OTHER BOOKS BY BISHOP COOKE 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND CHILDHOOD. 
 
 FREEDOM OF THOUGHT IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING. 
 
 THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE f RITUAL OF THE METHODIST 
 
 EPISCOPAL CHURCH, WITH A COMMENTARY 
 
 ON ITS OFFICES. 
 
 THE INCARNATION AND RECENT CRITICISM. 
 
 JDDICLIL DECISIONS OF THE GENERAL CONFERENCE 
 OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR HIGH CHURCHMEN. 
 
 REASONS FOR A CHURCH CREED. 
 
 THE WINGLESS HOUR. 
 
THE CHURCH AND 
 WORLD PEACE 
 
 By 
 RICHARD J. gOOKE 
 
 Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI 
 
C4 
 
 Copyright, 1920, by 
 RICHARD J. COOKE. 
 
yycy 
 
 TO 
 ROBERT J. FISHER 
 
 WHOSE HUMAN SYMPATHIES NEVER FAIL; 
 
 WHOSE INTERESTS IN THE KINGDOM 
 
 NEVER FLAG, THESE PAGES ARE 
 
 AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 
 
 ST O ^rv a-k, >v 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/churchworldpeaceOOcookrich 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAG* 
 
 Preface 9 
 
 I. Demand for a League of Nations.. 13 
 II. Is A League of Nations Possible?.. 27 
 
 III. Is a League of Nations Possible? 
 
 — Continued 46 
 
 IV. Political Difficulties 63 
 
 V. Need for Christian League 76 
 
 VI. States Need the Church 84 
 
 VII. The Mission of Israel 99 
 
 VIII. The Historical Mission of Jesus . . 116 
 
 IX. The Duty of the Modern Church. 130 
 
 X. The Future 165 
 
PEEFACE 
 
 Many books and pamphlets have been writ- 
 ten on the League of Nations: those by Earl 
 Grey, British Minister for Foreign Affairs 
 during the war, and Mathias Erzberger, at 
 that time member of the Keichstag, being the 
 most important, but no work, so far as I could 
 find, has been published on the relations of 
 the church to the purposes of the League. 
 
 The question, however, is of the greatest im- 
 portance. No one who appreciates the diffi- 
 cult problems, complex and distracting in 
 variety, character and scope, confronting gov- 
 ernments in Europe, will fail to apprehend the 
 significance of the subject. In England, since 
 this work was begun, a notable conference of 
 the representatives of all churches, Anglican 
 and Nonconformist, was held, and another is 
 to be called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 to discuss ways and means by which the 
 churches might cooperate with the government 
 to make the League effective in bringing peace 
 to the world. 
 
 9 
 
PREFACE 
 
 It is a difficult theme to handle. Those who 
 are alive to the crisscross currents of thought 
 running at this time in every land, each chang- 
 ing its course as new factors emerge in the 
 swirling seas, will appreciate the difficulty of 
 reaching final and satisfactory conclusions. 
 It is not easy to write history while it is in the 
 making, nor very wise to forecast conclusions 
 which may have no premise. 
 
 However, there are certain fixed facts, and 
 starting from these I have endeavored to out- 
 line in a brief, but perhaps sufficiently com- 
 prehensive manner, the imperative duty of 
 the universal church to the Allied powers in 
 their efforts to establish perpetual peace. 
 Others who may have more time than I have 
 may go further into the many questions sug- 
 gested in almost every chapter, especially the 
 particular, energetic influence which certain 
 churches might exert among the peoples in 
 various countries — ithe Roman Catholics in 
 Bavaria and other South German States, in 
 France, in Italy; the Church of England 
 through the Holy Synod upon the adherents 
 of the Russian Church, and also upon those of 
 the Greek Orthodox Communion; the Baptist 
 Church in the United States upon large masses 
 in Russian dissent, the Methodist Episcopal 
 
 10 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Church upon numerous and influential constit- 
 uencies in various European countries, the 
 Presbyterian Church in Bulgaria and Asia 
 Minor. To have taken up each of these 
 churches and discussed their relations to the 
 people, the churches and the governments in 
 Europe, and the assistance they might be able 
 to give the League of Nations, would have led 
 me far beyond my original intention. What 
 is here presented may be accepted, it is hoped, 
 as an introduction, at least, to one of the most 
 important questions of our day, a question 
 which will grow larger in world-wide interest 
 as the League of Nations is seen to become 
 either a saving power or a melancholy failure 
 in the binding of the nations in universal 
 brotherhood. 
 
 I wish to acknowledge the courtesy of the 
 publishers of the Methodist Review, New 
 York, for their permission to use some extracts 
 from articles by the writer during the war in 
 that Review, and also the kind services of the 
 Book Editor in his careful reading of the proof- 
 sheets. 
 
 R. J. C. 
 
 11 
 
CHAPTER I 
 DEMAND FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 
 
 The world war is over. The legacy of war 
 remains. The whirlwind of death which left 
 nothing it could destroy is passed, but ex- 
 hausted nations look with horror on the 
 destruction wrought and turn with nerveless 
 hands to the work of restoration. Has the 
 war paid? That depends. If the transform- 
 ing ideals which inspired the will to conquer 
 shall fade away, if the determination to rid 
 the world of evil heritages and to give it a 
 new start in freedom shall be swallowed up 
 in the maws of selfish interests; if, after all 
 that has been done, nothing is left, after a 
 while, but the same old world of international 
 strife, a world of stark-naked materialism in 
 which ancient wrongs, forgetfulness of God, 
 and deification of the Strong, shall again blur 
 justice and the sense of human brotherhood, 
 then the war has not paid. 
 
 But if out of this twilight of yesterday a 
 new world shall arise in which men shall have 
 
 13 
 
\ .TH^ OHURea AKD WORLD PEACE 
 
 a fair chance to live their lives self-governed, 
 sunlit, God-centered, then the war has paid. 
 It has paid, because there can be no question 
 that the spiritual is more than the material; 
 that freedom of the individual and the liberty 
 of small states, as of great states, to develop 
 their own racial spirit is worth more to human- 
 ity than the supremacy of gross conceptions of 
 state-might, of "scientific efficiency," mechan- 
 ical, dry, and hard, which a false culture, 
 nurtured by a materialistic philosophy, would 
 impose upon the souls of men. If victory of 
 right over sheer might is worth anything at 
 all, there can be no debate as to whether the 
 war has paid or not. 
 
 The struggle for equity has given the world 
 a mighty push forward ; and if war can be out- 
 lawed in human thought, the world will never 
 go back. Humanity has been lifted to a higher 
 plane of evolution, and, however poorly prac- 
 ticed as yet while the world is finding itself, 
 ideals of justice and opportunity have been 
 substituted for the jungle cries of class 
 struggle and race hatred. Nor is there shadow 
 of doubt, notwithstanding apparent reaction 
 since the war, of the heightening of spiritual 
 values which the war has brought to men every- 
 where. When men once get a glimpse of God 
 
 14 
 
DEMAND FOE A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 
 
 they are never the same again. The immensity 
 of the conflict, its appalling revelation of evil 
 springing up from the heart of the world, the 
 latent savagery and progressive diabolism 
 which the bloody struggle evoked, and the 
 terrible mystery which hung over it all as to its 
 purpose in the scheme of things, have awak- 
 ened the souls of men as if from a dream to the 
 reality of God, to the need of a supernatural 
 power to control the forces which the iniquity 
 of man had turned loose in what was once 
 God's world, but just then seemed crashing 
 down to chaos. 
 
 Nevertheless, the law which seems to dom- 
 inate in the world of the spirit that there is 
 no salvation without sacrifice, has exacted 
 from humanity a staggering price, and not- 
 withstanding all the benefits that may have 
 come to the world from this struggle, if war 
 is to continue, the question still remains, Has 
 the war paid? 
 
 The loss to civilization is incalculable. 
 Civilization itself is of slow growth. A nation 
 may be lifted out of barbarism in a few hun- 
 dred years, but it may take a thousand years 
 to get barbarism out of a people, since develop- 
 ment is gradual and difficult, while relapse is 
 swift and easy. 
 
 16 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 Human progress depends upon diffusion of 
 knowledge and obedience to moral law. Such 
 is the nature of the human spirit that no 
 nation ever did, or ever can, live devoid of 
 morality or religion, and what it cannot live 
 without it cannot progress without. 
 
 It is evident that the greater the number of 
 educated men in any period, men who to pre- 
 viously acquired knowledge add new discov- 
 eries and popularize philosophical, political, 
 and religious truth among the masses, the 
 more highly developed will be the civilization 
 of that period. It cannot, therefore, be other 
 than an immeasurable moral loss to civiliza- 
 tion when men of intellect — scientists, in- 
 ventors, promising buds of genius in literature 
 and the fine arts — are cut off at the beginning 
 of their careers, and all that they might have 
 been to the world perishes with them. The 
 hoped-for results of their study and research 
 remain among the shadows of things that 
 might have been, but never were. Such losses 
 are irreparable. Cities may be destroyed and 
 built again. War may devastate regions of 
 fruitful country and destroy innumerable in- 
 dustries, and time, which heals all wounds, 
 will restore both; but when masses of intel- 
 lectuals, leaders in thought and social develop- 
 
 16 
 
DEMAND FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 
 
 ment, are wiped out, that loss never can be re- 
 gained. 
 
 And it is just this that this war has done. 
 In every land seats of learning, colleges and 
 universities, sent their instructors and stu- 
 dents with the rank and file of the country to 
 the battlefield, and thousands of scholars, 
 scientists, workers in every realm of intel- 
 lectual activity, laid down their lives in every 
 part of the world. For this war embraced 
 humanity. It extended to the remotest 
 bounds of civilization and drained the man- 
 power of every land. What Lord Macaulay 
 wrote of Frederick the Great of Prussia, "In 
 order that he might rob a neighbor whom he 
 promised to defend, black men fought on the 
 coast of Coromandel, and red men scalped 
 each other by the Great Lakes of North 
 America," is literally true of his descendant 
 William II, the Calamity of Germany. In 
 order that he might obtain imperial ascen- 
 dency over his neighbors, the fields of France 
 and Flanders were drenched with the best 
 blood of Europe, an infidel race massacred 
 Christian peoples in the vilayets and moun- 
 tains of Armenia, English slaughtered Ger- 
 man in the Jungles of Africa, and semicivil- 
 ized tribes who never heard of Pan-German- 
 
 17 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 ism destroyed each other in the isles of the 
 Pacific. 60,000,000 men participated in the 
 war. Of this number 7,000,000 are dead and 
 nearly 6,000,000 are crippled for life. 
 
 The material losses are beyond computation. 
 Northern France is a desert. From the 
 Vosges to the North Sea, in a country about 
 five hundred miles long and comprising some 
 six thousand square miles, the besom of 
 destruction has done its work. Before the 
 war this territory was supporting a popula- 
 tion of two million, and these were among the 
 most prosperous in all Europe. Its varied 
 industries, its rich mines of coal and iron, 
 its agriculture, producing in 1913 nearly 
 ?400,000,000 worth of crops, constituted for 
 the largest part the economic life of France. 
 Now all is gone. This once fruitful region is 
 a Sahara. The land is ripped and torn ; towns, 
 villages, and cities are reduced to dust and 
 piles of ashes; dwellings, factories, public 
 buildings, schools, churches, cathedrals, monu- 
 ments, pious memorials of ancient days, all 
 are gone. Here and there a broken arch or a 
 crumbling wall, gaunt skeletons of the past, 
 indicate where once civilization stood. 
 
 Over one million two hundred thousand 
 acres of timber land have been destroyed. The 
 
 18 
 
DEMAND FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 
 
 Germans, inflamed by the rankest hatred and 
 envy of the prosperity of France, sought not 
 only to defeat her armies in the field, if that 
 were possible, but by destroying her arts, her 
 industries and agriculture, her mines of coal 
 and iron ore, endeavored to bury the knife so 
 deep into the very vitals of her industries that 
 she could never again recover from the blow. 
 In the coal fields more than $500,000,000 
 worth of machinery, including mills, has been 
 destroyed. Some of the mines have been so 
 badly damaged with the deliberate purpose of 
 preventing industrial resurrection that it will 
 require ten years of labor to put them in work- 
 able condition. The iron ore regions have 
 suffered the loss of millions. In the textile 
 industry machinery worth over $120,000,000 
 has been destroyed. Of the sugar refineries of 
 France, seventeen out of two hundred and ten 
 remain. Two thousand brush factories out of 
 three thousand were shot to dust. Electric 
 power stations valued with equipment at 
 $50,000,000 were ruined, and in machine shops 
 and foundries machinery worth $160,000,000 
 was either taken away into Germany or 
 smashed with hammers, as photographs of the 
 Germans at the heroic business show. The 
 official documents in Current History, March, 
 
 19 
 
THE CHUKCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 1919, page 516, from which these figures are 
 taken, sum up the total damage in the North 
 of France including buildings, agriculture, in- 
 dustry, furniture, and public works, as 
 amounting to $13,000,000,000. 
 
 Belgium is a cemetery. Her industrial 
 centers are destroyed. In every manufactur- 
 ing town, city, and village what the Germans 
 could not cart away into Germany, from an 
 iron door knob, or a copper kettle, to the most 
 valuable machinery in every trade, her agents 
 of Kultur maliciously destroyed. This was 
 not the wanton destruction of vandals who 
 destroy from an impulse of savagery, but, as 
 in France, a deliberate purpose to annihilate 
 the industrial life of the people. Millions will 
 be necessary to restore to Belgium the means 
 of production. So vast is the loss caused by 
 the war in the destruction of industries in 
 Russia, Roumania, Serbia, Poland, in every 
 nation invaded by Germany and her Allies, 
 that to the human mind totals in figures mean 
 nothing. But leaving out all such losses, and 
 all losses occurring from the destruction of 
 cities and towns and communes, and taking 
 account only of the expenditures of the 
 warring nations which went up mostly in 
 smoke, the sum total, according to Secretary 
 
 20 
 
DEMAND FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 
 
 of War Baker, March 3, 1919, amounted to 
 1197,000,000,000; that is about $11,000,000,000 
 more than all the wealth accumulated here 
 since Columbus discovered America. 
 
 Realizing as the world never has before the 
 horrors of war, the suffering of innocent 
 peoples — ^women and children — and the loss 
 of all that the toil of ages has produced, the 
 question which the people in every nation 
 must now decide is. Shall war he continued, or 
 shall it he abolished forever? 
 
 That it is in the power of man to abolish war 
 cannot be denied. Have the nations the will? 
 From the dawn of history the world has had 
 war; nevertheless, world peace has been the 
 dream of ages. Statesmen, philosophers, 
 bishops of the church, and even kings and 
 emperors, as Henry IV of France and Alex- 
 ander I of Russia, have employed their talents 
 and exerted their influence for its realization. 
 Henry IV, or his prime minister, Rosney, the 
 Duke of Sully, proposed to unite all European 
 states and kingdoms into one grand confeder- 
 ation with a Supreme Court to arbitrate con- 
 troversies. Grotius (1583-1645) enunciated 
 the principles of international law and laid 
 therewith the foundations of universal peace. 
 Later, following the peace of Utrecht, the 
 
 21 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 French Abbe, Saint Pierre, projected a plan 
 on similar lines. The great Powers were to 
 form an alliance and by means of a court, com- 
 posed of judges from all the states, to settle all 
 disputes between the nations. Other pub- 
 licists, Comenius, Puffendorf, Temple, Mon- 
 tesquieu (1689-1755), Turgot, French minister 
 of finance (1727-1781), and the German philos- 
 opher Immanuel Kant, in his essay on "Per- 
 petual Peace" (1784), contributed to the uni- 
 versal desire of the nations impoverished by 
 wars to which there seemed no end. It was 
 hoped that the Congress of Vienna, 1815, 
 through the influence of the Russian Czar, 
 Alexander I, who endeavored to form a Holy 
 Alliance, would inaugurate an era of peace, 
 but the selfishness of Prussia, the rivalry of 
 petty kingdoms, and the chicanery of diplo- 
 mats like Metternich and Talleyrand, whose 
 greatest service to the world was their leaving 
 it, frustrated the efforts of the Russian em- 
 peror, and the Congress that it was hoped 
 would usher in a millennium of peace ended in 
 disappointment and sowed the seed of future 
 wars. 
 
 Thus it has always been. After every great 
 war reaction, following a general law, sets in, 
 and the desire for peace gives rise to peace con- 
 
DEMAND FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 
 
 gresses. But every peace congress, beginning 
 with that of the Peace of Westphalia, at the 
 close of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), 
 the Quadruple Alliance of November, 1815; 
 the Diplomatic Congresses of Aix-le-Cha- 
 pelle, in 1818 ; of Troppau, in 1820 ; of Laibach, 
 1821; of Verona, in 1822; the Peace Confer- 
 ence of Paris, 1856; the Congress of Berlin, 
 1878; the Hague Congress of 1899 ; the London 
 Conference of 1908 — every one of them for the 
 past three hundred years has resulted in 
 failure. 
 
 Nevertheless, like the hope of immortality, 
 which asserts itself despite all doubts, the 
 desire for perpetual peace still persists despite 
 all failures. Statesmen and leaders of public 
 affairs and of the largest thinking in every 
 nation, believe that peace is possible — that 
 peace, and not war, is the natural condition of 
 human happiness. 
 
 In the United States the governors of States, 
 heads of industries, and political and ecclesi- 
 astical conventions have declared in favor of a 
 League of Nations. In the United States the 
 senators who have shown the most critical 
 hostility to the proposed plan of the League as 
 presented by President Wilson, are neverthe- 
 less in favor of a League that will insure peace, 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 without unnecessarily involving the United 
 States in European conflicts should such arise. 
 Political parties favor such a League. The 
 Republican State Convention, held at Sara- 
 toga on July 19, 1918, adopted a platform 
 which declared : 
 
 We favor the immediate creation by the United States 
 and its Allies of a League of Nations to establish, from 
 time to time to modify, and to enforce the rules of 
 international law and conduct. The purpose of this 
 League should be not to displace patriotism or devotion 
 and loyalty to national ideals and traditions, but, rather, 
 to give to these new opportunities of expression in co- 
 operation with the other liberty-loving nations of the 
 world. To membership in the League any nation might 
 be admitted that possesses a responsible government 
 which will abide by the rules of law and equity, and 
 by those principles of international justice and morality 
 which are accepted by civilized people. 
 
 The Democratic Platform of 1916 declared : 
 
 We hold that it is the duty of the United States to use 
 its power not only to make itself safe at home, but also 
 to make secure its just interests throughout the world; 
 and both for this end and in the interest of humanity, 
 to assist the world in securing settled peace and Justice. 
 
 Thus a new attempt to bind the nations of 
 the earth in concord and amity is now engag- 
 ing as never before in human history the earn- 
 est endeavors of statesmen in all countries. 
 
 24 
 
DEMAND FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 
 
 On May 27, 1916, President Wilson said : 
 
 The repeated utterances of the leading statesmen of 
 most of the great nations now engaged in war have 
 made it plain that their thought has come to this — that 
 the principle of public right must henceforth take pre- 
 cedence over the individual interest of particular na- 
 tions, and that the nations of the world must in some 
 way band themselves together to see that right prevails 
 as against any sort of selfish aggression; that henceforth 
 alliance must not be set up against alliance, under- 
 standing against understanding, but that there must 
 be a common agreement for a common object, and that 
 at the heart of that common object must lie the in- 
 violable rights of peoples ajid of mankind. ... Bo 
 sincerely do we believe in these things that I am sure 
 I speak the mind and wish of the people of America 
 when I say that the United States is willing to become 
 a partner in any feasible association formed in order 
 to realize these objects, and to make them sure against 
 violation. 
 
 On August 3, 1918, former Prime Minister 
 
 Asquith said in England^s Parliament : 
 
 The great mass of thoughtful opinion in Europe, as in 
 America, is now convinced that we shall have fought 
 in vain unless before we lay down our arms we have 
 achieved at least the beginning of a great international 
 partnership to be built upon the lines of a practical 
 policy for establishing and enforcing the world-wide 
 reign of justice and for making wars to cease to the end 
 of the earth. 
 
 It must be evident then to every patriotic 
 American, and especially to the Christian 
 
 25 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 Church as a vital force in the life of the world, 
 and as the only exponent of the gospel of the 
 Prince of Peace, that such a movement pro- 
 jected by leaders of political thought is en- 
 titled to the most earnest and sympathetic 
 consideration. 
 
 26 
 
CHAPTER II 
 IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 In view of the difficulties in gaining uni- 
 versal acceptance of this proposed League, not 
 to mention the compulsory signing of it in 
 principle by Germany, Austria, Hungary, 
 Turkey, and Bulgaria, no more serious ques- 
 tions can engage the thought of our time than 
 these: 1. Is any League of Nations that can 
 be relied upon practically possible? 2. Can 
 this League be made permanent without the 
 aid of the Church universal? 
 
 These are fundamental questions. In the 
 nature of things, such questions command 
 attention; for if in the constitution of nature 
 and the imperative demands of human exist- 
 ence a League of Nations is impracticable, 
 then this League, like previous attempts, is 
 doomed to failure. 
 
 Consider then : Is a League of Nations pos- 
 sible? Advocates of militarism, many experi- 
 
 27 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 enced diplomats, and portions of the press in 
 various countries, contend that such a League 
 is neither possible nor desirable. It is not 
 possible, they declare, for the reason that no 
 League can maintain its coherency because of 
 the necessarily conflicting interests of the 
 several units entering into its composition. 
 The economic interests of the governments 
 composing the League are not identical, nor 
 can they remain in status quo. Each state 
 differs from another state in natural re- 
 sources, in manufacturing skill, and access to 
 markets, and must differ in the future. States 
 grow. No state can wait for the economic, 
 social, or political development of another. 
 And it is just here, in the struggle for exist- 
 ence, that national interests clash, and dec- 
 adence or war becomes the forced alternative 
 of the weaker nation. 
 
 Further, apart from the foregoing, after 
 the experience which the world has had with 
 Germany in her disregard for treaties, her 
 contempt for international law, her subtlety 
 in diplomacy, her willingness to be deceived if 
 the certainty of victory is assured, and her 
 shifting of responsibility should her ambitions 
 be defeated, could the governments of the 
 Entente hope to maintain the solidarity of a 
 
 2S 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 League in which there will be sixty or seventy 
 nations, if unregenerated Germany becomes a 
 member of the League? What will happen if 
 she does not? Could the nations trust such a 
 people in a League to enforce peace, which 
 means that they shall be compelled to re- 
 nounce forever the political insanities which 
 her statesmen and writers now cherish? Will 
 the German people, as a whole, be content with 
 the economic state which their follies and the 
 verdict of the war they desired have forced 
 upon them? Would not the forced signers of 
 the League Covenant — Germany, Bulgaria, 
 Turkey, and the remnant of Austria — be dis- 
 integrating elements in a League which pre- 
 vents their resurrection to former power? 
 
 On the side of the militarists it is declared 
 that, if a league were possible, it would not be 
 desirable, for the reason that war saves great 
 states from all those ills that corrupt the life 
 of states enervated by peace. In his Politics, 
 Chapter XXVIII, the historian Treitschke 
 affirms also that war is a necessity to any first- 
 class power. "We have already seen," he 
 writes, "that war is both justifiable and moral, 
 and that the ideal of perpetual peace is not 
 only impossible but immoral as well. . . . The 
 mere fact of the existence of many states in- 
 
 29 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 volves the necessity of war." "The dream of 
 eternal peace," said Frederick the Great, "is a 
 phantom which each man rejects when the call 
 of war rings in his own ears." Treating of 
 the constructive forces in the building of the 
 state, he says: "We learn from history that 
 nothing knits a nation more closely together 
 than war. It makes it worthy of the name of 
 nation as nothing else can." And of war it- 
 self he declares, "Without war no state could 
 be. All those we know arose through war, 
 and the protection of their members by armed 
 force remains their primary and essential task. 
 War, therefore, will endure to the end of 
 history as long as there is a multiplicity of 
 states. The laws of human thought and of 
 human nature forbid any alternative, neither 
 is one to be wished. The blind worshiper of 
 eternal peace falls into the error of isolating 
 the state, or dreams of one which is universal, 
 which we have already seen to be at variance 
 with reason." 
 
