The redemption of the human race, in the 
 prophetic view, is to come mediately rather 
 
SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 47 
 
 than immediately, that is to say, by the use of 
 means, as the culmination of a process. All 
 the prophets see the culmination of the process 
 more or less clearly, but to three of them it is 
 given to see the process itself, Isaiah, Jere- 
 miah, and Hosea see, in differing degrees, the 
 place of suffering in redemption. Isaiah sees, 
 first, a suffering nation as the agent of God's 
 redeeming purpose. Later he sees a suffer- 
 ing remnant of a nation, keeping alive through 
 their faith in God the hope of the world for 
 ages yet to come, singing the songs of Zion in 
 a strange land, cherishing under alien skies 
 the hope of "the consolation of Israel." At 
 last Isaiah sees a Man, a single suffering Serv- 
 ant, through Whom human redemption is to 
 be complete. While "the thoughts of men 
 are widened with the process of the suns" — 
 thoughts with reference to the redemption of 
 the race — Isaiah's thoughts with reference to 
 the media of redemption grow narrower and 
 narrower with the process of the suns until in 
 the fifty-third chapter he gives us a portrait of 
 
48 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 a lone Sufferer wounded for our transgressions, 
 bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of 
 our peace upon Him, our heahng purchased 
 with His stripes. Whomsoever Isaiah may 
 have had in mind, and whatever the process he 
 foresaw by which one bruised Life should be- 
 come an offering for collective sin, we think 
 we know whom He had in mind, Who spoke 
 through Isaiah's lips. 
 
 Waiving all questions of criticism touching 
 the interpretation of prophecy in general and 
 of this prophecy in particular, practically all 
 scholars agree that Isaiah's picture of a soli- 
 tary Sufferer purchasing redemption for many 
 has its only perfect historic counterpart in 
 Jesus Christ. We do not use terms loosely 
 when we say this is His portrait. It is true. 
 He was not the only man in history to be de- 
 spised and rejected. There have been innu- 
 merable men and women of sorrows and ac- 
 quainted with grief; myriads have been 
 oppressed and afflicted; not a few have made 
 intercession for transgressors, but of One and 
 
SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 49 
 
 One alone can it be truly said that He bare the 
 sin of many and that "Jehovah hath laid on 
 Him the iniquity of us all." 
 
 It takes nothing from our sense of the 
 unique value of the sufferings of Jesus to say 
 that the Atonement He made was in accord 
 with a law of atonement which runs through- 
 out life. Jesus is, as an apostle calls him, 
 ''first among His brethren." And who are 
 His brethren? All who have suffered for the 
 redemption of their fellow-men, all the goodly 
 fellowship of the prophets, all the glorious 
 company of the apostles, all the noble army of 
 martyrs. 
 
 Dr. Charles Allen Dinsmore has given us a 
 noble book entitled Atonement in Literature 
 and Life, in which he affirms that sin, suffer- 
 ing and reconciliation are among the control- 
 ling ideas of both religion and literature, and 
 that no religion can gain the assent of reason- 
 ing men which does not contain a positive 
 message regarding these. He reminds us that 
 sin, retribution and reconciliation are the 
 
50 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 theme of the Iliad. Three of the seven plays 
 of -Sschylus which have come down to us re- 
 veal the essential seriousness of the Greek 
 mind, capable as it was of intense conviction 
 of sin and of the necessity of redemption by 
 suffering. The hereditary curse of sin is 
 stayed only when a right-minded man, Orestes, 
 was put to grief. The soul of Orestes became, 
 in a sense, an offering for sin, for the sin of 
 his ancestors and the sin of his generation. 
 
 The idea of redemptive suffering runs all 
 through the noblest literature of the ages. It 
 is in the CEdipus of Sophocles, it is in Dante, 
 it is in Shakespeare's Tempest and in his 
 Henry VIII. Milton is full of it, and Tenny- 
 son, "largest voice since Milton." So is 
 Browning. It is of the very essence of moral 
 grandeur as set forth in the words of Sidney 
 Lanier in The Marshes of Glynn: 
 
 "Ye spread and span like the catholic man who 
 
 hath mightily won 
 God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain, 
 And sight out of blindness, and purity out of a 
 
 stain." 
 
SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 51 
 
 It is significant that two of the most striking 
 literary productions of our day should bear the 
 same title, one in English and the other in 
 Latin. Frederic Lawrence Knowles was 
 scarcely more than a brilliant boy when he died 
 in 1905, but he left behind him immortal 
 lines and none more perfect than these he 
 calls Out of the Depths: 
 
 Torn upon Thy wheel, 
 
 Foul'd with blood and dust, 
 Still my heart can feel, 
 
 Still trust; 
 
 Still my lips can urge, 
 
 "Heal me with Thy Sword, 
 Cleanse me with Thy scourge. 
 
 Lord, Lord!" 
 
 Though a bleeding clod, 
 
 Faint with thirst and pain, 
 Still my hopes, dear God, 
 
 Remain; 
 
 Yea, and more than hope: 
 Faith! A prayer! Awing! 
 
 Even on Calvary's slope 
 I sing!" 
 
52 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 An English man of letters, essayist, play- 
 wright and poet, fell into deep disgrace and 
 was sentenced to a term in prison. His De 
 Profundis was written in a convict's cell: 
 
 "I have lain in prison for nearly two years. 
 Out of my nature has come wild despair; an aban- 
 donment to grief that was piteous even to look at; 
 terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; 
 anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no 
 voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed 
 through every possible mood of suffering. Better 
 than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth 
 meant when he said: 
 
 Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark, 
 And has the nature of infinity. 
 
 But while there were times when I rejoiced in the 
 idea that my sufferings were to be endless, I could 
 not bear them to be without meaning. Now I find 
 hidden somewhere away in my nature something 
 that tells me that nothing in the whole world is 
 meaningless, and suffering least of all. That 
 something hidden away in my nature, like a treas- 
 ure in a field, is Humility." 
 
 There has already been a considerable lit- 
 erary fruitage of the present war. Poets like 
 
SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 53 
 
 John Masefield and Rupert Brooke have sung 
 their songs; eloquent advocates have issued 
 their appeals for the defense; narrative writers 
 have found sufficient themes for the exercise 
 of their rarest gifts. But the epic of the war 
 is yet to be written. Perhaps its greatest 
 song is yet to be sung. When that epic is 
 written, when that song is sung, shall it not be 
 a De Profundis? Can it be anything less? 
 A book by Mr. Owen Wister bears the title, 
 The Pentecost of Calamity. The latest 
 book by Dr. George Sherwood Eddy is called 
 Suffering and the War. It was in the 
 twelfth century of our era that Bernard of 
 Cluny wrote the hymn beginning "The world 
 is very evil." If some Bernard of our day 
 were to write a hymn for this age, it might well 
 begin, "The world is very sad." The fair 
 fields of Belgium are desolate. Prosperous 
 provinces of France have been stripped bare 
 of human habitation and of every forest and 
 orchard. Not in those provinces can it be 
 said, "The birds of the air have nests." 
 
54 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 Stately temples are in ruins. Historic palaces 
 are shapeless heaps of debris. University li- 
 braries are in ashes. Serbia has been swept 
 as by a fire. Portions of Poland have been 
 thrice fought over. There are sections in that 
 unhappy country where it is said there are left 
 no children under seven years of age. More 
 than a million people are now starving in 
 Armenia, Syria, the Caucasus, Persia and Pal- 
 estine. The past winter has been the most 
 terrible winter the world has ever known. A 
 million and a half Armenians have been 
 massacred. The American consul at Tiflis 
 reports forty thousand fatherless children in 
 his region. In Damascus, where Saul of Tar- 
 sus received his sight, 120,000 people have 
 died during the last two years of the war. 
 A missionary writes, "I saw thirteen dead 
 in one Uttle alley." 200,000 have died in 
 Lebanon alone. One of the Syrian pastors 
 in Lebanon fasted twenty days in order to give 
 some food to the hundreds of hungry people 
 about him, and at length he too perished. An 
 
SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 55 
 
 American missionary in Syria writes, "What 
 I have seen and heard passes all imagination. 
 It was like passing through hell. One place 
 where my carriage stopped women were search- 
 ing in the refuse of the road for barley seeds. 
 I gave them some bread. They threw them- 
 selves on it like dogs dying of hunger." But 
 hunger is not the worst form of suffering nor 
 is death the most dreadful fate. 
 
