ADDRESSES. The Rev. AUBREY L. MOORE, Keble College, Oxford. OUR President has spoken of this subject as a "delicate and difficult" one. I confess I am not greatly troubled by the delicacy of my position. Those who serve their Queen and country as our soldiers and sailors do, will not only allow, they will expect the Christian priest to do his duty. But the difficulty is a very real one. When Christ was born into the world the angels proclaimed "Peace on earth:" when He came among us from the grave He said, "Peace be unto you." His legacy to us was "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you." The new Kingdom was a Kingdom of Peace; the promised Comforter was the Spirit of Peace: Christ Himself was the Prince of Peace. How, then, are we to explain the teaching of the Bible and the attitude of the Church in respect of war? The Old Testament com. mands, the Church allows, that which on any showing is alien from the spirit of the Gospel. The solution of this double difficulty is to be found, I believe, in a fuller recognition of two great principles of God's dealing with man, which at bottom are one and the same ;-first, that the Old Testament is a progressive revelation, and secondly, that Christianity is a principle of life and growth, not a formal system of conduct. If I had fifteen hours before me instead of fifteen minutes, I might hope to show how those two principles apply to the difficulties before us; and how, in the last analysis, the two are one. As it is, I can only summarise. I. The Bible is a progressive revelation which culminates in the Gospel of Christ. Not only in its teaching on war, but in its teaching generally, the Old Testament is preparatory and introductory to the New. If, for instance, it could be shewn that the Old Testament taught a gospel of war, and the New Testament a gospel of peace, however puzzled we might be by such an opposition, we should still believe that it was somehow the opposition between a lower and a higher revelation. If this is not so, if the Bible has not respect to the gradual education of mankind, if its utterances lie, as it were, all in one plane, I can find in it only a mass of contradictions and inconsistent moralities. But as I listen to those calm words from the lips of Him Who spoke with authority,-" It was said to them of old time, but I say unto you,"I see in the Old Testament, as S. Paul did in the Law, a raidaywyòs eiç Xpioróv, leading men on little by little till they could sit at the feet of Jesus. Its teaching is provisional only because propedeutic. It is destroyed only by being fulfilled. But if this principle is to help us we must be able to show how the Old Testament teaching about war prepared for, and led up to, the Gospel of peace. It is no use to say the Old Testament wars were commanded by God and that is enough. Undoubtedly the immediate justification for them was the direct command, but conscience demands an ulterior justification. If immoral acts become moral when done by God, as Zwingli taught, either there is no morality, or God is not God. Now the revelation of the Old Testament stands midway between the natural instincts of man and the supernatural life of the kingdom of God. Without committing ourselves to the sophistic fiction of a bellum omnium inter omnes, we are bound to admit that, when the struggle for existence among families or peoples comes, the law of force prevails. Man tacitly assumes "that he may take who has the power, and he may keep who can." No doubt the social instincts on the one hand, and experience of the evils of war on the other, tend to modify this view. The greatest of heathen teachers declares that "no one chooses war for the sake of war. A man would be bloodthirsty indeed if he turned his friends into foes in order to bring about battle and murder;" but in another context he remarks that "it is mere slavery if a man may not give another as good as he gave.” In fact, it would seem that however civilisation may mitigate the barbarity of war, it still leaves untouched the idea that war is a natural right. It is here that the teaching of the Old Testament about war, even at its lowest, shows a definite advance. It takes man as he is, with his savage, warlike instincts ; it does not ignore his nature, and proclaim at once a reign of peace. It does not even strike directly at the war spirit. It accepts war. But the people to whom are committed "the oracles of God," are to be taught to see war in a new light. It is taken out of the hands of man. It is God's prerogative. Man wages war lawfully only as His vicegerent. He is fighting "the battle of the Lord." (1 Sam. xviii. 