 But even if a League of Nations were both 
 possible and desirable, how can the decisions 
 of such a League become enforced upon a 
 nation that felt itself unjustly treated and 
 was strong enough to reject the decrees of the 
 League, without producing war? On August 
 
 30 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 8, 1918, in the House of Commons Premier 
 Lloyd George said : 
 
 I am a believer in a League of Nations, but its suc- 
 cess must depend on the conditions under which, it is 
 set up. The people who made the war still are there 
 in Germany, and they cannot have peace as long as 
 they predominate in the councils of the enemy. 
 
 It might conceivably happen that the Germans, by 
 actions rather than words, might insist that they have 
 suffered not a military but an economic defeat. But 
 next year they would take care that they would not be 
 short Every time you came to a conference with the 
 intention of reaching a decision the Prussian sword 
 would clank on the council table. What is the good 
 undertaking peace negotiations under these conditions? 
 
 There must be power behind a League of Nations to 
 enforce its decrees. We all want peace, but it must be 
 just, durable, and moral. There must be power behind 
 that justice which would enforce its decisions, and all 
 who enter the conference must know that. When we 
 have demonstrated to the enemy that such a power 
 exists peace will come, but not any sooner. 
 
 History is ever in flux. All treaties and 
 agreements between states are therefore con- 
 ditional, they are entered into rebus sic stanti- 
 hus, since no nation can bind itself eternally 
 to a treaty that might limit its sovereignty 
 which it cannot renounce, and which it may be 
 wholly at variance with under changed po- 
 litical conditions. "No courts of arbitration," 
 again says Treitschke, who as a historian fur- 
 
 31 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 nishes the arguments for those who oppose all 
 leagues for world peace, "will ever succeed 
 in banishing war from the world. It is utterly 
 impossible for other members of the group of 
 nations to take an impartial view of any ques- 
 tion vitally affecting one of their number. 
 Parties there must be, if only because the na- 
 tions are bound together, or driven apart by 
 living interests of the most various kinds." 
 "International congresses are quite capable of 
 finding legal formula for the results of a war, 
 but they can never avert the outbreak of it" 
 (Politics, Vol. II., p. 598). 
 
 It need not be contended that this eminent 
 writer is wholly wrong, or that he could not 
 draw from modern history numerous instances 
 to illustrate or establish his conclusions. The 
 defect in his philosophy, however, is that he 
 makes no allowance for moral progress. The 
 idea of a world-conscience, or the development 
 of an international mind, never seems to have 
 entered his head. Like all other defenders 
 of war, he is immovably fixed in the convic- 
 tion of the immutability of human nature, 
 and therefore assumes that what has been 
 will be. 
 
 But it is nevertheless just toward this inter- 
 national mind, despite all that may be said 
 
 32 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 concerning the unchangeableness of human 
 nature, that evolution is slowly working. 
 From the beginning evolution wrought on the 
 physical, then shifted to the mental; and the 
 line of development now is toward the moral, 
 letting "the ape and tiger die." From what- 
 ever point we study the evolution of man, 
 social, political, or religious, we see that the 
 result has been the gradual growth of his sense 
 of abstract justice, the broadening of his 
 sympathies, his enlarging interest in the 
 affairs of people outside his immediate rela- 
 tionship. 
 
 It is a long way from the philosophy of Cain 
 to the teachings of Jesus; from regarding all 
 not members of one's tribe or of one's city as 
 aliens liable to slavery or death, to the cry of 
 Terentius, "Nothing human is foreign to me !" 
 or to the word of Saint Paul, "Ye are all mem- 
 bers one of another" ; and it is a mighty long 
 way the nations have come from looking upon 
 the invasion of neutral states as a probable 
 necessity of war, to universal condemnation of 
 such violation of international law. 
 
 The human mind which emerges from belief 
 in a multiplicity of gods to the conception of 
 one God who is everybody's God, a God of 
 justice, of holiness and of infinite love; the 
 
 33 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 mind that from confused notions of antago- 
 nistic forces in nature, self-destroying and 
 tending to chaos, rises to the conception of 
 order and beauty in the universe, to the unity 
 of nature, to the reign of law, and the correla- 
 tion and conservation of forces — this mind 
 cannot in its evolution toward that which is 
 perfect stop short of perfect realization of the 
 moral and social unity of the race. Evolution 
 never ceases till its objective is reached, till 
 the initial impulse in any direction is carried 
 through and blossoms out in perfection. There 
 seems to exist no reason whatever in the 
 nature of things why the human intellect 
 should not reach this stage of development. 
 To affirm that this is beyond the power of evo- 
 lution is to say that human nature is inca- 
 pable of improvement beyond a certain limit; 
 that the same intellect which can invent a 
 deadly engine of war cannot invent a way to 
 make that instrument useless. But human 
 nature while far gone in unrighteousness is 
 not wholly bad, capable only of inventing evil. 
 It can "rise on the stepping-stones" of its sin- 
 fulness and stupidity to higher things. The 
 history of man is the story of his redemption. 
 He is not on a circle, he is on a spiral. The 
 moral progress of the race is a refutation of its 
 
 34 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 unchangeable immorality and is sure prophecy 
 of its future. 
 
 With this developing sense of international 
 relationship there must develop likewise a 
 stronger altruistic sense, and with this, also, 
 under the influence of religion, a growing con- 
 viction of moral obligation. Once this convic- 
 tion of obligation and the idea of human 
 brotherhood takes possession of a people, the 
 moral forces which are now at work with less 
 resistance than at any time in the world's 
 history, will make both a commonplace reality 
 in all national and international relations. 
 The wrong done to a savage in Africa will be 
 a wrong done to everyone everywhere, and 
 justice will be demanded for him at the seat 
 of every government, as every government now 
 demands protection for its citizens in what- 
 ever part of the world, and under whatever 
 government they may happen to be. 
 
 The realization of this ideal is not impos- 
 sible. The sentiment of nationality, which 
 was born in the throes of the Keformation, has 
 grown steadily through the years until it has 
 now become dominant in the political thought 
 of the twentieth century. "First," Viscount 
 Morley says, "it inflamed visionaries, then it 
 grew potent with the multitudes, who thought 
 
 35 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 tlie foreigner the author of their wretchedness. 
 Thus nationality went through all the stages. 
 From instinct it became idea; from idea ab- 
 stract principle; then fervid prepossession; 
 ending where it is to-day, in dogma whether 
 accepted or evaded." 
 
 It is, therefore, not at all a baseless dream 
 that human brotherhood, now perhaps only a 
 philanthropic idea, may become a working 
 reality. When that day arrives war will be- 
 come a memory. Moral ideals compete for 
 supremacy, just as do other ideals, and we may 
 rest assured that the fittest will survive. But 
 no ideal can be more fitting and gripping than 
 human interest in human welfare. This is the 
 international mind. This is the Christ mind. 
 This is the missionary mind, the church mind. 
 It is this mind which is slowly displacing the 
 parochial mind. 
 
 But this international mind, which will 
 be a factor in eliminating war and misery, 
 Treitschke never thinks of. He never rises 
 above a narrow, selfish nationalism. Interna- 
 tionalism neither destroys nor weakens nation- 
 alism, but, like the good Samaritan, it goes 
 beyond nationalism, mental and social provin- 
 cialism, as one's sympathies while centered in 
 his home may yet go out to all other homes. It 
 
 36 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 is toward the development of this mind in 
 human affairs that the currents of history 
 surely flow. 
 
 But, passing from Treitschke and his philos- 
 ophy, among the most formidable difficulties, 
 which on the surface seems to render per- 
 petual peace impossible, is the difficulty aris- 
 ing from the unchangeable laws of nature. 
 Will the inevitable growth of nations, the in- 
 crease of population, and the resultant de- 
 mand for expansion in colonial possession per- 
 mit of such a League? Nations must grow or 
 die. Are we not therefore attempting by such 
 a League to restrain the working of nature's 
 laws. Are we not attempting to build again 
 another Tower of Babel? To illustrate, ac- 
 cording to a well-known Japanese publicist, 
 M. Kawakami: During the past half century 
 Japan's population has been increasing at the 
 rate of 400,000 a year. Where there were 
 33,000,000 Japanese fifty years ago, there are 
 to-day about 54,000,000. As the total area of 
 Japan proper is about 148,756 square miles, 
 the density of population is about 356 per 
 square mile. If we leave out of consideration 
 Hokkaido, the northern island, the density in- 
 creases to 451 per square mile. Now, what 
 can any government do with such a congested 
 
 37 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 country, except to encourage colonization? 
 But Japan has no colonies and no place to 
 which her surplus population may emigrate. 
 Neither Korea nor Formosa offers any terri- 
 tory, since they also are badly congested, hav- 
 ing 187 inhabitants to the square mile. Japan 
 has not sufficient natural supply of coal or 
 iron for her industrial needs, hence she looks 
 to mining concessions in China. But the great 
 nations of Europe seek to block her efforts in 
 that direction, although they have had no com- 
 punctions about obtaining all kinds of con- 
 cessions for themselves. 
 
 The vital force of a people cannot be con- 
 fined. It is life, and life resents restraint. 
 Life must have space. It must have suitable 
 environment for the exercise of its energy. 
 Every vigorous state, therefore, must provide 
 for its surplus population, or die of starvation. 
 The more mouths there are to feed the smaller 
 must be the loaf. Such a state or nation 
 must, therefore, create large colonies, or scat- 
 ter its people by emigration in other countries, 
 among other peoples, to the great loss of the 
 homeland, and the gain of the foreign land. 
 Can such a state, "cribbed, cabined, and con- 
 fined," ever become a great state, a world 
 power? And does not this whole question ac- 
 
 S8 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 centuate the still further difficult question of 
 the rights of neighboring small states to exist 
 at all, as Belgium or Holland, in competition 
 with powerful adjoining states in the struggle 
 for existence? 
 
 Then again, is it possible to eradicate selfish- 
 ness and greed from human nature, to restrain 
 human passion, national egotism, the ambition 
 of militarism, its hunger for glory and lust of 
 conquest? For, unless a curb is put on the 
 rapacity of corporation thieves, the land-lust 
 of kings and emperors, and even of democ- 
 racies ; unless some restraint is put on the pas- 
 sions of peoples aroused by wrongs, real or in- 
 vented, and instead of these desires a mighty 
 impulse be given the masses of the people 
 toward universal good as the universal goal, 
 there never can be enduring peace. As the 
 known possession of wealth in a house is an 
 inducement to burglars, or flashing jewels on 
 the person is a temptation to highwaymen, so 
 the material resources of a weak state have 
 often invited the cupidity of commercial enter- 
 prises to reach out, under the guise of legiti- 
 mate business, for the undeveloped wealth of a 
 feeble and backward people. Can one for a 
 few dollars buy hundreds or thousands of 
 fertile acres, worth millions, from an impov- 
 
 39 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 erished people and not create in the soul of 
 them sullen hostility? Have the rich oil 
 fields, the gold and silver mines of Mexico 
 never aroused the sublime patriotism of 
 American financiers for the honor of the flag 
 and the sanctity of invested rights? Have the 
 diamond fields of Africa never influenced 
 worid politics in Downing Street? Has the 
 rubber on the Congo never excited the greed 
 of European commerce? It is not intimated 
 that undeveloped wealth should lie buried for 
 the lack of capital, but without any knowledge 
 of the negotiations, the secret and unscrupu- 
 lous methods of corporation chicanery in ex- 
 ploiting the property of poverty-stricken 
 people, have we not been ready to fight for the 
 inviolability of commercial interests, when in 
 reality we were only ministering to the in- 
 satiable avarice of thieves and robbers? Have 
 we never heard of crooked diplomacy manipu- 
 lated by powerful aggregations of wealth forc- 
 ing unwilling trade upon a helpless people? 
 The cupidity and dishonesty of capitalistic 
 combinations which claim their country's pro- 
 tection while robbing other people are not 
 identical with a square deal for those nations, 
 nor are such combinations indispensable pro- 
 moters of international peace. 
 
 40 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 But, after all, one of the strongest argu- 
 ments against leagues of peace is the biological 
 argument to which we will again refer. War, 
 it is affirmed, is a necessity. The natural laws 
 of the struggle for existence are universal in 
 their operation and must necessarily drive 
 nations whose interests clash into war, despite 
 all that the power of man can do to prevent it. 
 "War,'' wrote Bernhardi, "is a biological neces- 
 sity." "The struggle for existence is in the 
 life of nature, the basis for all healthy de- 
 velopment." "So long as there are nations 
 who strive for an enlarged sphere of activity 
 so long will conflicting interests come into 
 being and occasions for making war arise." 
 "Struggle is, therefore, a universal law of 
 nature, and the instinct of self-preservation 
 which leads to struggle is acknowledged to be 
 a natural condition of existence." 
 
 Now, if this contention be true — that war 
 has its basis in natural law — then, here again, 
 it is conclusive that all the peace societies in 
 the world can never succeed in their resistance 
 to the omnipotent impulse of natural law ; and 
 that, as Von Moltke said, "while wars are in- 
 human, eternal peace is a dream." But is it 
 true? Is it a law of necessity grounded in the 
 nature of things that, notwithstanding free- 
 
 41 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 dom of will, each generation must prepare for 
 war in the next? Must we toil and build and 
 think, and develop national resources, only to 
 have the labors of hand and brain blown to 
 dust in a few years, and that by those who are 
 now children in our homes and schools? Is 
 this a necessity? Forty years of peace in 
 Europe prior to this eruption would indicate 
 that war is not a necessity. There is scarcely 
 a war in history, excepting wars of defense 
 and struggles for freedom, that can be justified 
 on the ground of necessity in nature. Neither 
 the wars of Napoleon, nor those of Frederick 
 the Great, nor those of Prussia under the Bis- 
 marckian regime, can be charged to any other 
 cause than the avowed ambition of these war- 
 riors. No sane man will allege that this world 
 war, solely the outcome of Germany's ambi- 
 tion for the hegemony of the world, was due to 
 an irresistible necessity grounded in the con- 
 stitution of nature. 
 
 Once this is admitted — and conceded it 
 must be — all argument for war as a necessity 
 is at once dissipated. One might as well argue 
 that injustice is a necessity. Wrong is fric- 
 tion in the world's machinery. But friction is 
 not a necessity. War is the breakdown of 
 reason. War, that is, wars of aggression, 
 
 42 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 wars for territorial gain, for extension of com- 
 merce, for forcing religion or Kultur upon de- 
 fenseless peoples, under the guise of blessing 
 them with a superior civilization — all such 
 wars are nothing more or less than deliberate 
 ^-murder. War is murder. 
 
 It is not inferred from this, however, that 
 all war is wrong. The intent of an act de- 
 termines the morality of the act, but the intent 
 itself is determined by the end sought. Wars 
 in self-defense cannot be wrong. Invasion 
 must be resisted, despotisms destroyed, liberty 
 defended. Such wars cannot be wrong, unless 
 the police forces of the universe, the moral and 
 physical laws of God which work automati- 
 cally in punishment of violated law, are wrong. 
 If morality endures, morality must be de- 
 fended. 
 
 Nor can it be af&rmed in all fairness that 
 war is never a benefit to civilization. Sweep- 
 ing generalizations are generally sweeping as- 
 sumptions. Constitutional changes in favor 
 of Liberalism in European governments dur- 
 ing the last one hundred years had close con- 
 nection with war, if they were not in almost 
 every instance its immediate product. Ex- 
 pansion of empire, as of England in India, 
 France in Algiers, the independence of the 
 
 43 
 
^raE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 United States, of Holland and Switzerland, 
 the freedom of oppressed nationalities in 
 eastern Europe, and of the black race in 
 America, have all been the result of war. And 
 if Germany, like Lucifer fallen from heaven, 
 has lost her political and economic supremacy, 
 the victories of the Allies which established 
 the supremacy of right over might, and the 
 liberation of small nationalities from political 
 bondage, have been a distinct gain to civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 The remarkable fact, however, which must 
 not be overlooked, is that every war which had 
 its origin in national greed, egoism, and dis- 
 regard of justice, has resulted, in the long 
 run, not to the benefit of the aggressor, but 
 to his lasting injury. The empire which Bis- 
 marck established by rank injustice and the 
 mailed fist on Austria, Denmark, and France, 
 has fallen, as Babylon fell, as the Napoleonic 
 empire fell, as all empires of force have fallen 
 and must ever fall, even at the very height of 
 their power and planning new conquests and 
 greater glory. God is never in a hurry. He 
 knows that there is no loophole in the universe 
 through which the criminal can escape from 
 the consequences of his crime. 
 
 Louise of Prussia will beg for mercy at the 
 44 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 feet of Napoleon only to be spurned by the 
 conqueror. But the day will come when the 
 nephew of that same Napoleon will be a pris- 
 oner in the hands of the grandson of that same 
 Louise, and his kingdom prostrate at the 
 mercy of Prussia. Bismarck will endeavor to 
 crush the life of France by loading her 
 with indemnities the world had never heard of 
 before. But the day will come when the suc- 
 cessor of Bismarck will cry out to France and 
 her allies, from whom Germany boasted she 
 would extract unthinkable billions, to reduce 
 the indemnities which the allied governments 
 have laid upon her. In the Hall of Mirrors at 
 Versailles, triumphant militarism, intoxicated 
 with glory and power, will erect on the foun- 
 dations of blood and iron the German empire. 
 But the day will come when in that very same 
 Hall of Mirrors at Versailles that same Hohen- 
 zollern imperialism shall be hurled from 
 power and the empire flung to the depths of 
 ruin. "He hath showed strength with his 
 arm; he hath scattered the proud in the im- 
 agination of their hearts. He hath put down 
 the mighty from their seats, and exalted them 
 of low degree." 
 
 45 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 —CONTINUED 
 
 Philosophers like Hegel in Germany and 
 Cousin in France may gravely conclude that 
 war is the inevitable result of the clash of 
 ideas which particular nations may represent 
 in the course of their historical development. 
 Such conclusions, however, fade into vacuity 
 when the facts of history show that neither 
 different ideas nor difference of national char- 
 acter are necessary causes of war. By this it 
 is not to be understood that ideas representing 
 conflicting civilizations have not played im- 
 portant part in the history of war. The 
 epochal battles of Platia, of Salamis, of Mara- 
 thon, the struggle between Darius and Alex- 
 ander at Arbela, representing the conflict be- 
 tween Eastern and Western civilizations, and, 
 without further illustration, the war of the 
 world just ended, which was certainly a death 
 struggle between Autocracy and Democracy, 
 
 46 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 may all be considered as wars of ideas. But 
 however much such battles may have marked 
 the end or the beginning of an epoch, it cannot 
 be shown that different ideas, different civil- 
 izations are, as these philosophers teach, "in- 
 evitable causes of war." Questions of land 
 and food may with much greater reason be re- 
 garded as "inevitable causes." For the simple 
 fact is, as modern history shows, that an- 
 tagonistic nations have had similar ideals, and 
 nations dissimilar both in character and ideals 
 have fought side by side against peoples domi- 
 nated by some obsession of their exceptional 
 place in history, or superiority of culture. 
 
 It is not always easy to determine what a 
 true cause is. What may appear to be a 
 cause of war may really turn out to be simply 
 the occasion^ and we shall have to go further 
 back or substitute some other act or series of 
 acts, if we would discover the truth. "Eoughly 
 speaking," says Professor Cramb (Germany 
 and England, page 113), "I should define any 
 cause to which an historical event is ascribed 
 as a true cause when it can be submitted to the 
 categories of universality and necessity." 
 
 Of course, it hardly can be expected that 
 historians would admit theology or religion 
 except as political forces into their considera- 
 
 47 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 tion of the causes of war, but human depravity 
 is universal and wherever moral depravity 
 operates unrestrained by moral ideals there of 
 necessity, owing to the nature of evil itself, 
 war will be; and it cannot be eradicated ex- 
 cept by a force greater than the cause. Vis- 
 count John Morley goes to the heart of the 
 matter when, discussing religious conflicts in 
 France under Louis XV, he says, "No perma- 
 nent transformation of a society, we may be 
 sure, can ever take place until a transforma- 
 tion has been accomplished in the spiritual 
 basis of thought." 
 
 The roots of war are grounded in what Kant 
 designated as the radical evil in human 
 nature. Saint James had a long time before 
 shown the same source, "From whence come 
 wars and fightings among you? come they not 
 hence, even of your lusts that war in your 
 members?" Will it be contended, in the face 
 of human freedom, that this radical evil is ir- 
 resistible and cannot be repressed? The moral 
 development of humanity furnishes the com- 
 pletest refutation of this assumption that can 
 be made. 
 
 The argument that so long as there are na- 
 tions who strive for an "enlarged sphere of 
 activity" war will arise is certainly valid, but 
 
 48 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 it is only another way of saying that so long as 
 territorial extension is demanded, or greed is 
 exercised in controlling commerce between 
 nations, war is inevitable. 
 
 But in the court of reason and justice what 
 right has one state to demand "enlarged 
 sphere of activity" at the expense of another 
 sitate? What the American Declaration of 
 Independence asserted, that all men have the 
 inalienable right to "life, liberty, and the pur- 
 suit of happiness," is just as applicable to 
 states. Every nation has the right to exist 
 and to develop to the utmost its racial spirit, 
 its powers and resources, but never at the ex- 
 pense of other nations who also have the right 
 to exist. To deny this is to dethrone morality, 
 even to reverse the moral order of the universe. 
 It makes crime a virtue, wrong right, and 
 right wrong. Such a philosophy can only 
 spread moral disorder throughout the world 
 and must therefore be a false philosophy. It 
 is instinctively abhorred by the normal mass 
 of civilized humanity. God himself, the moral 
 Governor of the universe, warns men against 
 such an unnatural inversion. "Woe unto 
 them that call evil good, and good evil; that 
 put darkness for light, and light for darkness ; 
 that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter !" 
 
 49 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 The Central Powers to-day know the full 
 meaning of that warning, for it is just such 
 teaching, that might makes right, that has 
 brought them where they are. 
 
 But if a nation has the right to exist, it has 
 the right to exist somewhere, that is, in its 
 own defined and recognized territory. To this 
 domain it has exclusive right of possession. 
 No other nation has the right to invade that 
 territory. The desire for "enlarged sphere of 
 activity" is no ground for the invasion of it 
 any more than a desire for any other property 
 is a justifiable ground for theft. 
 
 Of course, in defense of the doctrine that a 
 strong state has the right to invade and absorb 
 a weak state, the teachers of such a philosophy 
 will affirm that state morality is different from 
 individual morality. Whatever may be the 
 moral relation of the state to its people, which 
 is internal justice, there is a vast gulf, we are 
 told, between that and its ethical relations to 
 other states. "The acts of the state cannot 
 be judged by the standard of individual mo- 
 rality." Here again is justification for every 
 brutality and villainy and Bismarckian bully- 
 ing, for every deceit and secret trickery, such 
 as Germany's attempted intrigue with Mexico 
 against the United States while professing 
 
 60 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 friendship for us, which so scandalized hon- 
 orable nations, that President Wilson declared 
 before Congress that so mendacious, so lack- 
 ing in moral character was the German gov- 
 ernment that no self-respecting nation could 
 deal with it. 
 