 The banishment of the Armenian popula- 
 tion of the Turkish Empire from their homes, 
 accompanied as it has been by unspeakable 
 atrocities, marks the massacre of a race. But 
 not all martyrs are massacred. How many 
 women and girls have been driven from their 
 homes as the German army has fallen back to 
 the "Hindenburg line"? At best they must 
 serve the oppressors of their people. At 
 worst, death were vastly to be preferred. 
 Think of the Belgian exiles in Germany. 
 Think of five millions of men in prison camps. 
 Think of seven millions of men lying in shal- 
 low graves in France, in Galicia, in the Balkans, 
 
56 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 at Gallipoli, in South Africa, in Mesopotamia. 
 Think of the thousands who have found their 
 sepulcher in the sea. Think of a milhon men 
 bhnded or lamed for hfe. This is a part 
 of the ghastly harvest of war. Science has per- 
 fected the instruments of destruction we wield 
 so expertly, but science has no cure for broken 
 hearts. And unnumbered hearts are broken. 
 There is a far-away look in unnumbered wom- 
 en's eyes. What do they see? They see what 
 Forceythe Willson saw who saw war stripped 
 of its romance: 
 
 I see the death-gripe on the plain, 
 The grappling monsters on the main, 
 The tens of thousands that are slain. 
 And all the speechless suffering and woe of heart 
 and brain. 
 
 I see the gorged prison den, 
 The dead-line and the pent-up pen. 
 The thousands quartered in the fen, 
 The living deaths of skin and bone that were the 
 goodly forms of men. 
 
 And still the bloody dew must fall, 
 And His great darkness with the pall 
 
SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 57 
 
 Of His dread judgments over all, 
 Till the dead nation rise transformed by Truth to 
 conquer all! 
 
 And to what end is all this? Ah, that is 
 the question we are all asking. Is all this 
 loss to bring the world no gain? Are we 
 spending our treasures or are we squandering 
 them? Is this "Pentecost of Calamity" to 
 bring no gifts? Is it to bring no rushing 
 mighty wind to chase away evil vapors? Is 
 the fire of this Pentecost to have no purifying 
 power? Are not the tongues of this Pentecost 
 to speak at length ? If not, then it is no Pente- 
 cost, but Babel. Yet even Babel yielded more 
 than mere confusion. Men learned to build 
 by having their foolish towers topple over upon 
 them. God did not begin this war, and He 
 is not continuing it. But He is in it. He 
 was before it. He will be after it. He saw us 
 building our high walls and higher towers. 
 He heard the hymns of hate they sang before 
 the German Hymn of Hate was written. He 
 was a witness of the toasts that were drunk 
 
58 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 "To the Day" — the day of hell let loose and 
 murder set to martial music. His still small 
 voice spoke to those who would listen, but the 
 multitudes were deaf to it. For forty years 
 international jealousy, suspicion and distrust 
 had been gathering the fagots for this con- 
 flagration. The hand of a Serbian student 
 set the torch to the pile, but if his hand had 
 not, another's would. They make the fire 
 who assemble the fuel. 
 
 This is God's world, and the people in it are 
 God's children — unless they repudiate His 
 parenthood. He is the soldier's God, and the 
 prisoner's God, and the sufferer's God. In- 
 deed He is the suffering God. Victor Hugo 
 once wrote on the base of a crucifix: 
 
 Weepers, come to this God, for He doth weep; 
 Ye sufferers, come to Him, for He doth care; 
 Ye tremblers, come, for He doth mercy keep; 
 Come, ye who die, for He doth still endure. 
 
 The Captain of our salvation was made per- 
 fect through sufferings. In all the afflictions 
 of Israel, Israel's God was afflicted. In Israel's 
 
SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 59 
 
 exile, Israel's God was exiled. God was with 
 the saving, suffering remnant that returned 
 from Babylon. And all the while God was 
 preparing the world for the supreme revelation 
 of Himself in One whose visage was to be "so 
 marred more than any man," and whose soul 
 was to be an offering for sin. 
 