17, xxv. 28.) There is nothing personal in the Israelitish campaigns, nothing even national except so far as the cause of Israel is the cause of God. We think it a great advance in civilisation when men neither take the law into their own hands, nor suffer a relative to be the avenger of blood, but trust to the administration of an impersonal law. Revenge, which, even in the individual, is "a kind of wild justice," is then transformed into that righteous indignation which lies at the root of the judicial system. Such an advance is the teaching of the Pentateuch in respect of War. It was the first, though an indirect blow to the war-spirit among the Jews. But they had much more to learn. That God is a God of battles is a half truth, which, to us, seems almost immoral. The higher truth, which is revealed in the Old Testament, was dimly shadowed forth when the Patriarchial conqueror, returning from the slaughter of the kings, did homage to a mysterious King of Peace. And when the wars of conquest were over, and the chosen people were established in the promised land, their king, who had fought the Lord's battles, is forbidden to build the Temple, because he has been "a man of war," and "has shed blood abundantly." (1 Chron. xxii. 8; xxiii. 3.) That honour is reserved for "a man of rest," under whom "peace and quietness" is promised (1 Chron. xxii.) The Jews, from first to last, had been taught that the explanation of the present is in the future, and as this future becomes clearer, it is revealed as a Kingdom of Peace. God is no longer man of war" (Ex. xv. 3.) “He maketh wars to cease in all the earth" (Ps. xlvi. 9.) He no longer "teaches the hands to war and the fingers to fight." He "scatters the people that delight in war." Clearer and more clear the promise is seen, that not Israel only, but through them the whole world, shall know the blessings of peace, when "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." 66 a The Old Testament teaching, in respect of war, is thus propedeutic and provisional. The Kingdom of Peace is not an after-thought; the whole of God's ancient revelation leads up to it. The Old Testament accepts war only to destroy war. It lifts war out of the region of personal and national ambition, by claiming it as God's prerogative; and then, as the knowledge of God's nature is broadened and deepened, the promise is given of a Kingdom of Peace under the Messianic rule. II. But if the Old Testament teaching about war can be explained in the light of the great principle that God's revelation of Himself is progressive, what are we to say about the teaching of the Christian Church? The promised Prince of Peace was born into the world nearly nineteen centuries ago, and war still exists, not among heathens only, but among professedly Christian nations. The Divine Society, the visible embodiment of the Kingdom of Peace, even contemplates the fact of war. How are we to explain this paradox? Some people will offer us a rough and ready solution. They have hardly got beyond the negative idea of peace as given by Mr. Chadband: "Oh, my friends, what is peace? Is it war? No, it is not war." Therefore, they argue, the Kingdom of Peace excludes war, and either the Church has absolutely forbidden war, or it has been false to its trust. The But what does the Church say about war? I answer, It recognises war as a fact, never as a right. Under the Gospel, war is an anachronism and a survival. Church never condemns the life of a soldier, but it never "contemplates war forensically" as a legitimate international Court of Appeal. Even Dr. Mozley, in spite of his magnificent tour de force, is compelled to admit that "Christianity only sanctions war, upon the hypothesis of a world at a discord with herself. In her own world war would be impossible," p. 119. It never forgets that war is alien from the spirit of Christianity; yet it never forgets that Christianity is to work like hidden leaven. No doubt individual Christians from the first have been found to hold the view, which finds its strongest expression in Tertullian, and is, perhaps, also the view of Origen, that the Sermon on the Mount forbids military service altogether, and even the administration of justice in matters of life and death. But this was not the common teaching of the ante-Nicene Church. Even while the Empire was pagan, and military service might seem to imply acquiescence in heathen ceremonies, Christians in large numbers fought in the Roman army, as Tertullian himself admits, and no disciplinary canons forbade it. The stories of the Thundering Legion, and of the Theban Legion, a century later, whatever be their literal truth, are sufficient to prove that Christians fought under Marcus Aurelius and Diocletian, and that the profession of the soldier was not like that of the gladiator, the actor, the idolmaker, the astrologer, forbidden to the baptised. The words, “I may not fight, for I am a Christian," were uttered by the martyr Maximilian (295 A.D.), at the very time when large numbers of his brethren