 There may be left yet some statesmen and 
 lawyers who will insist that "the morality of 
 the state must be developed out of its own 
 peculiar essence," just as individual morality 
 is rooted in the personality of the man and his 
 duties toward society ; that the morality of the 
 state must be judged by the nature and ^^radson 
 d'etre of the state, and not of the individual." 
 Treitschke declares, "He who is not man 
 enough to look this truth in the face should 
 not meddle in politics." In the first place, it 
 is not a "truth." While the theory may be 
 and has been in history universally accepted, 
 every moral nation should denounce it, since it 
 is intrinsically false, anti-Christ in essence, 
 and never can be other than, like all political 
 falsehoods, a promoter of social wrong and in- 
 ternational distrust so long as it is recognized 
 and acted upon in state laws and international 
 dealings. Every robber trust company and 
 soulless corporation assumes that its morality 
 must be different from personal morality, and 
 
 51 
 
THE CHUKCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 therefore it will do as a corporation what no 
 individual member of the body would dare to 
 do as an individual. Every literary or theatri- 
 cal genius who by profligacy of life defies the 
 sense of decency in the community is apolo- 
 gized for as a law to himself, and not to be 
 judged by the ordinary codes of decent con- 
 duct. But there are not, and there cannot be, 
 two kinds of morality. The universe is one. 
 There cannot be one morality for the rich and 
 another for the poor, one morality for king 
 and another for peasant. Right is right, and 
 wrong is wrong; and if emperors, diplomats, 
 and murderers of the human race who start 
 wars could be put on trial for their lives at the 
 bar of justice, just as other criminals are for 
 their murders, there would be fewer wars. 
 But such criminals shelter themselves on the 
 ground of the moral irresponsibility of the 
 state. This denial of moral responsibility ex- 
 tends to the right of the state to violate its 
 agreements with other states. "Not all the 
 treaties in the world," it is affirmed, "can alter 
 the fact that the weak is always the prey of the 
 stronger whenever the latter desires and is able 
 to assert this principle. As soon as we con- 
 sider states as intelligent entities lawsuits be- 
 tween them are seen to be capable of solution 
 
 52 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 only by material force" — another misstate- 
 ment, as already shown, which humanity will 
 some day get rid of. For, at bottom, what is 
 the state but an aggregate of moral beings 
 organized for social and moral purposes? 
 When, then, did the individual unit of this 
 organization lose his moral nature and obliga- 
 tions? If the purpose or mission of the state 
 is the moral education of its members, how 
 can the state remain nonmoral? 
 
 It is self-evident that if there is no universal 
 morality imbedded in the nature of humanity ; 
 if this morality is not of universal obligation ; 
 and if, because of the state's relation to its 
 own particular duties and self-interests, it is 
 not practically possible to conform to this 
 standard, then, despite all gospel preaching, 
 the declarations of peace societies, and agree- 
 ments of conventions, it is impossible for wars 
 ever to cease. Justice will never reign upon 
 the earth, since the foundations of justice are 
 destroyed, and the dream of the ages, 
 
 . . . "when aU men's good 
 Be each man's rule, and universal Peace 
 Lie like a shaft of light across the land," 
 
 can never in the nature of things become 
 a reality. Humanity is doomed. Ever- 
 
 63 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 recurring conflict for supremacy, or self-pre- 
 servation, is as certain as the motion of the 
 stars, since the final arbiter in every dispute 
 must be force. 
 
 But it will be observed that in order to 
 justify the right of the state to extend its 
 boundaries over other states by brute force 
 the biological law of the survival of the fittest, 
 which seems to be a universal law of life, is 
 brought over by those philosophers from the 
 jungle and applied to the state as a law 
 of nature to which the state must conform 
 in the struggle for existence. "Struggle is a 
 universal law of nature, and the instinct of 
 self-preservation which leads to struggle is 
 acknowledged to be a natural condition of ex- 
 istence." "This duty of self-assertion is by no 
 means satisfied by the mere repulse of hostile 
 attacks; it includes the obligation to assure 
 the possibility of life and development to the 
 whole body of the nation embraced by the 
 state." This, of course, means expansion, and 
 underlies the German demand made during 
 the war for the annexation of Belgium and 
 northern France and the absorption of Rus- 
 sian provinces. 
 
 Darwin's theory of evolution, based on 
 Malthus's theory of population, came at an 
 
 64 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 opportune time for that class of people who 
 needed some support for their assumption of 
 superiority over others. The Tories in Eng- 
 land seized it for political purposes. Every 
 law for the betterment of the working classes, 
 the poor and unfortunate, found scientific 
 reasons against its adoption in this newly dis- 
 covered law of the survival of the fit. In Ger- 
 many it was readily adopted by the military 
 classes. Through the influence of Haeckel, 
 and other materialistic scientists, it became 
 popular in university teaching and aided im- 
 mensely in the growth of national egotism, 
 since, if it could be shown that in the evolution 
 of races the Germans were a superior people — 
 as their philosophers and historians had made 
 them believe — they were destined by a law of 
 nature, by fair means or foul, to overcome all 
 other races and thus accomplish their mission. 
 The adaptation of this law to the nature and 
 function of the state fitted easily into the phil- 
 osophy of Pan-Germanists and gave scientific 
 validity to all their plans. 
 
 Whether there is or is not in reality, and 
 without any metaphor, such a struggle for ex- 
 istence in nature as Darwin postulated need 
 not be considered here. That a nation may 
 adopt this brute law, casting aside all re- 
 
 55 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 straints of reason and morality as an indi- 
 vidual may, and prosper in things physical, 
 need not be disputed. We may go further and 
 admit that riches, industrial prosperity, terri- 
 torial expansion, glory and power may follow 
 the state in its conformity to this physical law 
 because the state fulfills that law, but it will 
 be at the price of its soul. Even then its su- 
 premacy will be only ephemeral. Having sunk 
 itself in the physical it loses the spiritual. 
 But the spiritual alone stays. The physical, 
 subject to the laws of death, in the long run 
 vanishes in the struggle for existence. 
 
 Like the leaves on the trees the generations 
 of men come and go, and the grass grows green 
 where once their civilization flourished. The 
 Arab pitches his tent on the site of Babylon 
 and the cypress grows among the ruins of 
 Rome. But we still have the Iliad and the 
 JEneid, the tragedies of Euripides and ^schy- 
 lus, the orations of Demosthenes and the 
 disputations of Cicero, the philosophy of Plato 
 and the history of Thucydides — and it is 
 quite likely that the Celestial Rose of Para- 
 dise in Dante's Divina Commedia will con- 
 tinue to ravish the soul of the Saint gazing on 
 Eternal Beauty, though the windows of Notre 
 Dame, which it is said suggested the vision, 
 
 66 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 be shattered to dust by the apostles of the 
 material. The spiritual stays. 
 
 Moral laws have their innings. They work 
 automatically. The state, composed of moral 
 beings, is a moral entity. It cannot therefore 
 violate the laws of its life by becoming purely 
 physical or nonmoral, as some assert it may, 
 without the loss of those spiritual qualities 
 which first gave it ideals, without debasing its 
 literature and art by drying up their sources, 
 without lowering the character of its people, 
 and without plunging deeper into the qualities 
 of the brute in order to defend itself against 
 enemies which in the process of its physical ex- 
 pansion it has aroused against its insatiable 
 ambition. Thus, by exciting the enmity of all 
 nations, it will be driven by the momentum of 
 its history and the biological law of self- 
 preservation to force mankind into wars and 
 miseries, only to fall a victim at last to the 
 physical powers it has insanely evoked. 
 History shows that evolution is working, and 
 has always worked, not primarily for the su- 
 premacy of the strong, nor even for the intel- 
 lectual, but steadily through the ages for the 
 triumph of the good. "The meek shall inherit 
 the earth." Not antagonism, but cooperation 
 is the law of human progress. This is the law 
 
 57 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 of Christ, and this law is the soundest political 
 philosophy. Along this road — ^if our states- 
 men, our labor leaders, our lords of capital, 
 the people, would only take it — is the way to 
 industrial peace, social progress, international 
 friendship, universal brotherhood. 
 
 But even admitting that it is laudable for a 
 state to become great, is it necessary for the 
 welfare and happiness of its people that it 
 should rob other people as Austria was robbed 
 of Silesia, Denmark of Schleswig-Holstein, 
 Italy of Trentino, France of Alsace-Lorraine? 
 If this is necessary, then Japan, over-popu- 
 lated and lacking in material resources, 
 should be given a free hand in China, which 
 has a superabundance of what Japan needs for 
 the industrial life of her people. 
 
 What is greatness? Treitschke's concep- 
 tion of a great state — and all Prussian histori- 
 ans who wrote history for the glorification of 
 the house of Hohenzollern and the unification 
 of the German states under Prussian rule 
 adopt a similar view — is a state so mighty in 
 its own power that it shall be under no obliga- 
 tion to respect the rights of smaller states, nor 
 those of great states any longer than prudence 
 will permit. Even in the world of the spirit 
 it is only a great state, he affirms, that can 
 
 68 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 achieve the highest culture, since it is only the 
 vision of a mighty empire extending its sway 
 over other peoples, suppressing their national 
 aspirations and impressing upon them its 
 superior civilization, that can fire creative 
 genius in poetry and art, philosophy and 
 politics, and quicken invention in realms of 
 science. Hence the culture of the small state, 
 however charming may be the refinement of 
 its people, the liberality of its institutions, the 
 loftiness of its moral character, and how 
 deeply content the nation may be to live its 
 own life unruffled by passions for conquest 
 and glory which sweep over great states, still 
 it is only when the small state is absorbed 
 in the larger state that its culture, linked up to 
 material grandeur and power, can reach its 
 highest development. Force alone is the bul- 
 wark of civilization. 
 
 Serious statements on such a subject by an 
 eminent historian compel careful attention. 
 They are not easily brushed aside. It cannot, 
 indeed, be denied, with the facts of history 
 before us, that small states, circumscribed in 
 territory, are easy prey to powerful armies 
 which may be able to penetrate quickly to the 
 heart of the nation, and spread the horrors of 
 war over the whole people. Nor can it be 
 
 59 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 denied that small states are quarrelsome 
 states, engaged in rivalries among themselves, 
 breeding petty jealousies and hatreds, and be- 
 cause of their rancorous disputes and everlast- 
 ing controversies giving occasion for war be- 
 tween greater nations, as is illustrated in the 
 history of the Balkan States from time im- 
 memorial. 
 
 But while this is admitted, the history of 
 mankind furnishes abundant proof that small 
 states have contributed more to the progress 
 of civilization than have great states. No one 
 needs to be told what humanity owes to the 
 small republics of Greece; to Rome, before the 
 frenzy of imperialism destroyed the simplicity 
 of former days; to the religion and literature 
 of the Hebrews, to Florence, Venice, Bologna, 
 and other centers of culture. Nor let it be 
 forgotten that in the Reformation period, in 
 the struggle for democracy and religious free- 
 dom, the three states that defended both 
 against imperialism were the small states of 
 Holland, Switzerland, and Scotland. Com- 
 pared to the influence of these small states 
 upon civilization the great monarchies of Louis 
 XIV, of Frederick the Great, and of Germany 
 under William II, sink into insignificance. 
 
 Then, again, when Bernhardi, for example, 
 60 
 
IS A LEAGUE OF NATIONS POSSIBLE? 
 
 declares that "desire for peace renders civil- 
 ized nations anaemic and marks a decline of 
 spirit and political courage/' or, that "war 
 in opposition to peace does more to arouse na- 
 tional life and to expand national power than 
 any means known to history/' the logic of his 
 argument leads to an absurdity, for the same 
 argument — if it has any validity — would in- 
 vite us for this purpose to revive the gladia- 
 torial combats of ancient Rome. "The 
 Roman,'' says the historian Lecky, "who 
 looked with delight upon these terrible com- 
 bats of the amphitheater, sought by this means 
 to make men brave and fearless rather than 
 gentle and humane, and in his eyes that spec- 
 tacle was to be applauded which steeled the 
 heart against the fear of death." Therefore, 
 as the Romans did, as the Emperor Trajan did, 
 who during one hundred and twenty-three 
 days put ten thousand prisoners of war to 
 fight as gladiators into the arena, the German 
 prisoners of war in the prison camps of Eng- 
 land and France, and those captured by the 
 Americans, should have been forced into 
 gladiatorial combats in order to keep England 
 and France from becoming "anaemic" and 
 "spiritless," and to make those nations also 
 brave and fearless. But Germany herself 
 
 61 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 would now repudiate the philosophy of Bern- 
 hardi. She has learned since this war began 
 that it is not necessary for the people, or the 
 soldiers of England, or of France, or of Bel- 
 gium, or of the United States, to witness 
 gladiatorial combats in order to make them 
 "brave and fearless." 
 
 And no less vacuous is the statement of 
 Treitschke that "it has always been the weary, 
 spiritless, and exhausted nations which have 
 played with the dream of perpetual peace." 
 Relentless facts compel the reply that Ger- 
 many has recently found out differently. She 
 has discovered to her cost — at the cost of 
 nearly five million men — that Treitschke was 
 mistaken. She thought France was decadent, 
 England spiritless, and that the people of the 
 United States were devoid of idealism and 
 were merely luxury-loving worshipers of the 
 golden calf. But the men commanded by 
 Joffre and Foch and Haig and Pershing have 
 supplied this defect in Germany's education. 
 
 62 
 
CHAPTER ly 
 POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 In the judgment of men who fully compre- 
 hend the difficulties in the pathway of peace, 
 it would seem that there is no insuperable 
 difficulty blocking the road to concord among 
 the nations that may not be blasted out if the 
 people, the democracies of the world, will have 
 it so. The Will to Peace may be just as strong 
 and irresistible as the Will to Power, if that 
 Will is set in motion. 
 
 Take this last difficulty mentioned, the 
 struggle for existence. This to many minds 
 is the greatest difficulty of all. But is it a real 
 and insuperable difficulty? The whole argu- 
 ment rests upon the theory that in nature 
 there is an unceasing "struggle for ex- 
 istence," that in all realms of being, among 
 all living things, plant or animal, there oper- 
 ates an omnipresent, irresistible law which is 
 ever weeding out the weaker; so that only 
 those forms of life which harmonize with their 
 environment, succeed in obtaining food, and 
 
 63 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 destroying their enemies, can survive. This 
 instinct of self-preservation compels by inner 
 necessity the struggle for the survival of the 
 strong, and this law applies to nations as it 
 does to the individual or the brute. 
 
 This dictum of science, to which reference 
 has already been made but may be referred 
 to again, which seems to account for the rise 
 and fall of empires as easily as for the death 
 of beasts in the jungle, has obtained general 
 acceptance. We need not deny it. So far as 
 it pertains to the brute creation, it may be 
 true. But without claiming to possess suflS- 
 cient knowledge of all the data upon which 
 scientists establish their theory, one may chal- 
 lenge the processes of reasoning by which this 
 law is applied to man. Has the benevolent 
 God so created man? We may grant that 
 this is a physical law applicable wholly to 
 physical creatures, a law of which they are 
 unconscious, but which nevertheless compels 
 them by the very necessity of their being to 
 obey. They have no choice. They are im- 
 pelled by instinct and cannot change their 
 nature or the conditions of their existence. 
 But man is not wholly a physical being, and 
 here is an incalculable difference. He is also 
 spiritual, mental, and despite all that ma- 
 
 64 
 
POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 terialism may affirm concerning the origin of 
 man, he knows that he possesses free will. He 
 knows that he is not immovable, chained to 
 iron necessity. Between him and brute crea- 
 tion there is a great gulf. He is not impelled 
 by instinct to obey. He reasons. He thinks 
 and plans, looks before and after. He reasons, 
 and his reason puts him outside the grip of 
 necessity. Nor is he a compulsory victim of 
 environment. He may change his environ- 
 ment. In him there is no brute law which 
 cannot be controlled by a higher law, a spir- 
 itual power within him, so that he is not com- 
 pelled by any irresistible law of nature to any 
 one exclusive line of action or unchangeable 
 condition of living. He creates surroundings 
 and masters conditions. By his ever-increas- 
 ing knowledge he compels the laws and the 
 forces of nature, like the genii of Aladdin^s 
 lamp in Arabian story, to obey his will. The 
 law of the jungle is not applicable to man. In 
 him is the sense of right and wrong, however 
 perverted or undeveloped. In him, imbedded 
 in his nature, are also the mighty instincts of 
 love and sympathy which demand sacrifice 
 and not struggle, generosity and not greed; 
 and all these powers of his spiritual nature 
 enable him, if he will submit to the higher 
 
 65 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 lawB of his being rather than to the brutish 
 instincts which war against the spiritual, to 
 join with his fellows in leagues of peace, and, 
 resisting the momentum of past history, make 
 peace, and not war, the habit of the human 
 race. 
 
 Having thus briefly considered those objec- 
 tions which have been oftenest made against 
 the possibility of enduring peace, there re- 
 mains the political objection, which is the most 
 practical objection. There is no question of 
 greater import to the world, present and 
 future, than this. If the nations fall back into 
 pre-war distrust of each other; if Germany, 
 stung with defeat and humiliation, sinks into 
 sullen hatred and nurses revenge; if Bulgaria, 
 Hungary, Italy, Russia, and what is left of 
 Austria shall cherish the feeling that they 
 have been cheated by the great powers, 
 such an attitude will seriously affect the mind 
 of the world, shape policies of governments, 
 and compel all governments to continue mili- 
 tary programs for possible contingencies. 
 
 The Peace Congress, composed of repre- 
 sentatives of the nations which were at war 
 with Germany, met in Paris, January 18, 1919, 
 to formulate a treaty of peace. Among other 
 commissions the Congress appointed a Com- 
 
 66 
 
POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 mission to draw up a plan or constitution for 
 a League of Nations, the purpose of which 
 should be to establish a tribunal for the ad- 
 justment of international disputes and the 
 prevention of war. On February 4, 1919, this 
 Commission held its first session, and finished 
 its task February 13. The next day the draft 
 of the covenant was presented by President 
 Wilson to the plenary session of the Peace 
 Congress. In presenting the document Presi- 
 dent Wilson said: 
 
 A living thing is born, and we must see to it wliat 
 clothes we put on it. It is not a vehicle of power, but 
 a vehicle in which power may be varied at the dis- 
 cretion of those who exercise it and in accordance with 
 the changing circumstances of the time. And yet while 
 it is elastic, while it is general in its terms, it is definite 
 in the one thing that we were called upon to make 
 definite. It is a definite guarantee of peace. It is a 
 definite guarantee by word against aggression. It is a 
 definite guarantee against the things which have just 
 come near bringing the whole structure of civilization 
 into ruin. 
 
 President Wilson was followed by Lord 
 Kobert Cecil, head of the British delegation on 
 the Commission. He said : 
 
 The results accomplished embraced two main prin- 
 ciples — first no nation shall go to war until every other 
 means of settlement shall be fully and fairly tried; 
 second, no nation shall forcibly seek to disturb a terri- 
 
 67 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 tory's integrity or interfere with the political independ- 
 ence of the nations of the world. 
 
 Lean Bourgeois, representing France, Pre- 
 mier Cl^menceau, Baron Makino of Japan, 
 Premier Hughes of Australia, Premier Veni- 
 zelos of Greece, and several others spoke ap- 
 proving words, but with certain reservations 
 in mind. 
 
 Thus was launched upon the uncertain sea 
 of public opinion another of the most impor- 
 tant political documents in the world. The 
 longing for peace, which during the war was 
 often declared by the chancelleries of the 
 belligerent nations, as well as by the people, 
 found official expression in that covenant. On 
 the face of it, and, indeed, in the heart of it, it 
 seemed to be what it purported to be in its 
 Preamble. Lord Cecil plainly stated its funda- 
 mental purpose — the settlement of interna- 
 tional controversies and the prevention of war. 
 
 It seems, however, that, notwithstanding 
 happiness is a universal desire and that men 
 everywhere would support every effort to ob- 
 tain it, it is nevertheless among the deep 
 mysteries of life that never yet was good pro- 
 posed that some evil spirit was not present at 
 its birth ; either to destroy it in its infancy, to 
 mar its development, or to defeat its ultimate 
 
 68 
 
POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 purpose. This, at any rate, appears to have 
 been the case with the proposed covenant of 
 the League of Nations. 
 
 It could hardly be expected, in the first 
 place, that a document, written in the com- 
 paratively short time given to its considera- 
 tion (nine days), involving as it does so many 
 intricate and delicate questions of govern- 
 ment, would be received with unqualified ap- 
 proval even though composed by statesmen of 
 experience. The Commission itself which pre- 
 pared the draft of it had not been in session 
 four days before acute dissension arose among 
 them. In England influential newspapers ex- 
 pressed misgivings, and in the House of Com- 
 mons Premier Lloyd George found his worthy 
 appeal "to take it seriously" by no means en- 
 thusiastically received. Though responsible 
 journals in France have since changed their 
 tone, on the day of its publication in Paris the 
 covenant was immediately attacked, and so 
 severe were the criticisms it was suggested 
 that the Peace Congress be moved elsewhere. 
 The fact is, so little confidence in the League 
 was felt by all parties that Premier CMmen- 
 ceau would not accept its guarantees unless it 
 was stipulated that England and the United 
 States should come to the aid of France if she 
 
 69 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 "were attacked by Germany. In Italy and in 
 Rumania, now the most powerful of the 
 Balkan States, neither the Treaty of Peace nor 
 the covenant of the League found whole- 
 hearted support from either the governments 
 or the people of those countries. Italy was 
 promised territory she long desired in Asia 
 Minor and on the Adriatic if she entered the 
 war on the side of the Allies. Italy entered the 
 war, but when the war was over President 
 Wilson insisted that the important city of 
 Fiume, promised to Italy by the Treaty of 
 London, should go to the new state of Czecho- 
 slovakia. Rumania had a similar promise of 
 territory, but this too was revoked when the 
 war was over, on the insistence of President 
 Wilson; and the League of Nations' covenant 
 forever guarantees the boundaries thus fixed 
 as the new map of Europe. France, the friend 
 of Italy, finds herself obligated by this 
 covenant to fight Italy should she attempt 
 to annex Fiume. Rumania seized Budapest 
 notwithstanding the protests of the peace 
 powers, and was supported by public opinion 
 in France and Italy. In Germany it could 
 not be expected that the covenant would be 
 approved, since it would compel her to confirm 
 the loss of her colonies and the carving of her 
 
 79 
 
POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 empire in Europe for the making of the new 
 states of Poland and Czeeho-Slovakia, as fixed 
 in the Treaty of Peace. 
 
 In the United States the political atmos- 
 phere was charged with debate. The un- 
 fortunate antagonism, which had grown to 
 open hostility between the President and the 
 Senate, awakened critical interest in the re- 
 quirements of the covenant. The President, it 
 was stated, had ignored the counsel of the 
 Senate and the suggestions of eminent Ameri- 
 can statesmen. When, therefore, the official 
 text of the plan was laid before that body for 
 ratification without amendment or reserva- 
 tion, it was at once attacked, and one of the 
 bitterest controversies ever known in the 
 Senate raged around its obligations and their 
 implications which the United States govern- 
 ment would be compelled to assume, should 
 the covenant be adopted without reservations. 
 The Senate of the United States, which has 
 equal power with the President in the making 
 of treaties, had signed treaties before with cer- 
 tain definite reservations such as the Algeciras 
 Treaty and the "Hague Convention of 1907," 
 and no ulterior motives were attributed to 
 the Senate on making them. Since this 
 Covenant of Nations involved a departure 
 
 n 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 from the traditional policy of noninterference 
 in the political questions of foreign states, the 
 Senate, while in favor of a League, therefore 
 would not give unqualified indorsement to a 
 covenant which necessarily demanded a rever- 
 sion of that policy. It was argued that adop- 
 tion of the covenant was in fact and principle 
 a surrender of the sovereignty of the United 
 States to the authority of the Executive Coun- 
 cil of the League, a kind of supergovernment 
 which would function over all governments 
 signatory to the covenant. And not only so, 
 but notwithstanding the fact that by the terms 
 of the covenant the Council could only advise 
 what a nation should do in a particular crisis, 
 nevertheless, if the Council should "advise" 
 war against a recalcitrant state, the United 
 States would be compelled by its moral obliga- 
 tions in the League, and not by the American 
 Congress acting under the Constitution, to 
 cross the Atlantic and fight on foreign soil. 
 
 On the other side, the supporters of the ad- 
 ministration showed that every state signing 
 any treaty does by that act limit its sov- 
 ereignty, but does not thereby surrender it; 
 that what other governments had done with- 
 out diminishing their authority or loss of 
 dignity in adopting the League of Nations for 
 
 72 
 
POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 the sake of peace, which would be practically 
 guaranteed by such a coalition, the United 
 States should also do for the sake of humanity, 
 and thus by a mighty alliance of all the great 
 powers bring in a new era for the world. Thus 
 the battle raged. Finally, after a long and 
 stormy debate of four months, on November 
 20, 1919, ten reservations were adopted by a 
 committee of the Senate despite all that the 
 President and the administration forces could 
 do to prevent such action. Such at present 
 (February 18) is the fate of that document 
 upon which rested as upon former peace plans 
 the hope of perpetual peace. 
 