 God is revealing Himself to men and women 
 through the experiences of the war. We are 
 learning what we would not permit peace to 
 teach us — that nations, like individuals, can 
 not live unto themselves ; that nations must be 
 unselfish. We are learning the value of inter- 
 national comradeship in the defense of a com- 
 mon ideal. We are learning a new respect for 
 the rights of small nations. The sufferings 
 of Belgium since August, 1914, have written 
 her name imperishably in history. For a few 
 fateful days she held the German Army at bay 
 until France got her breath and until Brit- 
 ain brought her "contemptible little army" 
 across the Channel. Belgium is bruised, but, 
 thank God, she bruised the serpent's head! 
 
60 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 We are learning a new passion of revolt against 
 the possible domination of the world by one 
 ambitious Power. We are learning the beauty 
 of sacrifice. They who face death daily are 
 learning the possibility of a constructive belief 
 in the life to come. They — and we all — are 
 learning to think with a new sincerity. 
 Ghastly as war is, the virtues of unselfishness 
 and devotion to high ends shine aloft like 
 stars. Women were never so noble. The 
 words "1 serve" express the passion of un- 
 counted hearts. We are learning how lightly 
 we hold our chattels — subject to the common 
 weal. And sufferers are learning everywhere 
 the tender comfort of the God of love. Jesus 
 Christ is walking through the world to-day. 
 Dying eyes catch a sight of His passing glory 
 and dying hands reach out to touch the hem 
 of His garment. The world sees God through 
 its tears and gropes in its anguish if haply it 
 may find Him, though He is not very far from 
 any one of us. 
 
 Sad as the world is, it is alive with a new 
 
SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 61 
 
 hope of a better world when this war shall end. 
 The fire is burning up much that we wanted to 
 get rid of. The storm of hail is sweeping away 
 many a refuge of lies. A new epoch lies just 
 beyond the horizon — an epoch of free peoples 
 and of peace no king or chancellor can ever 
 again molest or break. Those who suffer in 
 this war are helping to purchase with their 
 pain the safety of "our children and our chil- 
 dren's children and as many as are afar off." 
 
IV 
 
 THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 
 
 Upon the four and twentieth day of the eleventh 
 month, which is the month Shebat, in the second 
 year of Darius, came the word of Jehovah unto 
 Zechariah the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo, 
 the prophet, saying, I saw in the night, and, behold, 
 a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among 
 the myrtle-trees that were in the bottom ; and behind 
 him there were horses, red, sorrel, and white. Then 
 said I, my Lord, what are these? And the 
 angel that talked with me said unto me, I will show 
 thee what these are. And the man that stood 
 among the myrtle-trees answered and said, These 
 are they whom Jehovah hath sent to walk to and 
 fro through the earth. And they answered the 
 angel of Jehovah that stood among the myrtle-trees, 
 and said, We have walked to and fro through the 
 earth, and, behold, all the earth sitteth still, and is 
 at rest. 
 
 Then the angel of Jehovah answered and said, 
 Jehovah of hosts, how long wilt thou not have 
 mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, 
 
 62 
 
THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 63 
 
 against which thou hast had indignation these three- 
 score and ten years? And Jehovah answered the 
 angel that talked with me with good words, even 
 comfortable words. So the angel that talked with 
 me said unto me, Cry thou, saying, Thus saith 
 Jehovah of hosts; I am jealous for Jerusalem and 
 for Zion with a great jealousy. And I am very 
 sore displeased with the nations that are at ease; 
 for I was but a little displeased, and they helped 
 forward the affliction. Therefore thus saith Je- 
 hovah: I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies; 
 my house shall be built in it, saith Jehovah of 
 hosts, and a line shall be stretched forth over Jeru- 
 salem. Cry yet again, saying. Thus saith Jehovah 
 of hosts: My cities shall yet overflow with prosper- 
 ity; and Jehovah shall yet comfort Zion, and shall 
 yet choose Jerusalem. — ^Zechariah 1: 7-17, 
 