were doing what he felt impossible. When I turn to St. Augustine as representing the post-Nicene Fathers, and to St. Thomas Aquinas as representing the schoolmen, I find the same teaching. It is taken for granted that the case of the faithful centurion in the Gospel, and of Cornelius in the Acts, justified a Christian in bearing arms. If the soldier is the enemy of Christ it is not his position but his disposition makes him so (non militia sed malitia.) St. Augustine even advises Count Boniface not to enter a monastery, but to do his duty as a Christian general. But under Christian emperors a wider question is raised, viz., Is war ever lawful for a Christian power? And the answer is, The Christian must always will peace, though war may be forced upon him (Pacem habere debet voluntas, bellum necessitas) and even in war the Christian must labour for peace (esto ergo bellando bacificus, etc.) He will fight misericorditer, in the spirit of a father who is compelled to chasten those he loves. And St. Thomas closely follows St. Augustine. "Three things," he says, are necessary for a just war, the authority of the ruler, a righteous cause, and a good intention. Any other war is unlawful." Summa. Theol. 2, 2, Q. XL. But the rapid deterioration which had taken place in the Western Church between the fourth and the thirteenth century is shown by the numerous canons passed against even clergy bearing arms. The Crusades had familiarised men's minds with bloodshed in the name of Christ, and the wars of Christians with one another had confused their judgment. The proclamation of a "Truce of God" marks the ineffective protest of Christianity against a spirit which it had done so little to overcome. 66 Why, then, did not the Christian Church from the first prohibit war as Tertullian would have done? Because it had realised the fact that Christianity is a principle of life which is to transform the world into itself. "We see not yet all things put under Him." The ideal is not the actual, either for the Christian society or for the individual Christian, and to attempt to make it so is not really to advance the Kingdom of God. There will always be those "Whose best hope for the world Is ever that the world is near its end, But the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven are to be the leaven of the world, and "they ought not," says St. Augustine, " to wish before the time to dwell with none but saints and righteous men." It is a dangerous thing to ante-date the millennial reign of Christ. You mean, then, that Christianity takes human nature as it is? Yes; but only that it may make it what it is not. Christianity did not prohibit slavery, in a sense it accepted it. But it enunciated principles ultimately inconsistent with slavery. It did not prohibit war, and say that no Christian might carry arms, but it attacked the war spirit in every form. Cessante causâ cessat et effectus. But the converse is not true. You may prohibit slavery, and declare that every man and woman is free whose foot is set on English soil, and, meanwhile, a white slave trade, as anti-christian and as inhuman as anything on the coast of Africa, is in our midst. And if war could be forbidden we might still be as far as ever from the kingdom of peace. Is the lust of glory more cruel than the lust of gain? Less careful of the good of others? "What is it," asks St. Augustine, that we blame in war? Not the fact of death, for all must die; but "the desire for wrong, the cruelty of revenge, the implacable spirit, the savagery of fighting, the lust of lordship-this is what we blame in war, and this is what is condemned by Divine and human law." The attempt to distinguish between just and unjust wars is one which, till the Spirit of Peace inspires our motives, can only lead to casuistry. Not only religious wars, but wars of mere earthly empire, darken the page of human history. Yet was there ever a war which could not be justified, on the plea of self-defence, or the service of God? Are we to blame a Christian nation if, like the errant knights of old, it goes about redressing human wrongs with earthly weapons? Doesn't the end justify the means? Isn't there something of truth in the sneer that even missionary work, which was once done by a Henry Martyn, is now done by a Martini-Henry? Has not the maxim si vis pacem para bellum been perverted into a justification for all the armaments of Europe, when there was little real thought or wish for peace? What has the religion of Christ to say to us here? I answer, For the tone and temper of popular “Jingoism," for the thinly disguised policy of bluster, for the craving after military display, for the readiness to stamp every effort for peace as a weak foreign policy and an abandonment of British interests for this, I find, in the Bible and in the Church, nothing but unqualified