 An impartial mind perhaps will be slow to 
 assign the blame. Perhaps the Constitution 
 itself is to blame, since it makes no provision 
 for dissolution of a deadlock between the 
 President and the Senate. Many causes con- 
 tributed to the debacle. The failure to ratify 
 probably will be attributed in the final 
 analysis to some particular individual, to the 
 conditions of membership in the League, to the 
 opposition of influential senators to any 
 League, or finally to the reluctance of the 
 American people to risk the experiment. 
 There is such a thing as doing a right thing in 
 a wrong way. 
 
 73 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 The indisputable facts are that the plat- 
 forms of both national parties, Republican 
 and Democratic, declared for a League of 
 Nations, and the public declarations of sena- 
 tors of both parties expressed the same desire. 
 Therefore, to charge as one of the reasons for 
 the failure of the plan that a majority of the 
 United States Senate were opposed to a 
 League of Nations in any form, may be an 
 exhibition of partisan bias, but it certainly is 
 not an exhibition of a judicial temperament. 
 Those who voted for reservation which, it is 
 alleged, defeated the plan, held that it was 
 only a proposal and not a completed contract, 
 which its champions declared it to be, but 
 which the Senate affirmed it could not be until 
 it had passed the Senate. The Senate, there- 
 fore, could not but consider it as open to 
 amendment actual or implied, or else reject 
 it altogether. To reject it was, its friends as- 
 serted, to reject the Treaty of Peace which was 
 deftly woven into it. To accept it just as it 
 was presented, automatically launched the 
 United States upon a sea it had never sailed, 
 delivered the American government into the 
 control of another government which would 
 have the authority to direct its acts and to de- 
 termine its obligations. The friends of the 
 
 74 
 
POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 plan blame the majority in the Senate for 
 magnifying minor defects which could be 
 remedied later; for distorting the advisory 
 powers of the League into peremptory de- 
 mands; for subordinating the welfare of 
 humanity to impossible interpretations of na- 
 tional obligation, and for insistence upon 
 theoretical relinquishment of sovereignty, 
 which is equally shared with all other signa- 
 tories to the League. 
 
 But it makes very little difference now, tak- 
 ing what might be called a planetary view of 
 the situation, where the blame lies. The lack 
 of unanimity and spontaneity in the highest 
 representative body of the American people, 
 the long and acrimonious debates, the critical 
 exposure of its defects by eminent statesmen 
 in the country at large, will certainly detract 
 from the impression which a whole-hearted ac- 
 ceptance of the fact would have made upon the 
 mind of Europe. An emphatic approval of the 
 League would have served notice to all the peo- 
 ples of Europe of the League's inflexible de- 
 termination to enforce law and prevent war. 
 But with what confidence may we now look 
 into the future? Will the League of Nations, 
 with or without the United States, be able to 
 maintain the peace of the world? 
 
 75 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 NEED FOR CHRISTIAN LEAGUE 
 
 The whole world sees that though the 
 United States should join the League with the 
 proviso that Congress shall retain its constitu- 
 tional authority to declare war or not, even 
 though "advised" to do so by the League Coun- 
 cil, it will still be doubtful in the world's 
 thinking, because of the uncertainty of public 
 opinion and the complexion of Congress, 
 whether American armies will ever again fight 
 in Europe. England and France will be re- 
 garded in European opinion as having become, 
 and in fact will have become, the main 
 strength of the League if such a League ever 
 becomes a reality. In such case the League 
 will simply have become an alliance between 
 those nations. It is not likely, until there is 
 some favorable readjustment, that Germany 
 or Bulgaria or Austria, or Rumania will 
 join the League. They see at once that what- 
 ever question of boundary may arise between 
 Germany and Poland, Serbia and Bulgaria, 
 
 76 
 
NEED FOR CHRISTIAN LEAGUE 
 
 Hungary and Rumania — and such will surely 
 arise — their case is prejudged, since these 
 boundaries are already fixed in the Treaty of 
 Peace, and the League of Nations is under 
 solemn obligation to defend these fixed boun- 
 daries against "external aggression/' Article 
 X reads : 
 
 The members of the League undertake to respect and 
 preserve as against external aggression the territorial 
 integrity and existing political independence of all mem- 
 bers of the League. In case of any such aggression or 
 in case of any threat or danger of such aggression, the 
 Council shall advise upon the means by which this 
 obligation shall be fulfilled. 
 
 It is much more likely that the defeated 
 nations may come to an understanding, or 
 form some coalition among themselves, if some 
 regenerating influence does not destroy in 
 them the spirit of revenge and direct the ener- 
 gies of the people in the paths of peace. 
 
 But what influence or power can do this? 
 The League of Nations alone cannot do it, 
 since it is the purpose of the League to main- 
 tain the status flxed by the Treaty of Peace. 
 Any change in boundaries, or relations of the 
 Poles, the Czechoslovaks, or the Serbians not 
 in harmony with the "self determination'' of 
 these states will be at once an abandonment 
 
 77 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 of the Peace Treaty and the signal for revolt 
 to right the wrong that has been done them. 
 It is not, therefore, to be imagined that the 
 League of Nations, the symbol of force, as it 
 is, and ought to be, will be able morally to re- 
 generate the people whom it keeps in bonds by 
 display of arms. 
 
 Time and betterment of industrial condi- 
 tions may go far to obliterate the memories of 
 the present, especially when Germany and her 
 allies reflect upon the misery they brought 
 upon the world and the frightful punishment 
 they had laid up for the Allies compared to the 
 lenient justice the Allies have meted out to 
 them. But, as an index to the mental reserva- 
 tions of those nations at present and their de- 
 clared purpose in the future, despite their ac- 
 ceptance of the Treaty of Peace and signing of 
 the confirmatory League Covenant, the Associ- 
 ated Press states that Bulgaria meditates 
 revenge. 
 
 The Minister of War Madjaroff, formerly 
 Bulgarian minister to London, declared that 
 Bulgaria might for the moment be humiliated 
 and crushed, but she would rise up again with 
 renewed strength — it might be five years from 
 now, it might be ten, it might be twenty, but 
 rise she would. Her "just military and terri- 
 
 78 
 
NEED FOR CHRISTIAN LEAGUE 
 
 torial desires might be repressed by the force 
 of superior numbers, but her spirit, which was 
 eternal, could not be suppressed by any power 
 on earth." The Bulgarians, he continued, 
 "were a patient, forbearing people, with whom 
 patriotism and national honor were a passion. 
 There could be no peace in the Balkans under 
 such an ^unjust territorial arrangement' as the 
 Peace Conference had laid down. Bulgaria 
 would have to prepare to resist the invasion of 
 its soil by her hostile neighbors, which sooner 
 or later was inevitable. She could not at- 
 tain her normal economic, political or social 
 growth under the ^harsh provisions' of the 
 treaty. She might be compelled out of self- 
 preservation, if the terms were not modified, 
 to resort to drastic expedients." 
 
 Premier Nitti, of Italy, expressed the dis- 
 content of his people when in November, 1919, 
 he said : 
 
 The war has ceased for a year. Ever since the 
 Italians have seen their national aspirations opposed 
 with a hardness and inflexibility which wounds them 
 profoundly. Was it worth while to oppose us so cruelly 
 regarding Fiume? An irregular situation has arisen 
 both in Fiume and Dalmatia. The discontent which has 
 blazed up in our army and navy is the result of many 
 errors of our own, but above all — I say it solemnly and 
 deliberately — they are in a great measure due to the 
 conduct of our aUies. 
 
 79 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 Thus Italy has been sacrificed to the new 
 state of Czecho- Slovakia, and seed of future 
 trouble sown on the Adriatic as well as on the 
 -^gean Sea. 
 
 When one considers the attitude of political 
 Germany and the avowed determination of her 
 leaders not to respect the Treaty they signed 
 any longer than they are compelled to, it is not 
 difficult to forecast the future. How any 
 nation with the record Germany has of 
 treaties of practical servitude imposed upon 
 Finland, upon Russia at Brest-Litovsk, upon 
 Ukrania, upon Rumania, and the conditions 
 of peace which she intended to impose upon 
 England, France, Belgium, and Italy, had 
 victory crowned her armies — how any nation 
 that had not lost its soul could have the hardi- 
 hood to complain of the terms which the Allies 
 compelled her to sign, is beyond the compre- 
 hension of any mind not afflicted with that 
 kind of mentality peculiar to the political 
 leaders of Germany. 
 
 But it is just in this abnormal mind the 
 danger of all Europe lies. The leaders com- 
 plain that the peace terms "will ruin Ger- 
 many" without one thought or sigh of repent- 
 ence for the ruin and death which Germany 
 brought to Belgium, to France, and their 
 
 80 
 
NEED FOR CHRISTIAN LEAGUE 
 
 allies. They complain that it will be impos- 
 sible for Germany to pay the indemnities laid 
 upon them, forgetting that Herr Helfferieh, 
 secretary of the treasury, in his report to the 
 Kaiser in 1913, one year before the war, esti- 
 mated Germany's capital wealth amounted to 
 more than 410,000,000,000 marks ; and that her 
 annual revenue was 50,000,000,000. No invad- 
 ing hosts ravaged her lands nor destroyed her 
 industries, her towns and cities; and if in the 
 working of retributive justice, her compulsory 
 pledges to deliver coal to Belgium and Prance 
 for a number of years will retard her return to 
 prewar conditions, even then she will be better 
 off in many respects than the states she had 
 determined to ruin. 
 
 Nevertheless, Germany will not submit to 
 the present situation as a permanent settle- 
 ment. Prussianism still remains. The same 
 military and Junker classes that brought on 
 the war still influence the councils of govern- 
 ment. The attempts to evade the terms of the 
 Treaty bode no good. They indicate rather 
 moral bankruptcy. The same tactics which 
 Scharnhorst employed to nullify the edict 
 of Napoleon I as to the number of troops that 
 Prussia should retain, Germany now pursues. 
 Professing to accept the decree of the Allies 
 
 81 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 that her armed force shall not exceed one hun- 
 dred thousand men, the German government 
 has recently passed a military law which while 
 not actually contravening the terms of the 
 Treaty will in a few years provide her with a 
 formidable army. 
 
 The German people are a noble, home-lov- 
 ing, and liberty-loving people, if untainted by 
 Prussian ambition and not led astray by evil 
 council. Such a people when deceived 
 through long years by all arts of government, 
 education and the press, and by false teachers 
 in government pay, are easily led to believe in 
 a false mission and unconsciously assume a 
 false character. They become just what they 
 have shown themselves to be in this war of 
 f rightfulness ; and then, such is the astounding 
 psychology of their changed nature, that they 
 will inquire with wonder why the whole world 
 condemns them I They cannot understand that 
 the world has not with them wholly changed 
 its moral character. 
 
 Germany must be born again. It will be, 
 but not without struggle. If the present gen- 
 eration and the next shall discard all that au- 
 tocracy has stood for, discard the insane phil- 
 osophies and falsehoods which have corrupted 
 the soul of the people, Germany will fill a 
 
 82 
 
NEED FOR CHRISTIAN LEAGUE 
 
 larger and a more permanent place in history 
 than the realization of her pan-Germanic 
 dreams could possibly have brought to her. 
 
 But should she persist in the course she has 
 pursued, it is not improbable that in less than 
 fifty years war will again resound in Europe. 
 If that war does come, and it will come if not 
 prevented now, it will be a swifter and a more 
 terrible war than this war. It will not be a 
 war of armies on foot, not a war of trenches or 
 of artillery, except long-range guns ; it will be 
 chiefly a chemical war. The science of chem- 
 istry will have been so greatly advanced by 
 new discoveries in explosives, skill in building,. 
 air-planes, and the art of flying so highly de- 
 veloped, ostensibly for the purpose of com- 
 merce but in war time directed by wireless and 
 concentrated by hundreds over cities, that in 
 an hour by the use of explosive bombs, in- 
 cendiary bombs, asphyxiating-gas bombs, 
 whole cities with their populations will be 
 utterly destroyed. Europe will have found 
 her grave in a shell-hole. 
 
 83 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 STATES NEED THE CHURCH 
 
 What can be done to prevent such a 
 calamity? Considering that the world has 
 only just emerged from one of the greatest 
 cataclysms in history and is tired of war, this 
 question may be ignored, or considered as void 
 of immediate interest. The shattered condi- 
 tion of the defeated empires is so hopeless, it 
 is said, that any idea of their resurgence to 
 former power, except in some far distant 
 future, is beyond the rim of practical reason. 
 
 This possible return, however, may not be 
 so remote that the League of Nations may now 
 safely surrender its charter or suspend its 
 scrutiny of enemies' plans and purposes. 
 Short-sightedness in a statesman guiding na- 
 tional affairs is just as bad as color-blindness 
 in an engineer driving a locomotive. Signals 
 are set up in order to be seen. Everybody now 
 sees that it was just this fatuous blindness to 
 
 84 
 
STATES NEED THE CHUECH 
 
 the signs of the times that came so near de- 
 livering the world's future into the hands of 
 Germany. Premier Lloyd George in an Ad- 
 dress to the House of Commons, April 16, 1919, 
 struck this same highly optimistic note when 
 he said : 
 
 I know there is a good deal of talk about recrudes- 
 cence of the military power of Germany. You get para- 
 graphs about what Germany is doing, that she is going 
 to get on her feet again, and about her great armies. 
 That is not the case. With difficulty — that is our mili- 
 tary information — she can gather together eighty thou- 
 sand men to preserve order. 
 
 There is no doubt that Lloyd George, whom 
 it may not be extravagance to name the 
 saviour of England, stated exactly the facts as 
 they were at that time; but already Germany 
 — such is the irony of politics — has passed a 
 military law which if not denounced by the 
 League of Nations as a violation of the Treaty 
 of Peace, will provide in a few years an army 
 of two million. And it may be noted further 
 that if the peace of Europe is so certainly as- 
 sured for the future, why such compelling ne- 
 cessity for a League of Nations at all, or, at 
 least, why such immediate haste in its organ- 
 ization? 
 
 With keener insight, or perhaps with less 
 
 85 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 regard for official reticence, the Hon. Winston 
 Churchill diagnoses the situation. He says: 
 
 Do not let us forget that the great, mighty masses of 
 the German and Russian nations will not always remain 
 plunged in their present weakness and miseries. At no 
 great distance from the present time they will again be 
 powerful factors in the world, and no course which it is 
 in our power to take can prevent them from being so, 
 even were that our wish. 
 
 Our greatest danger is that they will arise as the foes 
 of Britain, the United States, and France, and, joining 
 hands across the patchwork area of the small but un- 
 quiet "Balkanized" states, will once again confront the 
 Western powers with a menace as terrible as that which 
 we faced on August 4, 1914. This danger may be 
 averted by wise policy, but it is imperative 'that it should 
 be realized from the outset. 
 
 Unless we are able to set up a structure superior to 
 those we have destroyed, and not less practical and effi- 
 cient in action, we cannot possibly expect the results 
 of this war to remain permanent. The old empires rose 
 out of very real needs felt by the peoples dwelling in 
 those regions, and in response to tremendous forces 
 working there. Their ghosts still brood over the im- 
 mense battlefield, and unless a superior structure can 
 be created for Christendom their reincarnation after 
 fierce birth-agonies is certain. 
 
 The question, then, What can be done to pre- 
 vent a recurrence of war? may not be so im- 
 practicable as to put it outside serious con- 
 sideration. 
 
 Peace treaties are no guarantees against 
 another conflagration. The universe may be 
 
STATES NEED THE CHUECH 
 
 bomb-proof, but Paris is not, and London is 
 not; nor is the Atlantic Coast. A League of 
 Nations is not stronger insurance than treaties 
 of peace. Any power strong enough to violate 
 the one might think itself able to defy the 
 other. It may not get very far in its insane 
 venture, it may be annihilated as a just pun- 
 ishment for its crime, but all this does not pre- 
 vent war. It may be admitted that the League 
 does not propose to prevent all wars, which 
 would be equivalent to abolishing war alto- 
 gether, but to make it possible for nations to 
 settle their disputes if they desire without re- 
 sorting to war. But the Hague Tribunal was 
 organized for just such purpose as that, and 
 although it could not enforce its decisions, as 
 the League of Nations will be able to do, yet if 
 the nations would not obey that Supreme 
 Court of the World without compulsion, it is 
 an attenuated hope that threat of war will 
 force them to obey the verdict of the League. 
 The truth is that no threat of war can restrain 
 the passions of a people when excited by patri- 
 otism to the pitch of martyrdom. 
 
 The next truth is that while the League of 
 Nations may do much to prevent war, it can- 
 not eradicate the desire for war. It would 
 seem, therefore, absolutely essential that the 
 
 87 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 physical power of the League shall be supple- 
 mented by a spiritual power, some mighty re- 
 generating influence which by its appeal to the 
 souls of men shall be able to cool superheated 
 passions, and for treasured wrong substitute 
 desire for justice and not revenge, for peace 
 and not war. 
 
 Now the only power or agency that can do 
 this is the Universal Church of God, for the 
 reason that there is no other higher moral 
 agency. There is no conceivable other; and 
 if the League will endure, it must be this. The 
 League cannot become an effective institution 
 or restraining force in future history, without 
 the power of religion to support it. After all, 
 the mightiest and the most permanent force in 
 human history is religion. Even Robespierre 
 had to bring God back to the French Revolu- 
 tion, after the Convention had bowed him out. 
 There must be moral sanction, there must be 
 the compelling power of conscience, a spir- 
 itual, collective purpose unifying the masses 
 of the nation, generated and sustained by re- 
 ligious inspiration, before a whole nation, 
 with all its complex interests and activities, 
 political, social, and commercial, will give, or 
 can give, the full weight of its concentrated 
 power in support of any political or social 
 
 88 
 
STATES NEED THE CHURCH 
 
 movement vitally related to its deepest 
 interests. 
 
 But without the support of the people in 
 every nation in Europe, and of the people of 
 the United States, such a League cannot be 
 permanent or effective. And, on the other 
 hand, without the stimulus of religion and the 
 power of it uniting the people around a com- 
 mon purpose, fusing heterogeneous and con- 
 flicting beliefs and prejudices of the various 
 nationalities in support of the ideal, the 
 masses of the peoples will have no united sup- 
 port to give. 
 
 What, then, is the remedy? The remedy is 
 a Christian league, a league of Christendom 
 supplementing the political League of Nations. 
 Such a League of all churches, Greek, Russian, 
 Protestant, Roman, for the sole purpose of in- 
 stilling in all classes and in all governments 
 the principles of Christian brotherhood and 
 demanding equal justice for all, will do more 
 to prevent the recurrence of war than any 
 coalition of governments, or peace leagues ever 
 organized. 
 
 The Church of God in its world mission 
 can do no greater service to humanity than 
 this : to align itself with all its spiritual might 
 and educational forces in all lands and among 
 
 89 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 all peoples, races and tongues, on the side of 
 men who are endeavoring to establish uni- 
 versal and perpetual peace on the earth. If 
 ever there was an expression of the will of 
 God out of the skies concerning the social re- 
 lations of man, "Peace on earth, good will 
 toward men" — a league of the nations, a 
 league of Christendom — ^is the embodiment of 
 it. The Church of God cannot do less to pre- 
 pare the way for the kingdom of God than the 
 governments of the earth. 
 
 If the church should determine not to aid 
 governments in their efforts to establish uni- 
 versal peace by definite committal of herself to 
 this task, but falls back into an attitude of 
 indifference, and supinely submits to what 
 happens, thus separating herself in selfish iso- 
 lation from the world, and interested only in 
 the heavenly world where there are no lonely 
 homes or bloody battlefields, she will, as 
 certain as gravity, lose this world, since she 
 apostatizes from the teachings of her Lord to 
 "disciple all nations." In such case what 
 Israel, and what the church of former epochal 
 times failed to do, the church of the twentieth 
 century will deliberately refuse to do. She 
 deliberately repudiates her historical calling, 
 and so far ceases to be the organ of the Holy 
 
 90 
 
STATES NEED THE CHURCH 
 
 Spirit for realizing the purpose of God in 
 bringing in the kingdom of God. 
 
 It may be that the church will do this. It 
 may be that shortsighted leaders of churches 
 in Europe and in America may, under divers 
 influences, adopt a narrow view of the nature 
 of the church, its place and purpose in history, 
 and declare that the church should not "mix 
 in politics," that our Lord's kingdom is "not of 
 this world,'' that "Christ must come before the 
 world gets better," and thus in times of re- 
 ligious interest lead the thought of the church 
 away by Jewish notions from the larger con- 
 cept of the world's social and political re- 
 demption. But "Ye are the salt of the earth," 
 said Jesus. "Ye are the light of the world." 
 Therefore, if such unscriptural teachings con- 
 cerning the mission of the church in the world 
 as indicated should prevail to any large extent, 
 there is nothing visible so far as human eye 
 can see for the world but constantly recurring 
 clashings of selfish interests, social disturb- 
 ances, wars, steady decline of morals and slow 
 deterioration of civilization. The world un- 
 leavened by the Christian spirit, "the salt of 
 the earth," will go staggering along its hope- 
 less way simply repeating the experience of 
 Rome in its decadence, despite all that the 
 
 91 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 Stoic philosophy could do to arrest its fall ; the 
 story of France on the eve of the Revolution ; 
 of England's moral degradation in the same 
 period, and of every country where the church, 
 withdrawing herself from the life of the world, 
 contrary to the teachings of her Lord, or her- 
 self becoming corrupted, has failed with heal- 
 ing touch to remedy the ills of society or to 
 disinfect in unwholesome centers the sources 
 of pollution. 
 
 But the church will also deteriorate. She 
 is in the world and the world reacts upon her, 
 so that she will either conquer the world or be 
 conquered by it. Failing to subdue the spirit 
 of the world, since we "wrestle not against 
 flesh and blood, but against principalities, 
 against powers, against the rulers of the dark- 
 ness of this world, against spiritual wicked- 
 ness in high places," the church, withdrawing 
 from the world, will have no mission to the 
 world, and therefore no reason for her exist- 
 ence. Thus she will prepare the way histor- 
 ically for her removal. "The end of the times 
 of the Gentiles'' will have come, the passing 
 of the church of the Gentiles. But the idea of 
 God implanted from the beginning in human 
 history will not pass. By many providential 
 ways, religious and political, now but faintly 
 
 92 
 
STATES NEED THE CHURCH 
 
 seen, other latent means for realizing the pur- 
 pose of God, other religious forces now exist- 
 ing side by side with the Christian Church, 
 may have their chance and will accomplish the 
 purpose of God which the Gentile Christian 
 Church had failed to do. The Jew is God's 
 reserve. 
 
 Now, the state exists in order to execute the 
 will of the people. The church exists in order 
 to execute the will of God. As the people are, 
 so will the state in general be ; that is, its char- 
 acter, its morals national and international, 
 will in all realms of political activity reflect 
 more or less the spirit of the people which sup- 
 port it. It is therefore the duty of the church, 
 aside from its special mission in the salvation 
 of the individual, to bring all men into right 
 relationship with God, in order that the state 
 may be a moral state, and that by the proper 
 exercise of its powers in social development it 
 may create an environment in which men can 
 live in harmony with the new life within them, 
 an environment which shall afford free scope 
 for the exercise of Christianity without con- 
 flicting forces or conditions, tolerated or legal- 
 ized by the state, nullifying the moral and 
 spiritualizing influences at work for subject- 
 ing the whole life of man to the divine will. 
 
 93 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 With the growth of Christian sentiment and a 
 clear perception of the evil effect of vice upon 
 a people, the state endeavors now to do this 
 in its efforts to eradicate intemperance, 
 ignorance, and social vices. The church also 
 everywhere sees that it is her duty to aid the 
 state in creating such social conditions that 
 social heredity shall operate for the transmis- 
 sion of the good and not for the perpetuation 
 of evil. 
 