 In the sixth century before Christ the exiled 
 Jews returned to Jerusalem from Babylon un- 
 der the inspiration of Zerubbabel and Joshua. 
 Deserted altars were restored, neglected sacri- 
 fices were resumed, and the rebuilding of the 
 ruined Temple began. Two prophets arose 
 during this period, Haggai and Zechariah. 
 The first messages of Zechariah blended with 
 the last messages of Haggai. Haggai spoke 
 
64 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 to the older generation, Zechariah to the 
 younger. The prophetic message is harmo- 
 nious, though the messengers strike different 
 notes. Haggai looks back and sees the house 
 of God in its former glory. His vision of the 
 future is colored by memory. Zechariah is 
 forward-looking; hope paints his picture of 
 the future. Yet he is not indifferent to the 
 value of the past. He is the ideal reformer, 
 learning from nature, which evolves new forms, 
 not by rejecting the old, but by incorporating 
 them and going forward. 
 
 The prophets who predicted the Exile have 
 been vindicated. Seventy years have passed 
 since the First Great Exile, and sixty since the 
 Second, which completed the downfall of the 
 Jewish State. The saving remnant of God's 
 faithful people have kept alive in their hearts 
 the hidden seeds of a true spiritual kingdom. 
 Meantime a generation has grown up in Baby- 
 lon quite well satisfied to remain expatriates. 
 But there are those who cannot forget Jerusa- 
 lem, who prefer it above their chief joy. Divine 
 
THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 65 
 
 discontent is in their souls, however fat may 
 be the harvest-yield in Babylon. At last the 
 way opens for the repatriation of the people. 
 The exiles return. If psalmists were needed 
 in Babylon to cheer the flagging spirits of the 
 exiles, prophets are still more needed now to 
 act as reconstructionists, to steady the waver- 
 ing wills of those who, like their ancestors 
 centuries before, preferred bondage with its 
 fleshpots to the joys and sweets of freedom. It 
 has always been the deepest curse of slavery so 
 to sap the vigor of a people as to make them 
 content with slavery. 
 
 Zechariah reminds his generation of the 
 judgments of God upon an age that "did not 
 hear nor hearken unto Jehovah." He asks, 
 "Your fathers, where are they? and the proph- 
 ets, do they live forever?" He affirms that 
 the words and statutes of the Almighty do live 
 forever. He cries: "Thus saith Jehovah of 
 hosts. Return unto me, and I will return unto 
 you." Then there dawns upon him the vision 
 of the Man under the Myrtles. It is a night- 
 
66 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 time vision, but it is prophetic of the dawn. 
 The place of the vision is a valley, but the fig- 
 ures in the vision are like those Elisha had seen 
 on the mountainside long before. First among 
 them is the Angel of Jehovah, and back of him 
 is a troop of horsemen mounted on horses, red, 
 bay and white. The prophet inquires, "What 
 are these?" And the Angel that talked with 
 him said, "I will show thee what these are." 
 Then the man who stood among the myrtle- 
 trees said, "These are they whom Jehovah hath 
 sent to walk to and fro through the earth." 
 They are God's cavalrymen, God's scouts, and 
 they report, "We have walked to and fro 
 through the earth, and behold, all the earth 
 is at peace." This is strange, though the 
 prophet does not comment upon it. He awaits 
 the explanation. History tells us that at this 
 very time — or about this time — wars were rag- 
 ing; that if wars had ceased, they had ceased 
 only for a brief interval. The year was 519 
 B.C. Persia was seething with revolt. Gen- 
 
THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 67 
 
 erally speaking, it was always so while Chaldea, 
 Babylon, Persia and Egypt flourished and flung 
 their banners in the air. "Red ruin and the 
 breaking up of laws" ruled with only brief and 
 precarious intervals of quiet. 
 
 True, all was quiet in Judah and Jerusalem, 
 but it was the quiet of lassitude, apathy and 
 death. There is another possible interpreta- 
 tion of the angel's words. It is said by hydro- 
 graphers that far beneath the surface of the 
 sea quiet reigns. Turbulent as the waves may 
 be that rise and fall before the tempestuous 
 winds, the undercurrents are still. God sees 
 life's undercurrents. It is quite possible that 
 the spiritual life of a nation may rest even in 
 the midst of war. Certainly saintly soldiers 
 have found it true that at times there may be 
 "central peace subsisting at the heart of end- 
 less agitation." Read the letters of General 
 "Chinese" Gordon. All around him was 
 tumult, tumult of Chinese rebels, tumult of 
 bloodthirsty blacks, but all within was passive 
 
68 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 and tranquil. There was one who could say. 
 