condemnation. But I find no condemnation of the calling of the soldier Christian, and, therefore, I cannot adopt the teaching of Tertullian in ancient days, or of the Peace Society in our own. We honour them for their noble protest, we thank them for recalling the Church to its high ideal. The question between us and them is one not of motive but of method. Is the Kingdom of Peace to win its way by influence or by protest; by a policy of permeation or a policy of separation; by the implanting of a new nature which may transform the old, or by a mechanical substitution of the Divine for the human? In a word, do we believe in "regeneration," or in "instantaneous conversion ?" The Rev. DANIEL TRINDER, Vicar of St. Michael's, Highgate. THE proposition I should like to maintain is, that the Church has to teach righteousness both in war and in peace. We have, in the present day, to contend with a sentiment against war of a two-fold character. One runs a great risk of being thought barbarous or unchristian in seeming to side with war under any circumstances. But, surely, war is sometimes not only justifiable, but righteous. However, there is a sentiment which was started in earlier times by the Society of Friends which is purely religious and so excellent, that we cannot but sympathise with it to a great extent. And here I wish to pay my tribute of respect to that small body of Christians, whose conscientiousness and whose sentiments are impressing society at the present time. That society was founded, however, in what I believe to be a too literal interpretation of our blessed Lord's precepts. There is another anti-war sentiment which clothes itself in a somewhat similar dress, but comes of a totally different spirit. There is the sentiment which, I believe, is closely akin to that worship of material prosperity which endangers us at the present time in more ways than one. It is not all peace that is good. Peace, I maintain, has its "horrors," and no man who knows what is going on amongst us can dissemble the fact. Think only of the much competition which urges individuals and companies into the field to the ruin of themselves and of their competitors. Think of the fraudulent goods manufactured wholesale and sold retail ; think of the vast system of swindling which goes on in the name of stock-broking and commerce; think of the rings and corners in our markets. Have we not here a system of nefarious warfare against society-the horrors of unrighteous peace? Well, all these things belong to a spirit which is wholly unchristian, yet that spirit prompts some of the strongest expressions of opinion of horror against war. There are many men who object to war because it touches in some degree on the nation's material wealth. I have no fear of war on that account, but I have a fear of it when it is the outcome of an ambitious and selfish spirit, and when it is the effect of that Jingoism of which we have too much. For my own part, since I came to the age of reflection, I have never been able to join in singing "Rule Britannia," because the rights of other nations are ignored. On the other hand, there is something in peace itself which should make a Christian man jealous of maintaining it unless it is sought and enjoyed in the wholesome fear of God. The class of men of which I have been speaking seem to ignore one thing entirely. They think that by the pursuing of industrial occupation they have it in their power to banish war from the world. In fact, they attempt to take the sword out of God's hands. What the Old and the New Testaments point out to us is that God is a God of judgment, who sends the sword of war through a land in judgment upon it for unrighteousness. And I maintain that if a great nation like England systematically departs from the principles and practices of commercial morality it does its best to draw the sword of God through the fatherland. Let me go back and see what Christ says, and I think we shall find we have to do with a good deal of confusion of thought with regard to peace. Christ, it is true, promises peace, but does He promise it to the world universally? He promises peace to His own kingdom. His promise is "My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you; be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." The spirit of the world will never bring the spirit of peace into the human heart; it is Christ alone that peace. He is the very life of the individual and of society, and so far as the principles of His kingdom are received and acted upon, peace is the blessed result. In the very centre of those great storm clouds which sweep across the ocean, we are told there is a space where the air is undisturbed and quiet. This illustrates the course of Christ's kingdom. As it marches grandly along from age to age, from nation to nation, the is |