 But if it is the duty of the church thus to aid 
 the state in its internal administration, how 
 can the conclusion be avoided that it is also 
 the duty of the church to aid the state in its 
 relations with all other peoples? Must the 
 Church of God here part company with the 
 state, and, leaving the destiny of the nation 
 and the fate of other peoples in the hands of a 
 few statesmen influenced by divers considera- 
 tions, to a chauvinistic press, to the interplay 
 and designs of financial interests, tamely sub- 
 mit to the decrees of these statesmen acting for 
 the state? Is it not, rather, the duty of the 
 church to create in every country a state of 
 mind which will aid the government in pre- 
 serving amicable relations with all other gov- 
 ernments, since we are related to all other 
 governments, and prevent it from plunging 
 
 94 
 
STATES NEED THE CHURCH 
 
 the nation into war for any purpose other than 
 resistance of invasion? 
 
 This does not mean, of course, that in any 
 country the church in a time of danger should 
 put itself in opposition to the government, and 
 thus, by creating division among the people, 
 weaken the power of the state. Nor does it 
 mean that a flabby pacificism should be taught 
 the people, or that the church should encour- 
 age so-called conscientious objectors, whose 
 objection is not to the enjoyment of benefits 
 they derive from their country, native or 
 adopted, its laws and institutions, its cultural 
 and industrial opportunities, which in its 
 hour of need they will not defend, but to the 
 dangers and inconveniences they may have to 
 endure. Such people should be disfranchised, 
 and deprived of every right for which other 
 men suffer and die. They have no moral or 
 political right to the benefits of other men^s 
 death. But it does mean that it is the duty 
 of the church to create in every nation a real 
 sense of the brotherhood of humanity, a desire 
 for peace, a hunger for right understanding, 
 for love and^mercy that will prevent war and 
 mutual misunderstandings. 
 
 The chijgch by dii*ict influence upon govern- 
 ment, and vigorous education of childhood and 
 
 95 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 youth, must create a society in which war 
 shall be banished from human thinking and 
 planning, for war is not confined to actual 
 slaughter on the battlefield. War is a disease. 
 It is a state of mind. It is a product of social 
 heredity. Its antecedents and concomitants 
 penetrate and ramify through every thought 
 and activity of society even in times of peace, 
 from the statesman planning increase of terri- 
 tory or of markets, to the munition maker, the 
 manufacturer, the profiteer, the skilled work- 
 man and day laborer, dreaming of profits or 
 increase of wages. Thus the world-mind is 
 kept familiarized with the idea of war. It is 
 habituated by language and gesture to think 
 war, and in every nation multiplied thousands 
 are employed preparing for the next confiict at 
 home or abroad. 
 
 Such a state of mind can never make for an 
 unruffled sense of peace and of established 
 security. By an inward necessity it must con- 
 tribute on the contrary to the continuance of 
 that evil the nations most dread — War. 
 
 Man can never reach that civilization which 
 Christian thought contemplates until war is 
 abolished and the millions yearly expended for 
 the maintenance of armaments are spent for 
 the good of the people. Such a civilization 
 
 96 
 
STATES NEED THE CHURCH 
 
 cannot exist, for the reason that conditions for 
 its growth do not exist. Civilization requires 
 stability. There must be established institu- 
 tions, concord between nations, freedom of 
 intercourse, of travel and of commerce, for 
 neither manners, nor art nor science, neither 
 education nor development of any peaceful 
 pursuit, can be possible where there is unrest, 
 tumult, and roar of battle, or a feverish ex- 
 pectation of change or disaster. 
 '^0 '' Nor can the government abolish war by fiat. 
 It may disband armies and sink its dread- 
 naughts, but that would not banish war. War, 
 as stated, is an attitude of mind, the welling 
 up from the depths of the human spirit of the 
 desire for revenge; and if no weapons are 
 available, the mad impulse to kill will manu- 
 facture them. The roots of violence are in 
 the soul of man, and no legislation, or League 
 of Nations, can reach the malady. A stronger 
 impulse than the instinct for murder must 
 expel this desire from the human soul. But 
 there exists no power except the Church of 
 God which, by cooperating with the state and 
 by its own spiritual impact upon society, can 
 achieve that miracle. 
 
 Spiritual needs demand spiritual remedies. 
 The state, therefore, is incapable of imparting 
 
 97 
 
THE CHUKCH AND WOKLD PEACE 
 
 that spiritual power necessary to that mental 
 regeneration which will resort to the tribunal 
 of Justice, rather than to war, for the redress 
 of wrongs. The state does not possess such 
 power, and has no means by which it could 
 transmit it, if it possessed it. The state can 
 touch the outside but never the inside. The 
 church alone is the divinely ordained instru- 
 ment for the spiritualizing of the nations, and 
 it alone can reach the cause of the world's 
 trouble. Under God it possesses both power 
 and means for this regeneration, and to do this 
 is the mission of the church in human history. 
 For, as Dr. James Orr, in The Christian View 
 of the World, rightly inquires, "What did 
 Christ come for if not to impart a new life to 
 humanity, which, working from within and 
 outward, is destined to transform all human 
 relations — all family and social life, all in- 
 dustry and commerce, all art and literature, 
 all government and relations among peoples 
 till the kingdoms of this world are become the 
 kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ?" 
 
 Consider, then, the church and the idea of 
 the kingdom which war prevents from being 
 realized in national and international affairs. 
 
 98 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE MISSION OF ISEAEL 
 
 Whatever world- view philosophical histori- 
 ans may have of human destiny, to the Chris- 
 tian thinker the goal of history is the realiza- 
 tion of the kingdom of God. This conviction 
 rests upon belief in a divine purpose in crea- 
 tion, taught in Holy Scripture, and confirmed 
 by the moral progress of humanity. To those 
 who exclude final causes from their conception 
 of the universe, the idea of a superintending 
 God in human affairs has, of course, no stand- 
 ing in a world governed by physical law. 
 Such see no march of law and reason, of social 
 progress and culture under the guidance of 
 Providence. Blending in their monism the 
 spiritual with the physical, they so connect 
 the human with inanimate nature that the 
 laws which govern matter also determine the 
 social and moral conditions of man, and there 
 is set before him no higher destiny than that 
 which may be worked out by the uniform oper- 
 
 99 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 ation of physical law. There is no meaning 
 in history; it is a purposeless ocean-swell of 
 human endeavor, an eternal alternation of de- 
 velopment and decay. 
 
 Christianity cannot thus look upon the 
 world's life. No event is without significance 
 or relation, near or remote, to the thoughtful 
 Christian. As the prophets of Israel pon- 
 dered the vision relative to national destiny 
 and the dawn of universal deliverance in the 
 coming of the King and Redeemer, the Chris- 
 tian philosopher will have practical interest 
 in the theories and systems which dominate 
 human thought, in the purposes and methods 
 of civil governments, the acts of parliaments 
 and the movements of armies, the achieve- 
 ments of the explorer and the success of the 
 missionary, the progress of ideas, the nature 
 of reforms, and the play of social and political 
 forces. He will be actuated in this not for the 
 purpose of indulging mathematical caprice 
 and inventing prophecies, but because all that 
 is to be is now, because the new is involved in 
 the old, and all that is has relation to the king- 
 dom of God. As invisible mist evolves into 
 visible clouds, the antichrist of the future and 
 the golden age of prophecy will be historically 
 developed from corresponding elements previ- 
 
 100 
 
THE MISSIO:n: of ISRAELS^ .,; : 
 
 ously existing, from principles now operating 
 in human society. These by the ordinary 
 working of moral laws will reach their ulti- 
 mate realization as depicted in prophecy, in 
 the fullness of time. Hence all human ac- 
 tivity, even the chronic evils of the race, its 
 poverty, ignorance, sin, and consuming dis- 
 quietude and wretchedness, have import as 
 potent momenta in hastening or retarding the 
 kingdom of God. 
 
 This idea, the kingdom of God, or of heaven, 
 in its earthly manifestation, is the will of God 
 reigning in the souls of men, a state of society 
 in which obedience to that will shall be recog- 
 nized as the normal condition of society, the 
 determining motive in individual, social, state, 
 and civic activities. 
 
 Like the promise of the final triumph of 
 good over evil to the fallen pair in the Garden 
 of Eden, this idea of the kingdom, the purpose 
 of God, enters human history at the very be- 
 ginning and never disappears. Like the Gulf 
 Stream flowing within its own bounds in the 
 oceans, never mingling its waters with them 
 nor lost in their depths, it persists through all 
 changes and revolutions of time, through all 
 crises and epochs in the world^s history. 
 
 In the Scriptures, as if looking at a pageant 
 
 101 
 
. ; T^^ OpfURCJH: A¥D WORLD PEACE 
 
 or a moving picture, we see this idea entering 
 world life in the Morning of Time, imbedding 
 itself in primitive belief, and, in process of 
 time and migrations of races, becoming tradi- 
 tion, or myth in ethnic faiths. Among the 
 Hebrews it is preserved as the promise of a 
 Leader or as a Deliverer, and when in the run 
 of centuries these custodians of revelation 
 come in contact with world-powers and realize 
 the political downfall of their nation, it efflo- 
 resces in prophecy as the Messianic Hope. 
 Finally, its full significance having been mani- 
 fested in Jesus, its long struggle with evil 
 forces depicted in apocalyptic vision, its glori- 
 ous triumph over all enemies in its course 
 through history is proclaimed at last in the 
 heavens : "For the kingdoms of this earth are 
 become the kingdom of our Lord and his 
 Christ." 
 
 It would be an unwarranted blunder to con- 
 fuse the Jewish dream of a millennium with 
 the kingdom of God. They are not identical. 
 The affirmation of a millennium as a redemp- 
 tive agent cannot be accepted, for if there is 
 such a golden age for the Christian Church, it 
 can be considered only as a result and not as 
 a cause. Indeed, it would seem, following 
 sound reason, that if this world cannot be 
 102 
 
THE MISSION OF ISRAEL 
 
 morally subdued except by the personal com- 
 ing of Christ, Christianity, as a world-saver, 
 is certainly a failure, since the Holy Ghost, 
 operating in and through the church, is un- 
 able to overcome the forces of evil — a con- 
 clusion which itself would discredit the 
 spiritual nature of Christianity. Christian 
 eschatology will be rather slow in teaching 
 such doctrine, and with eighteen centuries of 
 Christian victories over all forces behind it, 
 it will not abandon hope in the ultimate tri- 
 umph of the cross in every land, the final 
 sovereignty of the spirit of the gospel over 
 the heart and intellect of the nations. 
 
 Christianity has nothing greater to accom- 
 plish in the future than it already has achieved 
 in the past. The paganism of the future can- 
 not be worse or stronger than the paganism 
 it conquered. There never will be another 
 Greece, another Roman empire whose im- 
 perial eagles shall guard the idolatrous fane. 
 It was Christianity that shook the gods from 
 Olympus; that without arms overcame all 
 arms; that carried the truth into Caesar's 
 household; that changed Roman law, put an 
 end to the shows of the arena, founded chari- 
 ties, elevated woman, protected children, un- 
 dermined slavery, established universities, 
 
 103 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 civilized western Europe, transformed its 
 numerous tribes, and produced the liberty, the 
 peace, the normal consciousness and the 
 grandeur of modern civilization, despite in- 
 herited tendencies derived from past ages to 
 resist divine light and to dwell in darkness. 
 
 Millenarianism is out of harmony with di- 
 vine methods in human history. Whatever 
 involves a constant miracle in the ethical de- 
 velopment of the kingdom of God may be dis- 
 carded as wanting in the divine element. Such 
 a miracle would be no miracle. The millen- 
 nium which is to come will be the outgrowth 
 of the labors of the church of to-day and of 
 yesterday, and in this practical view, which 
 harmonizes with the teachings of our Lord 
 himself, is the inspiration to toil in the vine- 
 yard. 
 
 Now, every idea, whether in the mind of 
 man or of God, that is to be realized, must 
 find embodiment in time and space, that is, in 
 History. The body, or agent, in which the 
 Divine Idea of the kingdom seeks to clothe 
 itself is the church. The church is not the 
 kingdom, but it is selected and designed to be 
 an expression of the kingdom. Its function 
 in history is to bring humanity within the 
 sway of the sovereignty of God. Beginning 
 
 104 
 
THE MISSIOI^ OF ISRAEL 
 
 with the individual, on a national scale, say 
 Abraham, as nature begins with the ion or 
 molecule to build the universe, its field is the 
 world. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto 
 leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three 
 measures of meal, till the whole was leav- 
 ened/' 
 
 "According to Darwinism," says John Fiske 
 in his Destiny of Man, page 19, "the creation 
 of man is still the goal toward which nature 
 tended from the beginning. Not the produc- 
 tion of any higher creature, but the perfect- 
 ing of humanity is the glorious consummation 
 of nature's long and tedious work. He who 
 has mastered the Darwinian theory, he who 
 recognizes the slow and subtle process of evo- 
 lution as the way God makes things come to 
 pass, must ... see that in the deadly struggle 
 for existence which has raged for countless 
 aeons of time, the whole creation has been 
 groaning and travailing together in order to 
 bring forth that last consummate specimen of 
 God's handiwork, the human soul." 
 
 In almost similar words one might de- 
 scribe the imponderable forces working in 
 history to bring forth the kingdom of God 
 through the church. For only to the extent 
 that this kingdom is realized in the soul of 
 
 105 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 humanity does man justify the "countless 
 aeons of time" necessary to produce him. Na- 
 ture brings the human soul so far and then 
 turns it over for its final development to 
 supernature. If, then, the kingdom of God 
 as an active idea is not as real in history as 
 are the forces of evolution in the physical 
 world, and if its purpose is not to be actually 
 realized in human history as a vital part of 
 the whole program of creation, then not only 
 the church but nature itself has failed in its 
 ultimate purpose, since, notwithstanding all 
 its efforts through "countless aeons of time," 
 it has failed at last to reach its ultimate goal, 
 and instead of all cosmic forces thus working 
 for the highest end, as the apostle Paul says, 
 and science demonstrates, they end in ever- 
 lasting futility — for without God what is the 
 human soul? 
 
 The church, thought of as the embodiment 
 of an idea, is a product of selection. What- 
 ever doubt there may be among scientists as 
 to the fact and importance of natural selec- 
 tion as among the chief factors in evolution, 
 there can be little doubt, with historical facts 
 in evidence, that there is some such law of 
 moral selection functioning in human history. 
 The empires of Egypt, of Babylon, Rome, and 
 
 106 
 
THE MISSION OF ISRAEL 
 
 the Isles of Greece were not accidents. They 
 seem to have appeared at the exact time for 
 a definite purpose and to have passed away 
 when their mission was accomplished. Each 
 nation seems to have been endowed with some 
 particular genius not possessed by another 
 which was demanded by its age, or needed to 
 initiate some forward movement in a succeed- 
 ing period. The Greek, with his civilizing 
 spirit and his taste for literature and art, and 
 the Roman, with his genius for law and or- 
 ganization, illustrate the working of this 
 mysterious principle. Shall we, then, exclude 
 the Hebrew nation, the church of the pre- 
 Christian period, which in its special genius 
 for religion rose so far above all other nations 
 of antiquity that it may be regarded as the 
 only spiritual people? Monotheism began 
 with Abraham, the progenitor of the Hebrew 
 race, and, notwithstanding national aposta- 
 sies, following the example of wicked rulers, 
 monotheism remained the religion of the race. 
 Was Israel's appearance in history a mere ac- 
 cident? It was called and knew itself to be 
 the chosen race. Did it have any mission dis- 
 tinct in character and purpose from every 
 other nation, as was the mission of Rome or 
 Greece? 
 
 107 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 Whatever view we may have of historical 
 development, it stands as a most remarkable 
 fact in human history that in the midst of 
 kingdoms built upon brute force a nation 
 should be established upon ideas and sus- 
 tained through its long history by principles 
 which were absolutely the reverse of the po- 
 litical, social, and military structure of those 
 kingdoms. How can this difference be ac- 
 counted for on any theory of accident, or upon 
 any purely materialistic conception of natural 
 law? There was no soil, no resident force, 
 out of which such a nation could spring. Nor 
 were the Hebrews themselves, degenerated as 
 they were by their slavery in Egypt and ac- 
 customed only to the merciless tyranny of 
 their masters, different from other people. 
 Not until they had been delivered from their 
 environment, and the transforming power of 
 spiritual ideals had been imposed upon them, 
 and had to some degree changed their world- 
 view, did the nation awake to its chosen des- 
 tiny and its innate susceptibility to the high- 
 est spiritual development. It was with the 
 awakening that the spirit of the nation mani- 
 fested itself and blossomed out in its mar- 
 velous literature, especially in those glorious 
 psalms which transcend the loftiest reaches of 
 108 
 
THE MISSION OP ISRAEL 
 
 all other religions and still voice the deepest 
 longings of the human heart. 
 
 Thanks to archaeological researches in the 
 East, the records of those ages in Mesopo- 
 tamia, Assyria, and Egypt, recounting the 
 sieges, victories, and bloody deeds of world- 
 conquerors, show that ruthless might was 
 everywhere supreme. And if the exultations 
 of a Shisak or a Nebuchadnezzar over defeated 
 enemies may be paralleled in the early records 
 of the Hebrew people, in the books of Judges 
 or of Kings, or even in the Psalms, there is 
 nevertheless underlying the initial struggle 
 of a people fighting for the land of their 
 fathers a national consciousness created by 
 their lawgiver and deliverer, Moses, which we 
 do not find in other peoples, that the com- 
 monwealth to be established later shall not 
 be founded upon military might and race 
 hatred but upon the imponderable forces of 
 justice, righteousness and mercy — eternal 
 principles according to which nations rise or 
 fall and which alone exalt a nation. 
 
 It is this deep sense of antagonism between 
 the moral ideals of Israel and the ideals of 
 the nations about them, that essentially dif- 
 ferentiates the Israelitish people from all 
 others and that gives such meaning and force 
 
 109 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 to the denunciation of the prophets against 
 those incarnations of ruthless power, Babylon 
 and Assyria, Egypt and Moab. All through 
 the messages of the prophets, who were not 
 only religious teachers but also the states- 
 men of Israel, there runs like a beam of light 
 in the darkness a conviction that never falters 
 that a day shall come when those nations shall 
 be destroyed and the principles they embody ; 
 that war shall cease, that justice and love shall 
 be ruling forces, and nations "shall beat their 
 swords into plowshares, and their spears into 
 pruninghooks." 
 
 This vision of a better day is bound up with 
 the Messianic idea, and this idea is imbedded in 
 the soul of the people. It is out of this chosen 
 race the Messiah shall arise and usher in the 
 new world-order. "Unto us a child is born, 
 unto us a son is given; and the government 
 shall be upon his shoulder ; and his name shall 
 be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty 
 God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of 
 Peace" (Isa. 9. 6). "He shall bring forth 
 judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, 
 nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in 
 the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, 
 and the smoking flax shall he not quench; 
 he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He 
 
 110 
 
THE MISSION OP ISRAEL 
 
 shall not fail nor be discouraged, till lie have 
 set judgment in the earth : and the isles shall 
 wait for his law" (Isa. 42. 1-4). 
 
 It was for this purpose that by a divine law 
 of selection from all other races, the Hebrew 
 people were called. It was for the creation 
 of a moral condition that would make pos- 
 sible the coming of the kingdom of God that 
 Israel was given the law, and prophets and 
 seers and the higher revelations of God. The 
 statesmen of Israel never dreamed but that 
 Israel should finally conquer her enemies and 
 become at last the supreme lawgiver, the 
 spiritual teacher of the nations. Micah, con- 
 temporary with Isaiah and Hosea, declares 
 (4. 1-3) : "In the last days it shall come to 
 pass, that the mountain of the house of the 
 Lord shall be established in the top of the 
 mountains, and it shall be exalted above the 
 hills; and people shall flow unto it. And 
 many nations shall come, and say. Come, and 
 let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and 
 to the house of the God of Jacob ; and he will 
 teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his 
 paths : for the law shall go forth of Zion, and 
 the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And 
 he shall judge among many people, and re- 
 buke strong nations afar off; and they shall 
 111 
 
THE CHUKCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 beat their swords into plowshares, and their 
 spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not 
 lift up a sword against nation, neither shall 
 they learn war any more." 
 
 Such a radical change in world conditions 
 as this foreshadows could result only from 
 Israel's successful mission among the nations. 
 History could not continue under the rule of 
 empires built upon despotism and maintained 
 by cruelty. There must in the nature of things 
 arise some new order, some potent agent which 
 would be able to substitute the spiritual for 
 the material, freedom for slavery, and change 
 the whole social system. This instrument 
 from the moral standpoint of the prophets 
 could be no other than Israel, since no other 
 nation possessed those ideas of liberty, of 
 righteousness, and of a spiritualized humanity 
 necessary to the social and political redemp- 
 tion of the world. 
 
 The revelation of God to Israel was not 
 for Israel alone, nor was national or personal 
 piety an end in itself. Then, as now, because 
 grounded in the moral constitution of things, 
 
 "Thyself and thy belongings 
 Are not thine own, so proper as to waste 
 Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee. 
 Heaven doth with us as we with torches do 
 112 
 
THE MISSION OF ISRAEL 
 
 Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues 
 Did not go forth of ue, 'twere all alike 
 As if we had them not." 
 
 Religion acceptable to Jehovah consisted not 
 in ^^bowing down the head like a bulrush," 
 not in afflicting one's soul in selfish delight 
 that he is holier than others, not in theological 
 strife and debate, 
 
 "Fighting like demons for conciliation 
 And hating each other for the love of God.** 
 
 but in spreading light among the Gentiles 
 and in doing the world's work from a motive 
 born of love for God and Humanity. "Is not 
 this the fast," in contrast to established ritual, 
 and formal piety, says Jehovah (Isa., chap 
 58), "that I have chosen? to loose the bands of 
 wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let 
 the oppressed go free and that ye break every 
 yoke?" 
 
 Here was the call of Israel to the moral 
 leadership of the world. No higher destiny 
 was ever offered to any people. Do this, says 
 Jehovah, "AncZ they that shall he of thee shall 
 huild the old waste places: thou shalt raise 
 up the foundations of many generations; and 
 thou shalt he called The repairer of the 
 breach, The restorer of the paths to dwell in/' 
 Under the invigorating influence of new con- 
 ns 
 
THE CHUKCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 ceptions of human worth, freedom from op- 
 pression, deliverance from yokes of misery 
 and social degeneracy, civilization shall again 
 go forward, ruined cities and villages de- 
 stroyed by war and pillage shall again rise 
 to prosperity; the hopes and ideals of genera- 
 tions shall be realized; racial hatreds and 
 divisions shall be done away; and the paths 
 of peace, obliterated for ages by ravages of 
 war, shall be restored. Henceforth nations 
 may dwell in safety. 
 
 Israel only could do this, since Israel only 
 had the oracles of God, the means by which 
 this could be accomplished. But Israel failed 
 in its mission and thus entered upon that slow 
 but sure decline of national power which in- 
 evitably comes to every people, whether Jew 
 or Roman, Greek or German, who fail to 
 understand their true mission in history, or, 
 apprehending it, pervert it, and, building 
 solely for their own glory, surrender at last 
 to the corroding evils which their selfish policy 
 has engendered. 
 
 What might have been the effect on the 
 course of history and its influence on civiliza- 
 tion had Israel penetrated Assyria, Egypt, or 
 Babylon with its ethical spirit, it is idle to 
 conjecture. But that those peoples could be 
 
 114 
 
THE MISSION OF ISRAEL 
 
 made responsive to the religion of Israel, the 
 book of Jonah, whether history or fiction, and 
 the vision of Ezekiel of the River of Life fer- 
 tilizing the sandy deserts of Babylonia, 
 strongly indicate. Other scriptures just as 
 strongly suggest that Israel was fully con- 
 scious of its duty to spread the knowledge of 
 Jehovah among the Gentiles. 
 