 In the secret of His presence, I am kept from strife 
 
 of tongues, 
 His pavilion is around me, and within are ceaseless 
 
 songs. 
 
 That one who sees with clear spiritual 
 vision may perceive the prevalence of inner 
 quiet even while "the heathen rage and the 
 people imagine a vain thing," has excellent il- 
 lustration in the life of our own people. On 
 Good Friday, April 6, of the present year, 
 after two and a half years of heart-searching 
 and waiting, two and a half years of abasement 
 and admirable self-restraint, two and a half 
 years of vain effort to preserve mental neutral- 
 ity, the United States entered the World War. 
 Superficially, America has been at peace since 
 the European War began, but actually there 
 have been wrestlings of spirit as keen and an- 
 guished as those of Jacob by the brook. A 
 prayer of thanks went up from unnumbered 
 hearts when President Wilson appeared be- 
 fore Congress and declared that we must have 
 
THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 69 
 
 an active part in making the world safe for 
 democracy. We experienced a sensation of 
 unspeakable relief. That this feeling was 
 shared by the multitudes was evident on every 
 hand. The thought must occur to us that, 
 whatever the reports of God's outriders un- 
 der the myrtle-tree may have signified as to 
 the then condition of the world with reference 
 to war and peace, there are times when God 
 sees peace beneath the most volcanic of po- 
 litical eruptions. This quality of vision, to 
 see things under the aspect of eternity, to 
 perceive the trend of things, their ultimate, is 
 the secret of the prophetic gift. We endure 
 what were otherwise unendurable "as seemg 
 the invisible." ^^ 
 
 "All the earth sitteth still, and is at rest. 
 Scarcely a generation passed before one of the 
 decisive battles of the world was fought. The 
 nations were at this very moment preparing for 
 Marathon. Yet Marathon ultimately meant 
 peace, because it was a victory of the spirit, a 
 great step forward in the march of human prog- 
 
70 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 ress. It was right that the Music Hall at 
 Athens should be built out of the timbers of 
 the captured ships of Marathon. There is no 
 music on earth or in heaven sweeter than that 
 which celebrates the victory of the human spirit 
 over the forces that would crush it. The mod- 
 ern Prussian world is akin to that ancient Per- 
 sian world. It may not be clear to all that 
 this is so. Neither was it clear to all that the 
 Greeks at Marathon stood for freedom, but we 
 see it now. We see now vastly better than 
 they saw on the battlefield of Tours that 
 Charles the Hammer was God's man, and that 
 the hammer was beating out the shape of a free 
 Europe. A thousand years from now it will be 
 more apparent than it can possibly be to us 
 that the armies of the Allies are fighting for 
 the redemption of the future. But we are not 
 altogether blind to the moral meaning of the 
 world-storm that rages about us. Thoughtful 
 and far-seeing men in the trenches are fight- 
 ing with the consciousness of a service per- 
 formed for generations yet to come. There 
 
THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 71 
 
 are occasionally searching words in letters from 
 the Front. There are pages in Donald Han- 
 key's book, A Student in Arms^ that attest 
 the possession of a strange peace, a peace that 
 passes explanation. Nothing is more amazing 
 than the patience of the wounded and the hope 
 and calm content of dying men, French and 
 British, as described by physicians and nurses 
 in military hospitals. It is something more 
 than the heroism that lies sleeping in the hearts 
 of common men. It is evidence that men may 
 be reconciled to the severest aspects of suffer- 
 ing if they are confident that the disaster is not 
 meaningless. 
 
 We may not have interpreted aright the 
 words of the angel. Perhaps for a little time 
 there was peace on earth — ^while men were 
 sharpening their knives for their neighbors' 
 throats. There was peace in the world when 
 Jesus was born, but peace soon to be broken. 
 Yet the angels sang "Peace on earth," and the 
 angels saw the history of humanity as a whole. 
 Peace on earth? Yea, "among men of good- 
 
72 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 will." Good-will is the one permanent basis 
 of peace, and good-will is of the moral essence 
 of Christianity. We talk of leagues to enforce 
 peace, and such leagues must be so long as 
 beasts in human form plan and plot to disturb 
 the peace of the world. Madmen must be re- 
 strained for their own good and for the com- 
 mon good. Marauders must be arrested. If 
 bad men conspire, good men must associate to 
 defeat their conspiracies. But far away in the 
 future lies the fulfillment of the apocalypse of 
 peace, not peace imposed but peace evolved, 
 peace growing out of permanent good-will. 
 
 Where had these riders been ? Through all 
 the earth. No nation had been unvisited. 
 No battlefield had been unwatched by the 
 celestial eyes. These are the agents of an 
 immanent God. They are the fleet, sure- 
 footed, open-eyed messengers of the Eternal. 
 Swifter than eagle's flight their course. Their 
 silent camps are spread by every rolling river 
 and under every arching sky. God is not in- 
 different to what happens on earth. He may 
 
THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 73 
 
 seem to be, and the fool may say there is no 
 God because judgment tarrieth. Let this vi- 
 sion correct the error of good men who fear 
 and of bad men who hope that God is inactive. 
 History proves that, as John Bright said, in the 
 long run ''the Eternal Powers are with the 
 equities." God is the ruler of the world and 
 He is no absentee landlord. He is the God of 
 all the nations, and He has no favorites. 
 
 In the report of an address by a German 
 theological professor in the Berliner Local 
 Anzeiger for November 13, 1914, we read, 
 "But the deepest and most thought-inspiring 
 result of the war is 'the German God' ; not the 
 national God, such as the lower nations wor- 
 ship, but 'our God,' who is not ashamed of be- 
 longing to us, the peculiar acquirement of our 
 heart." A pastor in Liegnitz, in a book of 
 war sermons, says, "One thing, I think, is clear. 
 God must stand on our side." Again he 
 speaks of "the old intimate kinship between 
 the essence of Christianity and of German- 
 ism." In the same sermon he affirms that "the 
 
74 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 Germans are the very nearest to the Lord.'' 
 Evidently he worships at the shrine of a tribal 
 God. Jehovah is to him only a magnified 
 Kaiser. Germany has much to learn from the 
 Hebrew prophets and not a little from this 
 vision of Zechariah. And so have we who 
 falter in our faith and ask if God has forgotten 
 Belgium and Serbia and Poland and Armenia. 
 No, God has not forgotten. His eyes see every 
 desolate home, every exiled patriot, every un- 
 marked grave, every blood-stained footprint 
 on mountainside or desert. "Vengeance is 
 mine, I will repay, saith Jehovah of hosts." 
 
 It is not the thoughtless or the immature 
 mind alone that asks, "What if God does see, 
 so long as He does not help?" Ah, but he 
 does help. He both sees and succors. He 
 has given a million Armenians the courage to 
 decline to renounce their faith. It is not in 
 human nature for a delicate girl to embrace 
 death rather than accept Islam. If human life 
 be the chief thing, if human safety be the sum 
 of human good, there were no martyrs such as 
 
THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 75 
 
 these. Far more precious than hfe is char- 
 acter, and through the darkness that has 
 settled down on Bible lands, heroic faith and 
 unsulUed honor, hope that makes naught of 
 death and courage that defies torture, shine out 
 Uke stars in the midnight sky. It was as plain 
 to Zechariah twenty-five hundred years ago as 
 it was to James Russell Lowell in the crisis 
 which preceded our Civil War, that 
 
 Behind the dim unknown 
 
 Standeth God within the shadow keeping watch 
 above His own. 
 
 The prophet heard God speak to the angel 
 under the myrtles "with good words, even com- 
 fortable words." God was still jealous for 
 Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy 
 and he was sore displeased with the nations that 
 were at ease. Therefore God had returned to 
 Jerusalem with mercies and with promises of 
 abundant blessings. Observe the personal 
 pronoun in these words: "My cities shall yet 
 overflow with prosperity." The cities of Ju- 
 dah were God's cities. Jerusalem was still 
 
76 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 God's city, though it had been in ruins. 
 Every city is God's city if it be inhabited by 
 God's people, if it be builded in righteousness 
 and founded upon equity. This was the 
 proclamation of the prophet's vision, as it had 
 been the message of his predecessors before the 
 Exile. This is the dream of the prophet of 
 our day, to make this city and every city a city 
 of God. 
 