 115 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE HISTORICAL MISSION OF JESUS 
 
 Israel failed. But the failure of Israel to 
 realize the purpose of God was not the failure 
 of the idea. The purposes of God in history 
 are not dependent upon the success or failure 
 of any particular agency. In Christ the idea 
 of the kingdom, the reign of God in the soul 
 of humanity, which with the failure of Israel 
 seemed to have faded away, appeared again 
 but in clearer and brighter light than was ever 
 seen even by the prophets of the ancient revela- 
 tion. Jesus came to inaugurate the kingdom. 
 In him the kingdom, the idea of God, was em- 
 bodied. His first plangent utterance upon en- 
 tering his mission was, ^^ Repent: for the king- 
 dom of heaven is at handJ' 
 
 It is impossible to comprehend the full 
 meaning of that announcement in the mind of 
 Jesus and its significance in human history, 
 unless one keeps before him the dark back- 
 ground to which it stands in contrast. Baby- 
 lon, Egypt, Assyria, imperial Rome — king- 
 
 116 
 
THE HISTORICAL MISSION OF JESUS 
 
 doms of force, embodiments of tyranny over 
 the souls and bodies of men — loom behind this 
 proclamation of another kingdom, a kingdom 
 of love, of soul freedom, a spiritual kingdom, 
 the kingdom of God. 
 
 It is of remarkable significance that at the 
 beginning of his ministry Jesus should take 
 up and repeat the very words of Isaiah in 
 which that prophet had announced the pur- 
 pose of God in Israel. Jesus takes up and an- 
 nounces the continuance of this idea which 
 Israel had abandoned, as the imperishable 
 purpose of the designing God slowly working 
 through all the revolutions of time, the rise 
 and fall of kingdoms and diversities of civil- 
 izations to establish upon earth the kingdom 
 of heaven. This is the one note that begins 
 and characterizes his whole teaching to the 
 day of his death. And this is precisely what 
 reason, what the logic of things, would ex- 
 pect him to do, if he were the embodiment of 
 the idea which from the beginning had been 
 hidden in the processes of human development. 
 In him humanity sees its ultimate self. In 
 him is the sum of all (Eph. 1). He is the 
 Restorer, since he alone, as history has so far 
 demonstrated, furnished those ideals which 
 are adequate to the world's redemption; the 
 
 117 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 Healer who is adequate to the world's ills, the 
 social and political evils which corrupt na- 
 tional life and breed those bloody revolutions 
 which, as certainly as the laws of action and 
 reaction, inevitably follow periods of luxury, 
 oppression, and vice. He is the Unifier. He 
 alone can heal the divisions of mankind, unit- 
 ing by a spiritual bond all men to himself and 
 thus to each other, since he, and he alone, has 
 broken down the middle wall of partition be- 
 tween Jew and Gentile, the invidious distinc- 
 tions between races which engender war and 
 national hatreds and render the brotherhood 
 of Man an iridescent but idle dream. In him, 
 and in him alone, the Universal Man, human- 
 ity finds its common center. In him is the 
 peace of the world. 
 
 Having laid down the principles, the plat- 
 form of his kingdom, which, while primarily 
 addressed to the individual — since humanity 
 is composed of individuals — like the Laws of 
 God on Sinai, they become immediately ca- 
 pable of universal application. Jesus com- 
 mitted these principles to his church. ^^And 
 Jesus ca/me and spake unto them, saying, All 
 power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 
 Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, hap- 
 tizing them in the name of the Father, and of 
 118 
 
THE HISTORICAL MISSION OF JESUS 
 
 the Sofiy and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them 
 to observe all things whatsoever I have com- 
 manded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, 
 even unto the end of the world." 
 
 The commission of the church, it will be ob- 
 served, is to the "nations.'' The approach to 
 the nations is not through governments, but 
 through individuals comprising the nations. 
 The morality or the spiritual teachings of 
 Jesus implanted in the individual must there- 
 fore, ideally, be the morality of the nation. 
 There cannot be two moralities, as the Bern- 
 hardis and Treitschkes affirm — one kind for 
 the individual and another kind for the state. 
 The individual entering the kingdom of God 
 must carry up into all stations in life, all posi- 
 tions in the state, the same principles which 
 inspire him in the presence of the Holy God. 
 He cannot be one person in public life or of- 
 ficial station, and another in private life. 
 Thus will the leaven "leaven the whole lump" 
 and thus only can "the kingdoms of this world 
 become the kingdom of our Lord and his 
 Christ." Machiavelli, Metternich, a Disraeli 
 or a Bismarck, a Bernstorff, or a congeries of 
 conspirators in Wilhelmstrasse spreading 
 their network of villainies, will have little 
 hope of plunging the nations into blood and 
 119 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 ruin where the principles of Jesus have their 
 application. 
 
 We know only too well that the church 
 failed in large degree to fulfill this mission. 
 The reasons for its failure should be helpful 
 in avoiding failure now. 
 
 Why did it fail? Of all the reasons alleged 
 for the failure of the primitive church, the 
 church of the Middle Ages, the church of the 
 Reformation, and the often declared failure of 
 the modern church to influence the whole of 
 life, there is no reason so devoid of reason as 
 that offered by those who, curiously enough, 
 stubbornly refuse to test their assertions, that 
 the church failed because the ethical teachings 
 of Jesus are impracticable. His lofty ethics, 
 they affirm, are beautiful dreams, idyllic, ten- 
 der and sweet in their Palestinian setting, but 
 wholly impracticable in the fierce struggle for 
 existence in the modern day, and are essen- 
 tially antagonistic to the social order of the 
 Western world. 
 
 Friedrich Nauman, author of Mittel- 
 Europa, in his Briefe iiber Religion, quoted 
 by Baron F. Von Hugel, presents this view in 
 the best form. He says : 
 
 We see Jesus, in the international empire of the 
 Romans, in the little Jewish corner. Only there could 
 
 120 
 
THE HISTOKICAL MISSION OF JESUS 
 
 he arise, only there did he arise. . . . What Jesus offers 
 is adoption to be children of God in Galilee. ... I lay- 
 stress upon the words "in Galilee.'* . . . Jesus says 
 "From him that would borrow of thee turn not thou 
 away'* (Matt. 5. 42). Only those have a right to join 
 as experts in the discussion of this saying who have 
 actually attempted to follow it literally. Jesus says 
 "When thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, 
 the lame, the blind" (Luke 14. 13). Just you transfer 
 this directly to our circumstances. He says "Take no 
 thought for the morrow," ask not "What shall we eat? 
 or, What shall we drink?" (Matt. 6. 34, 31.) But what 
 does our political economy teach, and what do we in- 
 stil into our children? Jesus says, "Sell that thou hast, 
 and give it to the poor" (Matt. 19. 21). But who is 
 ready to sell, simply to transform his field or his fac- 
 tory into alms? Is it only the hardness of our hearts 
 and our innate sinfulness, if we do not carry out all 
 these injunctions to the letter? Indeed, would it be a 
 good fortune for anyone, if we did so? Are we even 
 free, morally free, to will to do so? . . . 
 
 This, our capitalistic world, in which we live, because 
 none other exists for us, is organized according to the 
 principle "Thou shalt covet thy neighbor's house! Thou 
 Shalt will to gain the market which the English hold, 
 thou Shalt get the influence in Constantinople which 
 the French possessed, thou shalt produce in painting 
 what hitherto appears to be the privilege of the Pari- 
 sians, thou shalt eat the bread which, in strictness, the 
 Russian peasant himself should eat! And so on, end- 
 lessly: Thou shalt — covet! . . . All the moods of the 
 gospel only hover, like distant, white clouds of longing, 
 above all the actual doings of our time" (p. 65). 
 
 Now, there is not a scintilla of doubt but 
 that the teachings of Jesus are utterly iinpos- 
 
 121 
 
THE CHUECH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 sible in the social order of the present day to 
 those who refuse to accept them. Of course 
 Jesus is antagonistic to Mammon. Of course 
 the Sermon on the Mount is opposed to the 
 jungle law of Darwin. The trouble, however, 
 is not with the teachings of Jesus, but with the 
 social order. What element is there in the 
 present constitution of society, built upon this 
 jungle law of struggle for survival of the fit- 
 test, that in the depths of their souls the con- 
 science of men does not condemn? And what 
 element is there in the loftiest teachings of 
 Jesus, whether they practice them or not, that 
 in the depths of their moral nature, and in 
 their healthiest and loftiest moments, the souls 
 of men do not approve? God himself is im- 
 practicable to those who deny him. Jesus is 
 impracticable to war lords, to gamblers in the 
 people's food and resources, to thieves, ex- 
 ploiters of the people; to the oppressors of 
 the hireling in his wages, breeders of anarchy 
 and social ruin, to the lovers of sybarite lux- 
 ury faring sumptuously every day, riding with 
 power and limitless pride on -the high places 
 of the earth and treating with contemptuous 
 arrogance or indifference the poor, the unfor- 
 tunate, the weak and the ignorant — pitiable 
 products of that very order of society which 
 122 
 
THE HISTOEICAL MISSION OF JESUS 
 
 is so bitterly hostile to the teachings of Jesus. 
 Jesus is impracticable to such, just as he is 
 impracticable to those sons of Chaos, pro- 
 moters of social discontent, snarling apostles 
 of anarchy who, under the cry of social justice, 
 seek murder and bloodshed and destruction 
 of property. His crystal-clear sincerity con- 
 demns the professional propagandist who 
 never did an honest day's work in his life. 
 His simple justice condemns the cunning ex- 
 ploiter of labor using the power of unions and 
 associations for revenge on employers, who, 
 exercising their own rights to personal free- 
 dom, refuse to recognize incompetency and 
 savage usurpation, lawless as Bolshevism, 
 as sole competent judge of industrial disputes. 
 Jesus is impracticable to these enemies of an 
 honest, wholesome human social order as 
 Eternal Justice is; but to those who would 
 love God and man and would welcome the 
 kingdom of heaven on earth, the teachings 
 of Jesus are not impracticable. In them they 
 see universal principles of righteousness and 
 not the petty details of Pharisaic legalism 
 masquerading as religion. 
 
 But lovers of the good do not interpret 
 Jesus as Nauman does. They do not think 
 that in order to live, in order to enjoy the 
 
 123 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 glories of nature, the refined delights of cul- 
 tured society, of literature and art, of music 
 and the drama, that in order even to become 
 rich and powerful, to be a great capitalist, a 
 statesman or a promoter of vast enterprises, 
 it is at all necessary to be a liar or a thief, a 
 murderer, a debauchee, or an all-around dip- 
 lomatic scoundrel ; they do not think that war 
 and bloodshed, fraudulent dealing, political 
 corruption, hatred of God and contempt for 
 man, injustice, cruelty, and oppression are at 
 all necessary to the development of civiliza- 
 tion. On the contrary, they do have a mighty 
 conviction that violence is not cured by vio- 
 lence, that purity of soul is lovelier than vice, 
 that love is better than hate, that meekness 
 is stronger than arrogance, and that honest 
 motives expressed in just deeds are more in 
 harmony with the moral constitution of hu- 
 man nature, even though it be degraded and 
 as "ugly as a fallen angel grown wrinkled," 
 than is the hard materialistic philosophy of 
 self which is the curse of modern life. 
 
 Jesus was no dreamer. He knew the social 
 condition of the millions in Palestine. He was 
 well acquainted with the moral atmosphere of 
 Jerusalem and the political conspiracies in 
 Herod's palace at Caesarea. The royal "fox" 
 
 124 
 
THE HISTORICAL MISSION OF JESUS 
 
 in the palace and the ecclesiastical politician 
 in the temple were both well known to him, 
 and they knew that he knew them far better 
 than anyone else knew them. He who spake 
 the parable of the unjust steward, showing 
 how low values are lifted to higher, the par- 
 able of the pounds, putting premium on dili- 
 gence, and the story of the prodigal son, in 
 which chronic discontent against law and 
 order ends at last in anarchy and swine^s 
 husks — such a Teacher was not standing very 
 remote from social unrest, economic problems, 
 and human relationships. 
 
 Jesus was no Buddha. No one who lived in 
 the midst of the political and religious cross 
 currents then running in Palestine, religious 
 factions kept from each other's throats only 
 by Roman spears, fierce rebellion against 
 Rome itself seething in the hearts of the 
 masses, class hatreds, rich against poor and 
 poor against rich — no one, certainly not 
 Jesus with his clear discernment of social ills 
 and impending doom of the whole nation, 
 could be ignorant of tHe obvious facts of life 
 that in all questions relating to the family, 
 labor, trade, property and the state, there are 
 whole regions in which the individual must 
 be guided by experience, and not by set rules 
 
 125 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 which may or may not apply to the case. This 
 does not mean, as some theologians insist, that 
 these various complexes of life, such as trade, 
 the powers and activities of the state, the state 
 itself, are in a totally different sphere from 
 the individual in relation to religion. But it 
 does signify that if a man is actuated by the 
 right motives, if the love of God and love for 
 his fellows are dominating factors in his inner- 
 most life, his relations to all such questions, 
 infinite in variety, character, and circum- 
 stance, since they are not precisely the same 
 to all men everywhere, may safely be left to 
 his private judgment, his intellectual and 
 moral sense. 
 
 The idea that Jesus should have laid down 
 exact rules for every act of every man in every 
 conceivable relation in our complex human 
 life, as the logic of Nauman's criticisms of 
 Jesus's ethics lead us to, is to put the broad 
 teaching of Jesus in clamps. Jesus recog- 
 nizes the moral unity of the race. He, there- 
 fore, lays down universal principles. He 
 whose motives are pure will act purely, he 
 will know how, and when, to apply these 
 principles. This is the secret of Jesus: he 
 puts right motives in the heart and turns the 
 man loose. ^^The words that I speak unto 
 
 126 
 
THE HISTORICAL MISSION OF JESUS 
 
 yoUy^' said Jesus, '^they are spirit, and they 
 are life,'' with the result, as a French writer 
 (Monnier, La Mission Historique de Jesus, 
 page 334) declares, "The religion of Jesus 
 transformed the world, not by the observances 
 which he prescribed, but by the sentiments 
 which he inspired." 
 
 When Jesus says, "Eesist not evil," he is 
 not inviting disaster, political and social, to 
 his followers, and thereby contributing to the 
 perpetuation of evil. He is not encouraging 
 strong nations to attack the weaker, who by 
 nonresistance will make the invasion of their 
 country easier; nor is he enthroning Neros 
 and Caligulas, or counseling Belgium to throw 
 open her gates to the invader, though she 
 might save her life at the price of her soul. 
 He is not forbidding interference with Ger- 
 man atrocities, sinking Lusitanias and massa- 
 creing old women and children; nor when he 
 says, "Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right 
 cheek, turn to him the other also," is he mak- 
 ing it easy for brutality to outrage innocence 
 with impunity — all of which would result if 
 literalistic interpreters of Jesus followed their 
 logic. But what he does teach is avoidance of 
 individual and international feuds, revenge, 
 reprisals, as of the old law, "An eye for an eye, 
 127 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 a tooth for a tooth." Wars are not cured by 
 wars, wrongs by wrongs. Submission to per- 
 sonal injury for the kingdom of heaven's sake 
 is better for the individual and for society 
 than fanning the flames of wild revenge. 
 
 Jesus is the gospel. The four gospels are 
 records. His life is the standard for human 
 life. 
 
 But considering the task before it, the over- 
 throw of false religions intrenched for a thou- 
 sand of years in the traditions, the habits and 
 customs of divers races, and substituting 
 therefor a purer religion which created a new 
 world, the church has not failed as hadly as 
 critics of the church, who attribute moral 
 progress to intellectual advancement only, 
 would have us believe. Such partisan critics 
 suffer from a confusion of thought. They 
 confound progress with civilization. A na- 
 tion may be highly civilized, polished in man- 
 ners, scientific, inventive, devoted to litera- 
 ture and the culture of the beautiful, and yet 
 be indifferent toward moral progress, pursu- 
 ing that ideal of the perfect Good with wings 
 of lead. It is quite true that all progress in 
 humanizing society cannot be attributed solely 
 to the church. Such influences as science, 
 ethics, aesthetics mold the manners and ex- 
 
 128 
 
THE HISTORICAL MISSION OF JESUS 
 
 pand the intellect, apart from the church. But 
 surveying the development of civilization as 
 a whole from the days of imperial Rome to the 
 present, it must be conceded that the struggle 
 toward the moral ideal, the inspiration to the 
 realization of political freedom for all men, 
 and not, as in the democracy of Athens, for the 
 few. Justice and Fraternity, had the strong- 
 est impulse in the teachings of Jesus applied 
 by the church to the laws, customs and in- 
 stitutions of the people among whom it 
 labored. 
 
 Jesus said, "My words shall never pass 
 away." Imperishable, they have entered the 
 laws, the institutions, the civilization of the 
 world. The name of Phidias, it was said, was 
 so chiseled into his masterpiece, the goddess 
 Athense, that it could not be erased without 
 destroying the statue. It is conceivable that, 
 in some far distant age, a student of history 
 from the valleys of Tibet may sit down on the 
 shores of the Chinese Sea and sketch the de- 
 cline and fall of Western civilization, but it 
 is not conceivable that the teachings of Jesus 
 will ever be eradicated from the soul of hu- 
 manity. 
 
 129 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE DUTY OF THE MODERN CHURCH 
 
 These principles Jesus committed to his 
 church, and his church challenged the empire. 
 The impact of those ideals upon society was 
 the same in effect as their transforming power 
 is in the life of the individual. He becomes 
 a new creature, it became a new world. It 
 was then, for a brief period, like the coming 
 of the sun from behind a cloud, that the king- 
 dom of God was visible on earth. Within the 
 circle of the church all barriers of race and 
 birth, of culture and wealth, were broken 
 down. The disciple of Plato became the 
 teacher of hucksters and laborers; the noble 
 matron who yesterday urged on with jeweled 
 hands bloody combats in the arena now min- 
 istered to the saints ; the proud patrician, who 
 looked with contempt upon barbarian kings 
 crowding the Appian Way, became a brother 
 to the slave who was the bondsman of Jesus 
 Christ. The democracy of Jesus had con- 
 
 130 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODERN CHURCH 
 
 quered the autocracy of Caesar. Its social mes- 
 sage, as Lecky fitly terms it (The History of 
 European Morals, Vol. II, page 130), was "a 
 proclamation of the universal brotherhood of 
 man.'' 
 
 But the ideal of the kingdom suffered 
 eclipse. Every great historical movement 
 originates in prophetic fire. The vision of the 
 ideal is the inspiration of the prophet. In the 
 soul of humanity reside latent forces which, 
 responding to elemental truths, destroy an- 
 cient falsehoods, overturn the old order and 
 change the course of history. Nothing can 
 resist the explosive power of such forces. In 
 the beginning the revolution is characterized 
 by passionate self-surrender to the idea, by 
 contempt for suffering, by scorn for mockery 
 and death. The idea alone is supreme. No 
 ties of blood, no appeal to self-interest, not 
 even fear of death, can stand between the dis- 
 ciple and the realization of the ideal which il- 
 luminates him and transforms him. Its en- 
 thusiasms lift its apostles to the highest levels 
 of being; the blind see, the deaf hear, the out- 
 cast and the rabble rise from tombs of living 
 death to new life and spread the holy fire; 
 the rich, the indolent, the philosopher and the 
 clown, the statesman and the social reformer, 
 131 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 all classes wearied of the present order, are 
 swept by its mighty inspirations and gleam- 
 ing hopes into a new world and lift the age 
 or the century in which they live to higher 
 planes than ever could have been reached by 
 the slow process of social development. 
 
 But every institution, whether human or 
 divine, is sustained solely by the forces which 
 gave it birth. As these die it dies. The 
 second stage of the movement is the cooling 
 off, the reflective period. It becomes a reminis- 
 cent period, a day of philosophizing, a day of 
 compiling of biographies, of writing history 
 instead of making it, a period of crystalliza- 
 tion of forces and ideas into organization, of 
 bureaucratic administration, and the reach 
 for social prestige, for wealth and power — 
 slowly gliding into its third stage of Apologia, 
 explanation and decadence. 
 
 So it was with the church. There comes a 
 time when where some great battle was fought, 
 or where Elishas crossed Jordans, smiting a 
 path through the waters with mantles of 
 power, the inheritors of the freedom won, or 
 of the revelation bestowed, will sit around and 
 pick blackberries. Where there is no prophetic 
 vision there is no prophetic power. The fire 
 has died out. 
 
 132 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODEEN CHUKCH 
 
 The church failed. It stepped from the 
 prison to the throne. Never was the church 
 a greater regenerating force in human life 
 than when she was housed in the Catacombs ; 
 when instead of seeking power she plucked the 
 purple flowers of martyrdom. 
 
 The church failed to fulfill its mission, to 
 realize the kingdom of God, so far as it may 
 be achieved in any one generation, not because 
 it was burdened with an impossible task, the 
 reconstruction of civilization on the principles 
 of Jesus as foundation stones, weighty as that 
 task was, and is, but for the sole reason that, 
 like Israel, it grew false to its own ideals. 
 It linked itself with the state, as the early 
 church did under Constantine, and succumbed 
 to the spirit and the methods of the state. 
 Amid the conflicts of rival princes following 
 the break-up of the empire in the West, it as- 
 cended the dread heights of Caesarian power 
 and hid the cross of Christ in the folds of the 
 imperial purple. The vision of a spiritual 
 kingdom faded away before the rising splen- 
 dor of an organization that rivaled the em- 
 pire of the Caesars. Papalism rose as the em- 
 pire declined, and as political power and 
 wealth increased spiritual power decreased. 
 "You see," said Pope Innocent IV to Thomas 
 
 m 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 Aquinas, one day, as he pointed to some loads 
 of treasure that were being carried into the 
 Vatican, "that the day is passed when the 
 church could say ^Silver and gold have I 
 none.' " 
 
 "Yes, holy father," replied Thomas, "and 
 the day is also passed when she can say to the 
 paralytic, 'Take up thy bed and walk.' " 
 
 The church, we admit, failed also at the 
 Reformation. The idea of a theocratic king- 
 dom took possession in crudest form among 
 certain sects, but the kingdom of God as pro- 
 claimed by Jesus was lost sight of by the 
 church in the conflicts of the period. The 
 political, religious, and the humanistic forces 
 originating in the Renaissance, and which had 
 been slowly gathering strength, finally ex- 
 ploded and disrupted, perhaps forever, the 
 unity of Christendom. The Corpus Chris- 
 tianum was rent asunder. The one church be- 
 came many. Those that broke away from the 
 Caesaro-Papalism of Rome, instead of unit- 
 ing in one body, separated from each other 
 and became national churches, thus repeat- 
 ing the blunder of the church under Constan- 
 tine. For the protection the state afforded, 
 each national church supported the state, be- 
 came subject to the state, and, allied with the 
 
 134 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODERN CHURCH 
 
 state in its policies, gave divine sanction to its 
 decrees. Neither Luther nor Melanchthon, 
 Zwingle or Calvin or Bucer, or any of the lead- 
 ers of the Reformation in Germany or in 
 Switzerland, and certainly none in England, 
 considered church and state as two distinct 
 and independent bodies. If they did not sub- 
 ject the church in everything, as Zwingle did, 
 to the state, they would, as Calvin did in 
 Geneva, subject the state to the church. 
 
 In vain will the historian search for any 
 important contribution to the free develop- 
 ment of the modern spirit originating in na- 
 tional churches, or beyond that which the state 
 itself has made. State churches are not inde- 
 pendent. Subsidized by government, they 
 naturally support government, defend it, in- 
 dorse its policies, sanctify its ambitions, and 
 anathematize those who do not thank heaven 
 for its victories in war which, whether just 
 or unjust, are certain evidence of the favor 
 of God. When did a national church protest 
 against a war the state government had de- 
 termined upon, and, in defiance of its pro- 
 moters, appeal to the nation? 
 
 Looking back on those tumultuous days of 
 the Reformation when the modern age was 
 struggling to be born, it can be clearly seen 
 X35 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 why the churches, breaking away from Rome, 
 put themselves under the protection of the 
 state, and were therefore unable to bring to 
 the front the idea of the kingdom of God, or 
 rather universal peace, as a condition of its 
 sway in the world. 
 
 But the day of subservience to the state, 
 that is, to a body of statesmen who for the 
 time being control the state, is, or should be, 
 forever gone. The cry of Cavour for a "Free 
 church in a free state" has become a universal 
 conviction and a reality, even at the present 
 in Germany, and in England, despite the resid- 
 uum of Toryism which still lingers in classic 
 shades and in circles of special privilege. 
 
 A new day, therefore, has come to the 
 church. There is no reason why it should 
 fail now. Christ our Lord sets before the 
 church of the twentieth century an open door 
 of opportunity such as was never opened be- 
 fore in the course of its history. Now, if it 
 has the divine daring to do so, it may fulfill 
 the prophecy of its mission in history, a 
 "healer of the breach, a leader of the paths 
 for the people to walk in." Never before in 
 modern times was the church in all lands and 
 in all languages endowed with leaders of 
 greater gifts, with clearer sight and wider 
 
 136 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODEEN CHURCH 
 
 vision. Hence, this war gives the church, now 
 endowed with such leadership, the opportunity 
 to redeem the past, to swing forward to the 
 head of the column as the leader of the na- 
 tions in paths of peace. As Saint Paul, stand- 
 ing between the old and new eras, wrote to 
 the Corinthians (1 Cor. 10. 11), we also at 
 this hour are ^^ confronted with the ages"! In 
 our day the streams of history converge, a 
 new era opens in the progress of humanity, 
 and a new day dawns for the Church of God. 
 Never will the world be the same again; the 
 opportunity and man, the church and its 
 chance, face each other and what is done, or 
 is not done, will profoundly determine the 
 thought and the life of the future. 
 
 It is for the church to discern the day of 
 its visitation. To every nation, to the church 
 in every new age, such a day comes, and such 
 a day is now. We have seen that even if 
 the United States, with or without reserva- 
 tions, should join the entente powers in a 
 League of Nations, the moral effect of this 
 international combine upon the peoples of the 
 world has been already lost. The League of 
 Nations, some think, is already dead. Poland 
 defies it, Rumania, Italy, Germany — all who 
 have a territorial grievance — defy it; and 
 137 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 neither England nor France is able or will- 
 ing to enforce acquiescence in the Treaty of 
 Versailles. The widespread suspicion that the 
 map of Europe as drawn at Versailles cannot 
 remain as drawn but must involve further 
 struggle, this time involving the whole Islamic 
 peoples in the East, rests heavily upon all 
 Europe. 
 
 Can the church of God stand by and see 
 humanity go once more the road to Calvary 
 without demanding in every land that war 
 shall cease? 
 
 What is the church for? It is now a trite 
 saying that the church is for service. We hear 
 it at every convention, great and small, as if 
 there were some magic in the repeating of it, 
 but what kind of service? Every intelligent 
 man now knows that the church that does the 
 greatest service spiritually and socially in 
 the largest sphere is the church that fills out 
 the ideal of her Lord. A little, puny, starve- 
 ling of a so-called church, so narrow in its 
 conceptions of the purpose of Christ in found- 
 ing his church, and so selfish in its work that 
 it is driven for very shame to invent reasons 
 and excuses for its isolation from the mani- 
 fold interests of men, and tries to think that 
 this seclusion from the world is piety — such 
 13$ 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODEEN CHURCH 
 
 a chureh has no right to exist. It is a carica- 
 ture, an imposition and a humbug, an ecclesi- 
 astical fakir, which men will not sustain in 
 that day when they come — as they surely will 
 — to appraise the value of every church to the 
 cause of humanity. Every man of modern 
 mind knows this. Christ is for humanity. He 
 is for any church only so far as that church 
 is for humanity. 
 
 But what larger service can the church do 
 to the present age, and for all time to come, 
 than to bring about perpetual peace on the 
 earth, one phase of the kingdom of God? Is 
 not this the duty of the church? Is the 
 church true to her calling if she turns this 
 duty over to the state alone, as something that 
 belongs solely to government? Why, then, 
 does the church interfere with the liquor 
 traf&c, with questions of social welfare which 
 it is the duty of the state solely to determine? 
 We have gone far beyond all such interroga- 
 tions in these days, and in our deepest selves 
 know that nothing human is alien to the Chris- 
 tian Church. The whole man belongs to 
 Christ. 
 
 The government of any state is the represen- 
 tative of the people. Its relations to other 
 governments, its contracts or understandings 
 139 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 are, or should be, known to the people. Such 
 government does not exist apart from the 
 people ; it is the people, and because it is this 
 it can be compelled to obey the will of the 
 people. The church, therefore, as a body, and 
 as a part of the people, has equal right with 
 every other part to be heard in the councils 
 of the government which affect the weal or 
 woe of the nation and of other nations, since 
 humanity is one, all men everywhere being 
 members one of another. 
 
 There was a time when, by the power of 
 spiritual authority, recognized in some dim 
 w^ay as of equal authority with the state, 
 the church could forbid even a Roman em- 
 peror, Theodosius, after his massacre of the 
 Thessalonians, to approach the altar with 
 • bloody hands; a time when she could wrench 
 the palladium of English law and free- 
 dom, the Magna Charta, from a lawless king ; 
 a time when, wrestling with the chaos and 
 barbarism of northern Europe, she could 
 defend the rights of men and throw her 
 protection over the weakest that appealed to 
 her aid. That day has gone. But the con- 
 science of humanity has not gone. The Church 
 of God, though divided, still has authority 
 and power to stir the conscience of Christen- 
 
 3,40 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODERN CHURCH 
 
 dom if it would bring to hear united protest 
 on the belligerent policies of the nations. 
 
 Since the policies of statesmen in every 
 country have failed, why should not the 
 church now apply the principles of Jesus 
 Christ to the need of the world? If how to 
 bring peace will test, as Lord Balfour said, 
 "the statesmanship of the world," the oppor- 
 tunity of the church to test the teachings of 
 Jesus in world problems should be welcomed 
 by statesmen, if they prefer the world's peace 
 to their political ambitions. For it seems, for 
 reasons already stated, as certain as anything 
 in the future can be certain, that if the League 
 of Nations depends for its success solely upon 
 the several governments now signatory to its 
 covenant, it will be a bitter disappointment. 
 Man cannot redeem himself politically any 
 more than he can spiritually, without the aid 
 of moral impulse. 
 
 The question, then, the most urgent for the 
 Christian Church, is, What can the churches 
 do in all lands to assist the leaders of po- 
 litical thought and the responsible heads of 
 government to make such a League of Nations 
 an accomplished fact? Is it desirable that 
 the churches should ally themselves with this 
 cause? That is to say, shall the church here- 
 
 141 
 
THE CHUKCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 after, as in the past, allow the politics of the 
 world to be conducted from the standpoint of 
 the material interests of the nations, or shall 
 international dealings be conducted from the 
 standpoint of the kingdom of God? Shall 
 material interests control, or shall the spirit 
 of Christian morality be interfused in all in- 
 ternational diplomacy? How long shall this 
 world be governed solely by selfish interests, 
 without regard to real justice, or any of the 
 civilizing and spiritualizing principles of 
 Jesus Christ? Shall the church of the future 
 continue to be a rubber stamp for political 
 parties? Shall her ministers be state-chap- 
 lains or prophets of God? 
 
 If the churches were determined that gov- 
 ernments shall absolutely sever themselves 
 from the old political methods, which never 
 have brought peace to mankind, as they are 
 that the gospel shall be preached to the 
 heathen at home and abroad, the line of cleav- 
 age between government and people in for- 
 eign affairs would not be so deep nor so broad. 
 So long as the assumption exists and is acted 
 upon that the church has nothing to do with 
 politics, so long will governments go their 
 way independent of the will of the people un- 
 til they need the aid of the people to give 
 
 142 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODERN CHURCH 
 
 sanction to their acts. But the church with- 
 out interfering in the duties of the state can 
 put a curb on the political designs of states- 
 men inspired by party or financial interests 
 to fling the kindred of the earth into mortal 
 combat. 
 
 To this end appeal should be made to Chris- 
 tians in all lands to consider what the effect 
 on Christian thought would be if the churches 
 — all the churches of Christendom — should 
 unite in their Synods or Councils, Conferences 
 or General Assemblies or through their repre- 
 sentatives, lay and clerical, the bishops and 
 archbishops and the leaders of the noncon- 
 formist bodies of England and France, Italy, 
 and Germany; the bishops and other leaders of 
 the great Protestant and Catholic churches of 
 America — if Christendom should meet to- 
 gether in council and unite in a Christian 
 League to support an international League of 
 peace established by the political powers of the 
 world, the vision of prophecy would be real- 
 ized, the will of God expressed at the birth of 
 his Son the Prince of Peace would be done, 
 and the way opened as it has never been 
 opened for the coming of the kingdom of God, 
 
 At Central Hall, Westminster, London, 
 November, 1918, a conference, the press re- 
 
 143 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 ports inform us, was held to consider this 
 subject. It was a notable gathering. The 
 conference was attended by representatives 
 nominated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 the moderator of the General Assembly of the 
 Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the chair- 
 man of the Baptist Union of England and 
 Wales, the presidents of the Primitive Method- 
 ist, United Methodist, and Wesleyan Method- 
 ist churches, and Cardinal Bourne. Two reso- 
 lutions were adopted by the meeting, and 
 afterward forwarded to the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, who has since intimated his inten- 
 tion of calling a representative gathering at 
 Lambeth, which, in the first instance, will be 
 held in private. The resolutions are as 
 follows : 
 
 1. That this meeting, realizing the responsibility of 
 the churches in reference to the speedy furtherance of 
 the League of Nations proposal, respectfully requests the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury to summon a gathering, con- 
 sisting of the heads of all the British churches, together 
 with other representatives by them appointed, to confer 
 without delay and to appoint a standing committee to 
 take appropriate action in support of the League of 
 Nations proposal. 
 
 2. That this meeting suggests, as exemplifying the 
 kind of work which could be undertaken by the standing 
 committee: (1) The holding at an early date of a na- 
 tional conference, representative of all the churches, at 
 
 144 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODERN CHURCH 
 
 which the support of the churches to the League of 
 Nations proposal could be focused and a lead given to 
 the Christian opinion of the nation. (2) The endeavor, 
 in the first instance, to secure similar united action in 
 support of the League of Nations proposal, or to cooper- 
 ate with similar movements, on the part of the Christian 
 churches of the Dominions and of the United States of 
 America. 
 
 3. The consideration of methods of cooperation with 
 similar Christian movements in other countries. 
 
 4. Educational propaganda, not only for the estab- 
 lishment of a League of Nations, but also for its support 
 during the years when the League would be on its trial. 
 
 Is a Christian League of Nations, supporting 
 the League proposed by England, France, the 
 United States, and Italy, feasible? Is it prac- 
 ticable? Is it a dream of Utopia? Consider 
 it seriously. If military nations, through gov- 
 ernmental institutions, the universities, the 
 pulpits, and the press, can instill through long 
 periods into the masses of their people the 
 spirit of war, for offense or defense, could not 
 the church also in every land destroy the 
 teachings of barbarism and by means of Chris- 
 tian education, a truly Christian pulpit, and 
 the apostolate of a Christian press, creating 
 public opinion, bring all classes of society to 
 the support of the peaceful policies of their 
 respective governments? It will be easier to 
 do this than to tax the nations for increase in 
 
 145 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 armaments, to drench the earth with blood in 
 aggressive warfare, to send to the slaughter of 
 the battlefield the finest manhood of the world, 
 either to sustain imperial dynasties or self- 
 determined boundaries or, on pretext of na- 
 tional danger, to satisfy the ambition of war 
 lords or the gamblers of a nation's welfare. 
 
 In what effective way, then, can the church 
 assist the League of Nations? 
 
 It is evident that the church in every land 
 must put itself in line with the best efforts of 
 the League to bring peace to the nations. 
 Civilization must be born again. The world 
 can never go on in the old way of thinking 
 which has led to infinite misery and the dis- 
 solution of everything men valued and relied 
 upon. The church itself must move into 
 larger fields, and, despite the criticism and 
 misunderstanding which will surely come, the 
 political interests of men in their moral 
 aspects must be directed in the interest of 
 world peace, with an eye single to the glory of 
 God and the well-being of humanity. 
 
 Of course, it will be assumed that since the 
 church failed either to prevent or to shorten 
 the war, it can be of little practical worth in 
 influencing either governments or peoples of 
 the belligerent nations. It also will be urged 
 
 146 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODERN CHURCH 
 
 that the church, because of its divisions, can- 
 not impress governments with united opinion, 
 or bring to bear in any crises united action. 
 The conclusion, therefore, will be that the 
 church should leave affairs of state to states- 
 men and devote itself to spiritual matters. 
 
 This is cheap advice, and is usually given by 
 those who would continue the old monopoly of 
 government such as they enjoyed before they 
 disrupted Europe, But are not these raucous 
 voices louder and harsher than the facts will 
 warrant? Are not these solicitous guardians 
 of the church's spirituality really more inter- 
 ested in the sale of Diana's images than in 
 the truth of Paul's preaching, in the profits 
 of war rather than in the blood of the people, 
 poured out on battlefields, to no purpose but 
 the triumph of victory over another people 
 as miserable as themselves? 
 
 One need not add to nor attempt to answer 
 the indictments against the church that it has 
 lost its influence over the masses, that the 
 masses have lost faith in the church, that the 
 church has lost faith in itself as a world-re- 
 deeming power in its relation to world-govern- 
 ment. It requires no great intellectual ca- 
 pacity, nor is it a distinguishing evidence of 
 moral excellence, to indulge in supercilious 
 
 147 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 criticism of the failure of the church to 
 prevent the war. 
 
 There are many causes for the weakness and 
 decline of popular faith in the church. It can- 
 not be denied that materialistic thought turned 
 God the Creator into an interrogation mark, 
 that destructive criticism, taught in many 
 universities for the past thirty years, devitaliz- 
 ing the positive truths of the gospel, played 
 into the hands of the enemies of religion, that 
 the historic faith was denied, that in the 
 atmosphere of doubt created by rationalist 
 preaching and teaching, the Christ of the 
 people in many quarters faded away into dim 
 uncertainty and the authority of the church 
 faded with him. 
 
 In every country in Europe, and in this 
 country also before the war, a feeling of in- 
 difference, a wave of practical infidelity, was 
 sweeping over the people. The masses were 
 submerged in materialistic thinking and liv- 
 ing, finding altogether the satisfactions of life 
 in the grossness of earthly pleasures. The 
 churches, many of them, in every city were 
 empty, notwithstanding every device, from 
 operatic performances to the antics of the 
 mountebank, to entice the man in the street 
 to fill the desolate void. This may be ad- 
 
 148 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODERN CHURCH 
 
 mitted. And it may be admitted further that 
 no great spiritual leader or apostle in any 
 country in Europe held commanding spiritual 
 influence over the masses, whose souls, irre- 
 sponsive to official religion, were thrilled by 
 the apostles of socialism and anarchy. But 
 there were no flaming evangels; no Lacor- 
 daire, no Spurgeon, no Stoecker, though in 
 the United States we had some notable 
 leaders, such as Cadman, Jefferson, Hillis, 
 Gunsaulus, Bishop McDowell, in all de- 
 nominations who preached Christ cruci- 
 fied as the only hope of the world. No voice 
 of the Roman Catholic Church in all Europe, 
 not even the Roman pontiff himself, could 
 appeal effectively to the crowned heads of 
 Europe or to the masses of the people to stop 
 this war, and when the war, like the thunders 
 of the Almighty in the skies, broke loose in all 
 its devastating horror, one voice alone in all 
 Europe, not the Vatican, not Canterbury, not 
 York, but the voice of the heroic martyr of 
 Belgium, Cardinal Mercier, the Archbishop of 
 Malines, one voice alone rose above the shouts 
 of battle and the shock of arms and compelled 
 the whole world to behold in wrath the un- 
 speakable barbarism of war. 
 All this may be admitted in a degree, and 
 
 149 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 one may not be able to refute the charge that 
 the church has failed to influence the masses 
 or to preserve the unity of the nations, because 
 it has broken its own unity ; and by reason of 
 its divisions has brought forth weakness in- 
 stead of strength. All this in a measure may 
 be true, and, as in a critical hour in the French 
 Revolution, the mighty Mirabeau cried out in 
 the Convention, "The sins of my youth prevent 
 me from saving France I" so might the church 
 have cried out at the beginning of this war, 
 "My sins and divisions prevent me from saving 
 Europe and the world." 
 
 Christendom is divided. Protestantism is 
 divided. But let us not exaggerate the evil, 
 if it is an evil. To superficial observers who 
 would magnify our shortcomings, it may seem 
 that the lack of the unifying principle of re- 
 ligion is too pronounced in the divisions of 
 the church for the church to be of much force 
 in unifying the nations. But no one who 
 looks deeper will deny that, after all, among 
 Christians of whatever name, Catholic or 
 Protestant, as the battlefields of France and 
 Flanders testify in voices from the wounded 
 and the dying, which speak louder than the 
 voices of disunion, there is beneath these ex- 
 ternal divisions an inner, spiritual bond of 
 
 150 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODERN CHURCH 
 
 union which binds all Christians into one 
 spirit around the undivided Christ. 
 
 Nor is it altogether accurate to say that the 
 people in any country has lost such confidence 
 in the church that it cannot influence govern- 
 ment and, if it willy produce a revolution in 
 the whole life and thought of the world. The 
 Church of God can revolutionize the thinking 
 of a nation, for what is a nation but an aggre- 
 gation of individuals? If the regenerating 
 gospel can convert the individual, it can con- 
 vert any number of individuals. The people 
 still reverence the church as in some way the 
 only authoritative voice of God on this planet. 
 In France such has been the loyalty of the 
 Roman Church to the republic, her priests 
 seeking no exemptions, but flocking to the 
 colors and fighting with such contagious 
 bravery in the trenches, that the bitter an- 
 tagonism existing between church and state 
 prior to the war has melted away in a common 
 love for the fatherland. The outburst of- 
 Bolsheviki savagery against the church in 
 Russia, demolishing churches, massacring 
 priests, and repeating all the horrors of the 
 French Reign of Terror, has in no wise de- 
 stroyed the faith of the masses in the orthodox 
 church, but has rather given it renewed life; 
 15X 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 nor has the Greek Church in the Balkans or 
 elsewhere lost its influence amid the cyclone 
 of death and misery which has well-nigh ex- 
 terminated those peoples. In England, the 
 churches, both national and nonconformist, 
 still kindle the fires of devotion, whatever dis- 
 putes concerning church government or ec- 
 clesiastical conformity may cut deep lines of 
 cleavage between representative bodies. In 
 the United States, membership in all churches 
 shows at present a decline in numbers owing 
 to the war, but not since the founding of the 
 republic have the people manifested deeper 
 appreciation of the church, and never has it 
 exerted such widespread influence in every 
 zone and relation of American life. Hundreds 
 of millions of money have been spontaneously 
 thrown into the treasuries of the churches in 
 response to their appeal for funds to carry on 
 their work, while their evangelistic labors have 
 quickened the sense of religion in every part of 
 the country. 
 
 Never apparently was the modern church 
 more deeply appreciated, at least in this coun- 
 try, for its work's sake. In vital touch with 
 the surging life of polyglot America, it relates 
 itself to all classes, and even through foreign- 
 ers from every nation under heaven it awakens 
 
 152 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODERN CHURCH 
 
 in no small way the thinking of their relatives 
 in the homeland. In congested cities, towns, 
 and in the agricultural districts, in workshop 
 and mill, in stores and factories, in the slums, 
 which should not be tolerated, but where the 
 poor and the unfortunate are huddled away, 
 among laboring people everywhere, the church 
 ministers through numerous agencies in count- 
 less ways — physical, social, spiritual, domestic. 
 
 In foreign fields, in every habitable country 
 on the globe, missionaries, men of intellect, of 
 scientific attainments in various professions, 
 spread the evangel which has created the best 
 there is in Western civilization, and sow the 
 seeds of spiritual regeneration without which 
 no people can come to a full realization of 
 their worth and calling in history. The church 
 is not dead, nor is she going to die. The day 
 of materialistic thinking went down in blood 
 and smoke on the battlefields of Europe, and 
 whether all men believe in a personal, direct- 
 ing God or not, they do see that there is Some- 
 thing in the universe that works for righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 On the whole, one who is acquainted with 
 the history of the Christian Church and has 
 carefully surveyed the present religious condi- 
 tion of the world, may well be within the rim 
 
 153 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 of undeniable fact should he state that not 
 since the divisive period of the Reformation in 
 the sixteenth century were the churches of 
 Christendom so closely related or so cordially 
 cooperative in good works as they are at this 
 time. It is needless to furnish proof of this. 
 Numerous evidences of it may be met with 
 every day in towns and cities where there are 
 different churches, and what is of universal ex- 
 perience is superfluous to prove. 
 
 Apart from any political suggestion, but 
 proceeding solely from a sense of moral duty, 
 among the means for realizing the purposes of 
 the League of Nations should he a more inti- 
 mate and more frequent intercourse between 
 the churches in Europe and those in the 
 United States, 
 
 Mutual acquaintance promotes understand- 
 ing among different nationalities and ripens 
 into friendship. Starting from the basic 
 principle that it is the expressed will of God 
 that all who believe in Jesus Christ as the Son 
 of God and the world's Redeemer should make 
 possible the coming of his kingdom — a possi- 
 bility which never can be realized while war is 
 recognized as the means for adjusting national 
 contentions — there should be no ground for 
 suspicion, political or religious, of representa- 
 
 X54 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODEEN CHURCH 
 
 lives of the churches meeting in open confer- 
 ences for the sole purpose of promoting among 
 the masses the psychological conditions of uni- 
 versal peace. No government that is signatory 
 to the covenant could object, providing the 
 propaganda were carried on in all countries, 
 nor could any government complain that the 
 church was going over its head to the people, 
 or that the church, aided by representatives of 
 a foreign church, was injecting itself between 
 the government and the people contrary to 
 governmental policy. 
 
 Whatever seeming danger may lurk here to 
 well-meaning efforts, it will be dissipated 
 when it is remembered that the churches of 
 Europe are as loyal to their people and as 
 interested in the welfare of their countries as 
 are the churches in America to the future of 
 the republic. The terrible war through which 
 the world has just waded left no such taint 
 of disloyalty to their governments on the 
 churches in Europe as was openly charged 
 against some in the United States. 
 
 The Evangelical Alliance, which years ago 
 brought together in the United States and 
 elsewhere the most representative scholars of 
 international repute in all the churches, not 
 only combated the evil effects of rationalism 
 155 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 and strengthened essential unity in the 
 historic faith, but contributed greatly to the 
 good will and comity existing between the 
 nations represented. Thus also could the 
 churches, by reciprocal visitation and by 
 world-wide publicity of the needs and desires 
 of the people in every nation, promote the 
 cause of peace. However embittered the 
 peoples of Central Europe may be toward the 
 governments of the war-period which brought 
 on the war and deceived them as to its causes, 
 or even toward the American government for 
 its effective participation in the defeat of Ger- 
 many and her allies, there is no question 
 among all classes but that the humanity of the 
 American Red Cross and the generosity of the 
 American churches in furnishing food and 
 clothing for starving millions in Belgium, 
 France, Italy, and the Germanic nationalities, 
 have opened the way for closer friendship be- 
 tween the nations. They now see that America 
 is not materialistic, selfish, seeking only com- 
 mercial advantage at the expense of European 
 labor, but while careful of its own interests, 
 desires nothing more than to live in peace and 
 amity with all other peoples. 
 