 There was a time when Florence proclaimed 
 Christ King. But cities are not made religious 
 by proclamations. If cities were built of brick 
 and stone and mortar, they might be dedicated 
 to religious uses by proclamation. Cities are 
 not thus built. A city is a social organism. 
 A state is a great family. A nation is a vast 
 household. A city, state or nation belongs to 
 God only by so much as its people belong to 
 Him, and they belong to Him only in so far 
 as they surrender themselves to do His will. 
 And God's will is not accomplished by pen- 
 ances or pilgrimages. The Hebrew prophet 
 made plain the will of God for his age and for 
 
THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 77 
 
 ours, as to city building and nation building: 
 
 Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his! 
 . . . Woe to him that getteth an evil gain for his 
 house, that he may set his nest on high! . • . Thou 
 hast devised shame to thy house by cutting off many 
 peoples, and hast sinned against thy soul. . . . 
 Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and 
 establisheth a city by iniquity! 
 
 The supreme height of prophecy was 
 reached by one who lifted up his voice from the 
 low hills of Judah : 
 
 He hath showed thee, man, what is good ; and 
 what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, 
 and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy 
 God? 
 
 Justice — ^justice to backward races; justice 
 to subject nations; justice to alien peoples; 
 justice to feeble governments. Mercy — ^mercy 
 to conquered cities; mercy to neutral neigh- 
 bors; mercy to non-combatants on land and 
 sea ; mercy to prisoners of war. Humility be- 
 fore God; not the proud look and the scornful 
 judgment of all "outlanders" as uncultured, 
 
78 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 but the painful heart-searching that seeks to 
 square our purposes to the mind of the All- 
 Righteous — this is the Christian temper in 
 peace and war. God grant that America and 
 her allies may strive to reach and keep it in 
 these times that try men's souls! 
 
 We did not enter the war lightly. We 
 weighed with scrupulous care the worth and 
 appraised the value of the ideals that are ar- 
 rayed against each other on the battlefields of 
 Europe. Neutrality of action was no longer 
 possible, as mental neutrality had been an 
 empty phrase since the raid on Belgium and 
 the sinking of the Lusitania and the Sussex. 
 With malice toward none — even toward the 
 malicious; with charity for all — even for the 
 uncharitable; with firmness in the right as 
 God gives us to see the right, we go forth to a 
 war which, let us fondly hope, shall end war, 
 and with it, end the dream of world-empire 
 founded on force. 
 
 We are in this war, all of us, and all of us 
 must do our part: soldiers and sailors; ambu- 
 
THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 79 
 
 lance-drivers and aviators; doctors and nurses; 
 fathers and mothers whose sons are swift to 
 see their chance to serve the age; investors in 
 Liberty Bonds and contributors to Rehef 
 Funds; editors, pastors and teachers who help 
 to keep alive in pur hearts the sacred fires of 
 rational patriotism; merchants and manufac- 
 turers who demand no war-time profits on 
 their trade ; tillers of the soil who rise early and 
 labor long in order to increase the harvests of 
 the land; women who find time in the midst 
 of their absorbing tasks to knit and sew and 
 wind bandages for the Red Cross; payers of 
 special taxes who gladly bear their share of 
 the financial burden of the war; girls and boys 
 whose eyes glow as they pledge allegiance to 
 the Flag whose symbolic meaning they are 
 learning daily — all have a part in this war. 
 The veterans of other wars have a part in it. 
 The stars that shone on Shiloh and Gettysburg 
 shine as brightly over France and Belgium. 
 The seas that bathe the shores of Europe are 
 the same that bore the fleets of Farragut and 
 
80 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 
 
 Dewey. The hands that gave the world the 
 airship and the submarine have not lost their 
 cunning, and ultimately the best fighters are 
 those who have the most to fight for! 
 
 In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the 
 
 sea, 
 With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you 
 
 and me; 
 As He died to make men holy, let us die to make 
 
 men free, 
 
 While God is marching on! 
 
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