 Politicians discourse much on democracy as 
 a means for uniting the nations without much 
 
 156 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODERN CHURCH 
 
 definition of its meaning, and the war-cry, 
 "Making the world safe for democracy," has 
 often been a fat text for a lean sermon. The 
 definition of democracy by the immortal 
 Lincoln as a "government of the people, for 
 the people, and by the people," is perfectly 
 intelligible to the American born in freedom 
 with the ballot in his hand, but it is not so 
 clear to those who have never known any gov- 
 ernment but the rule of force imposed from 
 above. These people will have to learn that 
 democracy is more than a form of government. 
 Christian democracy, which the churches 
 stand for, and which is the best type of democ- 
 racy, seeks the highest moral as well as merely 
 political good of all men, since without this 
 moral foundation there can be no permanent 
 bond linking the nations in real brotherhood. 
 This kind of democracy supplies the necessary 
 motive for permanence, as mere politics can- 
 not, for at bottom, government is largely a 
 matter of expediency. But the laws of God 
 are not expedients. They are built into the 
 constitution of our moral nature, and we must 
 obey them or suffer the consequences. The 
 future belongs to this Christian democracy be- 
 cause this democracy alone is basic. It is the 
 enemy of oppression, but the apostle of free- 
 
 157 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 dom; the foe of anarchy, but the defender of 
 law; the enemy of hate, but the promoter of 
 love. It is universal in its scope. It knows 
 no foreigners; it is the bond of brotherhood. 
 It knows no race but the human race, neither 
 Jew nor Gentile, neither Americans nor Rus- 
 sians, Englishmen nor Frenchmen, Germans 
 nor Poles, Irishmen nor Italians, Hungarians 
 nor Greeks, but, leaping over all boundaries, all 
 barriers and distinctions of race and color, of 
 poverty and wealth, of creed and nationality, 
 it seeks justice, an open field and a fair chance 
 for all men! This is Christian democracy. 
 But there is no institution among men that 
 has the power or the machinery to instill this 
 kind of democracy into the minds and hearts 
 of the people except the church of God; and 
 it is through the church that this democracy, 
 based fundamentally upon the spiritual 
 nature of man, and not alone upon his physical 
 needs, that may become the common posses- 
 sion and blessing of mankind. 
 
 Another means by which the church may 
 help the League of Nations is by its influence 
 upon the press. 
 
 In every country there is a section of the 
 press which, assuming to be the mouthpiece 
 of the nation, seems to exist for the sole pur- 
 
 158 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODERN CHURCH 
 
 pose of creating suspicion and misunderstand- 
 ings between their own government and the 
 government or people of some other country. 
 Whatever the foreign government does is 
 always done, in its opinion, with ulterior 
 motives against its own virtuous people, and 
 the home government is called upon to take 
 decisive action to maintain the national honor 
 or to forestall disaster to the nation's com- 
 mercial interests. Failing to obey the hyster- 
 ics of Jingoism, the government is abused, 
 vilified, ridiculed, and made odious to the 
 people, who never dreamed that because a 
 member of Parliament in some other country 
 insisted upon a certain tariff, a commercial 
 war was meditated; or that because a For- 
 eign Office denounced an outworn treaty 
 severance of diplomatic relations would 
 speedily follow, and that a casus belli was be- 
 ing concocted by the envious nation. Every 
 act that affords the slightest opportunity for 
 criticism is misinterpreted, every speech of 
 premier or leader of opposition is distorted, 
 every expression of opinion in the foreign 
 press is an occasion for an insulting diatribe 
 against the whole nation or the government of 
 that people, until the victims of false news, of 
 criminal inventions, begin to think that possi- 
 169 
 
THE CHUKCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 bly there is danger in the supineness of their 
 own government, and that before it is too late 
 the nation should be aroused to the serious- 
 ness of the situation I Thus there is created 
 suspicion, distrust, fear, hatred in the public 
 mind of both countries owing to the effect of 
 mental contagion engendered by a Jingo press, 
 but for w^hich there exists absolutely no real 
 foundation. Nevertheless, such nihilities are 
 seriously discussed in Parliament and on the 
 curb as menacing realities. News items are 
 garbled, rumors begin to float, stocks fluctuate, 
 coincidences occur, all confirmatory of the 
 contentions of the omniscient, patriotic, but 
 most pernicious evil that ever cursed the peace 
 of a people. 
 
 How to offset the influence of such an evil is 
 a problem which must be tackled if the peoples 
 of Europe and America shall truly understand 
 each other, and in all good faith repose in each 
 other's honor and desire for peace. The free- 
 dom of the press cannot be annulled. Better 
 that a people should be deceived by false 
 rumors and garbled news (if it will depend 
 upon an unscrupulous newspaper for its 
 opinions) than that the liberty of the press 
 should be taken away. Upon the freedom of 
 the press depends the liberty of the people. 
 
 160 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODERN CHURCH 
 
 But the freedom of the press should be no 
 greater than the freedom of the private citizen. 
 Press freedom is a grant from the people, but 
 the people never intended the grant should be 
 greater than that exercised by themselves. 
 Personal liberty is limited by laws enacted by 
 the people for protection from libelous tongues 
 and similar disturbers of the public peace. 
 
 In every country, therefore, the church 
 through its agencies should demand a respon- 
 sible press. For this is not simply a question 
 of how much money a sensational newspaper 
 might make off a credulous public, or the 
 ignorance of a class, but a deeper and more 
 important matter of maintaining cordial rela- 
 tions with countries abroad, and of truthfully 
 informing public opinion at home. Attacks 
 upon statesmen and government representa- 
 tives of foreign countries, misrepresentation 
 of policies, erroneous news, everything which 
 without foundation in fact would create a 
 breach of friendship between governments, 
 should be corrected and the exact truth be 
 given so far as it can be ascertained. The 
 whole world now knows, and the German 
 people now realize, how diabolically deceived 
 they were by the German press inspired by the 
 government They were led to believe that 
 
 161 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 England, Russia, and France were all allied in 
 a conspiracy to destroy the growing industry, 
 the power, prestige, and expansion of the 
 German people. Every increase of army or 
 navy expenditures in England and France 
 proved it. Every attempt of the Russian gov- 
 ernment to build a railroad eastward, proved 
 it. Every ukase to restore the strength and 
 morale of its army following the war with 
 Japan, or effort to solidify the bonds of blood 
 and gratitude between it and Slavic national- 
 ities in the Balkans, proved it. The dis- 
 closures of diplomats, recent memoirs, and the 
 documents brought forth by M. Kautsky from 
 the archives at Potsdam, now open the eyes of 
 the German people to the terrible deception 
 practiced upon them by what Bismarck once 
 called "the reptile press,'' itself deceived or 
 criminally subsidized by a criminal govern- 
 ment. 
 
 It seems impossible that a whole nation, 
 which boasted of its culture and prided itself 
 on its encyclopaedic knowledge and general in- 
 telligence, could be so deceived without reflect- 
 ing either upon its intelligence or its veracity. 
 And yet if professors, ninety-three in number, 
 of various universities — Berlin, Marburg, 
 Heidelberg, Goettingen, Jena, and others — 
 
 162 
 
THE DUTY OF THE MODERN CHURCH 
 
 were so grossly deceived that they had the 
 hardihood to sign their names to the famous 
 "Manifesto" which will stand as an indictment 
 of German scholarship; if such once honored 
 leaders of theological learning and criticism 
 as Professors Deissman, Eucken, Harnack, 
 with the literature of the world at their elbows 
 and read with ingrained habit of critical 
 scrutiny, could be deceived, as the facts now 
 show them to have been, how much easier must 
 it have been for a deceiving press to blind the 
 judgment of the less intelligent millions whose 
 only information concerning foreign affairs 
 was obtained from such a source? 
 
 There would be little excuse for this if 
 Christian journalism in all countries would 
 leave its ancient ruts. The idea of the church 
 press, with some notable exceptions both in 
 England and America, seems to be that it is 
 for denominational propaganda only, for local 
 church news, details of progress, devotional 
 reading, much of which should, of course, be 
 published for its inspirational value and pur- 
 poses of organization. But the Christian 
 public, which constitutes a large part of the 
 population in every country, and contributes 
 to the formation of public opinion, should not 
 be driven to the secular press for expert infor- 
 
 163 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 mation and judgment on questions of vital 
 interest in national affairs. Great editors, be- 
 cause of their political training and grasp of 
 world conditions, often exercise greater influ- 
 ence upon public opinion than President or 
 Prime Minister, and by exposing fallacies or 
 lurking dangers in Parliamentary or Congres- 
 sional measures, compel a change in govern- 
 ment policy or of popular opinion. 
 
 There is no reason why a church press could 
 not exert corresponding influence. There is 
 no reason, except a traditional or con- 
 veniently invented reason, why such a press 
 should not step out from its barricaded sanctu- 
 ary, from its paragraphical limitations in re- 
 port, and comment on the world's thinking, 
 and treat in largest fashion the questions 
 which agitate the people. This can and should 
 be done, not from the viewpoint of politics, but 
 from the larger view of the kingdom of God. 
 As intimated, some Christian papers do this, 
 and just because they do they stand out in the 
 world of journalism with a distinctive char- 
 acter and sphere of influence all their own. 
 Here, then, is a vast field in the new era for* 
 the church press, and an opportunity — really 
 a demand — for effective contribution to the 
 League of Nations of the gravest significance. 
 
 164 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE FUTURE 
 
 Another means by which the church can 
 assist in the practical working of the League 
 of Nations is education. Among the most im- 
 portant duties of the state is the education of 
 the people. A vigorous but ignorant people is 
 a sleeping menace. No one who reads The 
 Eclipse of Russia, by one of the greatest of 
 journalists, E. J. Dillon, especially the chap- 
 ter "The Rule of the Bureau,'' will fail to see 
 the cause of the terrible agony through which 
 that empire is passing. But education, the 
 purpose of which is the culture and develop- 
 ment of the human spirit in those things which 
 make for the noblest civilization, may be per- 
 verted and turned into an instrument which 
 shall make only for the destruction of those 
 who became its victims. This we see in the 
 history of Germany since 1871. Then victory 
 over France brought millions into her treasury, 
 but changed the idealism of the people to ma- 
 terialism, their activities from agriculture to 
 
 165 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 industrialism, and as a result — national col- 
 lapse in the world war. "No one," writes W. 
 B. Dawson, in The Evolution of Modern Ger- 
 many — "No one who knows Germany from its 
 literature, its poetry, and philosophy, and who 
 has followed its career during the past genera- 
 tion can have failed to recognize the immense 
 change which has come over the national life 
 and thought. A century ago idealism was 
 supreme; half a century ago it had still not 
 been dethroned; to-day its place has been 
 taken by materialism." "A new spirit has 
 entered into the national life. If the first half 
 of the nineteenth century witnessed in Ger- 
 many the reign of spirit, of ideas, the second 
 half witnessed the reign of matter, of things, 
 and it is this latter sovereignty which is 
 supreme to-day." 
 
 Germany is not to be blamed for becoming 
 an industrial nation. It was an economic 
 necessity. A whole people, with a rapidly in- 
 creasing population, cannot live upon ideas 
 alone, any more than it can upon bread alone. 
 But the blame is that the energy of the nation 
 was turned by false education to the realiza- 
 tion of false ideals, to the building of a vast 
 militaristic empire for dominion and power 
 over other nations. This is the crime of Ger- 
 
 166 
 
THE FUTURE 
 
 many. For this purpose every industry and 
 every individual, every shop and factory, every 
 profession and calling, public school and uni- 
 versity, became a part of the gigantic state 
 machine. The empire became a camp. All 
 things were made to work with scientific co- 
 ordination to one definite, predetermined end 
 — the supremacy of Germany over all other 
 nations. 
 
 The means by which this was accomplished 
 was education. History, economics, world- 
 politics, science, philosophy were all taught 
 from the standpoint of Prussian needs and 
 aspirations. Ideas of the state, never held be- 
 fore, were invented in order to justify military 
 purposes, and to establish the new imperial 
 creed that every subject of the state existed 
 solely for the state without regard to his 
 individual rights. The drill sergeant became 
 the teacher of Germany. 
 
 For a whole generation, from 1870 to 1914, 
 the mind of Germany was subjected to this 
 education and, at first gradually, but finally 
 with alacrity, it submitted to the militaristic 
 spirit. Now, what the state can do for pur- 
 poses of war the church can do for the estab- 
 lishment of peace. By education through the 
 press, platform and pulpit ; by substitution of 
 167 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 the Christian conception of the state for pagan 
 ideas of force and irresponsibility; by incul- 
 cating the principles of Jesus concerning the 
 rights and the moral worth of man, the church 
 in schoolroom and market place can at least 
 attempt what publicists attempt in their writ- 
 ings and moralists in their books. This is to 
 say there must be active agencies for the crea- 
 tion of public opinion favorable to peace and 
 obnoxious to war. 
 
 But mankind will never attain to that de- 
 gree of culture by itself, because man is by 
 heredity a combative animal. He creates that 
 social environment himself by which the in- 
 stinct for war is developed and strengthened. 
 It is only by the creation of another environ- 
 ment which will neither suggest nor afford 
 opportunity or field for the shedding of human 
 blood, that a social heredity can be created 
 and transmitted to successive generations. We 
 must breed out as well as breed in. There can 
 be no elimination of war till the impulse to 
 war is expelled from human thinking and 
 social environment. The idols and symbols of 
 heathenism do not remain alongside Christian 
 altars where pagan people are to be converted, 
 nor will reminders of pagan worship or par- 
 ticipation in rites and ceremonies be permitted 
 
 168 
 
THE FUTUEE 
 
 to annul the impact of Christian ideas on the 
 mind of the heathen slowly emerging from his 
 idolatry. But once Christian principles are 
 fixed in the mind of converts and the heathen 
 community becomes a Christian community 
 purged of all traces of heathenism, an environ- 
 ment is created in which children may grow 
 up habituated in thought and practice to 
 Christian living. But how is this change ac- 
 complished? By education. By the substi- j 
 tution of new ideals, new concepts, for the old. / 
 
 Given an ideal attractive enough to arouse 
 the depths of feeling and it will, in time, con- 
 quer the world. It is by such an appeal that 
 all great achievements in war, in religion, in 
 civilization have been accomplished. It is the 
 inspiration of world-conquerors, of mission- 
 aries and martyrs ; of great artists and nation- 
 building statesmen, like Bismarck, whose ever- 
 haunting dream was the subordination of the 
 German states to the sovereignty of Prussia^ 
 
 To create a new ideal in the soul of Christen- 
 dom is the duty of the church. As Pope 
 Urban at the Council of Constance created a 
 collective mind in all Europe and originated 
 the Crusades which lifted the spirit of Europe 
 to the highest pitch of religious enthusiasm, 
 it is possible for the church, if she has the will, 
 169 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 to create in every land an enthusiasm for 
 humanity which, without fanaticism or dis- 
 order, will be the genesis of a new world. This, 
 by means of education of the young, the 
 church in time can accomplish. "Give us the 
 young," cries Benjamin Kidd in his Science of 
 Power, "and we will create a new mind and a 
 new earth in a single generation." 
 
 No government signatory to the League 
 Covenant could consistently oppose such a 
 program, on the ground that by instilling such 
 ideas into the mind of youth the defensive 
 strength of the nation would be undermined. 
 In the first place, such peace activities sanely 
 directed would only be in harmony with the 
 declared policy of the government signing the 
 covenant. But should any government, signa- 
 tory or not to the League, forbid such teaching 
 on any pretext whatever, that government 
 would awaken the suspicion of all other gov- 
 ernments as to its designs. It would thus 
 compel them to prevent any overt act on 
 its part which would disturb the common 
 peace. For not till the kingdom of God 
 comes will, nor should, any nation deprive it- 
 self of the means of self-defense, or of acting in 
 concert with other nations in policing the 
 world. 
 
 170 
 
THE FUTURE 
 
 But perhaps such weighty matters, after all, 
 cannot be so easily settled. It is a profound 
 question and contains elements of trouble both 
 for the church and the state should conflict 
 arise between them. A state, for example, 
 while expressing adherence to the Covenant of 
 the League, may nevertheless prohibit peace 
 activities by the church on the ground of com- 
 plete severance of church and state in matters 
 of public policy. In such case no other nation 
 could interfere in matters of internal admin- 
 istration. The question then arises. What 
 would be the duty of the church? The duty of 
 the church would be to "render unto Caesar 
 the things that are Caesar's, and to God the 
 things that are God's." World war or world 
 peace is not a question for Caesar, but for hu- 
 manity. To surrender to the state, in order 
 that the state may continue war, is equivalent 
 to the blunder of the early church, and of the 
 Protestant churches at the Reformation, in 
 forming an alliance with the state. The 
 church cannot surrender the right to preach 
 peace in an effectual manner, providing it does 
 not put the state at a disadvantage as against 
 other states, should the state interfere, and 
 the church should accept the consequences of 
 its refusal. Had the apostles of Jesus Christ 
 171 
 
THE CHUKCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 and the churches they founded surrendered to 
 the state, there would be no Christianity 
 to-day. The church can again suffer martyr- 
 dom for a great ideal which will bless man- 
 kind. It may be that some church, some na- 
 tion, may yet have to die in order that the 
 white race shall not perish. Of course there is 
 no sort of analogy between the church and the 
 so-called "conscientious objector." No church 
 will refuse service to the state fighting in self- 
 defense, but, on the contrary, it will inspire 
 every patriot with love for his country, just as 
 one will defend his home from the attack of a 
 burglar, or the virtue of his family from the 
 touch of vice. 
 
 Universal peace, with all the assistance the 
 church may give statesmen and governments, 
 cannot be realized at once. There must be a 
 psychological cleansing of the nations. But 
 if, as Mr. Kidd notes, in one or two genera- 
 tions Japan by the force of an ideal constantly 
 held before the national mind, can emerge 
 from what she was to what she is, from an 
 isolated position in the world's affairs to a 
 first-class power, from Oriental ways of think- 
 ing to the knowledge and use of Western 
 science, or if in a single generation Germany, 
 under the influence of new ideals, could 
 
 172 
 
THE FUTURE 
 
 change from an agricultural, pMlosopMcal, 
 art-loving people to the mightiest industrial 
 and military power in history, if such achieve- 
 ments can be wrought under the inspiration of 
 dynamic ideals, what is there that can render 
 impossible a change in the thought of the 
 world from warlike schemes to thoughts of 
 peace and international law? 
 
 The opportunity of the church to become 
 the leader of humanity was never so inviting 
 as now. Never in all her history was there 
 such chance for success, a louder call, a more 
 imperative demand, for her to come out from 
 her isolation into the wide horizons, the vast 
 reaches of human affairs and lead the thought 
 of the nations, as now. The world needs new 
 ideals and new leaders. The old-world policies 
 are gone, the day of Christ has come. Can the 
 church see Him? Is the Church of Christ in- 
 capable of fulfilling her mission? Is she so 
 blind, so worn and feeble that she is no longer 
 able or fit to summon the best of Christendom 
 to create a collective mind which shall apply 
 the ideals of her Lord to the needs of human- 
 ity? That kind of a church, let us hope, is 
 gone also, for, as M. Monod, president of the 
 National Union of Churches in France, says, 
 "If the present cataclysm has ended any 
 173 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 chimera, it is certainly the chimera of a Chris- 
 tianity merely ecclesiastical, doctrinal, indi- 
 vidualistic, shut up in its sanctuaries, without 
 program or horizon. A stranger to the spirit 
 of the prophets, ignorant of the kingdom of 
 God, it boasts of its declaration of the whole 
 gospel, while it renounces all efforts to trans- 
 form the political and social world." 
 
 But suppose the church fails to align herself 
 with the governments desiring world peace, 
 leaving world-problems to political experts, 
 and these are left alone to struggle with such 
 problems in the midst of a dissatisfied and be- 
 wildered world, and war is still the resort of 
 the nations, what then? The white race will 
 destroy itself. A few more wars like this war 
 just ended will seal the doom of the white 
 race in Europe. So deadly will become the 
 weapons of warfare and so vast their range 
 that no nation in Europe will live. So great 
 will be the human loss and so complete the 
 destruction, there will not be enough man- 
 power left to build again the centers of civil- 
 ization or to resist the possible invasion of the 
 dark races. 
 
 In view of the discontent among the nation- 
 alities in Europe the Poles, Ukrainians, Ru- 
 manians, Bulgarians, the German people, 
 174 
 
THE FUTURE 
 
 Austrians, the Turks and other people whose 
 racial and national boundaries have been 
 changed by the Treaty of Versailles, or who 
 clamor for readjustment, it would require no 
 great stretch of the imagination, should one 
 take a pessimistic view of the future, starting 
 from present disconcerting facts in world 
 politics, to see Japan with the millions of 
 China in her armies sweeping over disorgan- 
 ized Russia and in possession of northern 
 Europe; to see the millions of the Mohamme- 
 dan world, friends and allies of Germany, rise 
 in a holy war in India, North Africa, Egypt, 
 the Strait Settlements, and, as the Saracens 
 once reached the gates of Vienna, pour into 
 southern and southeastern Europe. Weak- 
 ened by war and ever diminishing recuperative 
 power, cities ruined, agriculture destroyed, 
 populations starving, Europe, in such condi- 
 tion, could offer no sustained resistance. 
 Even in this war the European nations were 
 exhausted. France was bled white. England 
 was on the edge of collapse; Germany, with 
 forty years of preparation behind her, was 
 unable to continue the conflict, and would 
 have been annihilated had she not surren- 
 dered. 
 It must be either world peace or world war. 
 
 175 
 
THE CHUKCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 There is no alternative. The thoughtless op- 
 timist in foors paradise who imagines that the 
 world will now stand still ; that the alien races 
 will have no racial instinct for self expression ; 
 that without the expulsive power of new ideals 
 of human brotherhood, of Christian civiliza- 
 tion, the defeated nations in Europe will ac- 
 cept with thanksgiving the Treaty of Versail- 
 les as a permanent settlement, which in itself 
 would be in fact and reality a League of 
 Nations without formal covenant — such an 
 impractical dreamer will have no advice to 
 give heads of government responsible for a 
 nation's welfare. 
 
 There is restlessness in the Mohammedan 
 world. There is deep resentment in Japan 
 against being officially designated as an in- 
 ferior race. Germany will never acquiesce in 
 the present map of Europe; and if she will 
 abandon all designs to the westward, she yet 
 hopes to extend her empire in the East. 
 Although the Hindus and other peoples in 
 India are as antagonistic to the Mohamme- 
 dans as the Serbians are to the Bulgarians, 
 nevertheless India will not always be submis- 
 sive without autonomy to British rule, or only 
 so at frightful cost. Japan cannot by the 
 laws of nature remain as she is; the Islamic 
 
 176 
 
THE FUTUEE 
 
 world will not supinely submit always to the 
 practical vassalage of the Sultan as the divine 
 representative of the Mohammedan faith. If 
 to prevent coalition of these nations, or to 
 frustrate the designs of any one of them, a 
 destructive war upon each in turn, as occasion 
 may demand, should become a necessity for 
 the preservation of Christendom, still it is 
 clearly seen that such a remedy will only 
 weaken the power or powers engaged, and 
 leave it, or them, open to attack by warlike 
 neighbors watchful of opportunity. 
 
 And so, again, by the mutual destruction of 
 Europeans will grow the strength of the dark 
 races. Nothing but a League of Nations and 
 a binding together in Holy Alliance of Chris- 
 tian peoples, the abolishment of war and of 
 the manufacture of war implements, universal 
 education of the people in principles of justice 
 and peace, and implicit confidence in the im- 
 partiality of a world court for the settlement 
 of national disputes, will ever make impossible 
 the results which further European wars will 
 finally bring. 
 
 What may be the will of God as to the 
 
 future we do not presume to know. But we 
 
 do know that evil produces more evil, good 
 
 more good; and that obedience to the revealed 
 
 177 
 
THE CHURCH AND WORLD PEACE 
 
 will of God is the only safe path for men and 
 nations. 
 
 With abiding faith that in the everlast- 
 ing constitution of a moral universe all things 
 work, and must all work together in un- 
 broken harmony for good, as the ultimate 
 goal of history, there is no ground left for 
 doubt but that whatever may be the reverses 
 of Christianity or the retrogressions of civil- 
 ization in the future by the failures or follies 
 of the present, the idea of the kingdom of God 
 imbedded in the church at the beginning of 
 time shall finally triumph over all opposing 
 world forces, and "the kingdoms of this world 
 shall become the kingdom of our Lord, and of 
 his Christ." 
 
 178 
 
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