1. One of the purposes for which our Lord instituted the Christian Church was that it might exercise a distinct moral influence on the society round it. Separate in idea from the world, and at first separate from it in a great measure in fact, it was to be in the world, to touch the world, and to make great changes in it; to attract and win and renew. It was to be a principle of health and freshness, the antagonist of corruption and decay. And it was to work, not at a distance, but by contact, by subtle and insensible forces, which combined with what they acted on and modified. The Kingdom of Heaven was to be like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.
2. Now Christianity stands for peace. It proclaims peace to be the natural and normal life of man. He is only fully himself when he is at peace. His inner being is social, and fulfils itself in brotherhood. Christ, the Prince of Peace, comes to consummate this brotherhood by making us all members one of another in the one Body, in which He has broken down all that separates and divides, and has constituted us all one organic unity in His perfect Humanity. All virtue, all excellence, all moral character, is determined by this condition. It issues out of the law by which the brotherhood coheres. It is governed by the one dominant standard rule, “Be at peace with one another” (Rom_12:18; 1Th_5:13). Whatever “edifies,” whatever, that is, makes for the unity of the Body in peace with itself, is ethically good. Whatever divides the members from one another is for that reason stamped as evil. All conduct is to be framed on these lines of peace. All joy is to be sought in the unity of the Spirit. All strength is derived from the correlated co-operation of the functions by which the active Body is fed from a single source from whence, by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, it maketh “increase to the edifying of itself in love” (Eph_4:16). Peace, then, is what Christ’s religion exists to create. It has always before it the vision of a life out of which all fear and wrath and hatred have passed away; a life in which “they do not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord” (Isa_11:9); a life in which every man at peace with his fellows shall live out his own peace, in his own way, under his own vine and his own fig tree, unmolested by tyranny or wrong, a life on which the hills would be for ever dropping the blessings of peace, and over all would hang the brooding peace of heaven.
There is a Body represented in all the nations, yet in its essence supra-national, which ought to be able to lead the world in to the paths of peace. It is essentially catholic, a body of persons of all races and colours who are bound together in a brotherhood which should be more binding than any other link between human spirits. It stands for the supreme worth of the individual, and, therefore, for an ideal of society in which no supposed interest of nation or of group can be built upon the surrender of the freedom and inherent rights of the individual soul. It exists to bring in a Kingdom of Love by means which are wholly consistent with the spirit of love, and, therefore, to refuse to use any method which involves a denial of love. These three principles carry with them a condemnation of war and the war spirit. They cannot be uttered without our becoming conscious of the challenge to Christianity which is inherent in war. It is by consistently maintaining these principles that the Church may yet lead the world into the Promised Land. Her watchword should be, in the words of Romain Rolland, “Above the Battlefield.” To his challenge we are bound to seek an answer. “Can we not,” he says, “sacrifice ourselves without sacrificing our neighbours as well?” If, however, for some supposed national interest, the Church is now silent in regard to those very principles which may help us to find the way to true peace, if, in giving them forth, she is unwilling to accept the full implications of loyalty to them, or if she urges a course of action which actually involves a denial of them, is it not clear that she thereby surrenders her right to utter them when the war is over, as the fundamental principles of a new world order? [Note: H. T. Hodgkin, in Christ and Peace, 14.]
3. It is a truism that Christianity is a religion of peace. It is also a truism that Christians have often made it a religion of quarrels, persecutions, and bloodshed, and that custom makes us strangely insensible to the anomaly of a religion of peace compatible with strife, tolerant of litigation, patient of war. The Church—not the world only, but the Church and Christian society —seems to have disappointed the hopes of Apostles, seems to have persisted in the path which the Prince of Peace came to lead it from. But, however God may allow His purposes to be crossed by the weakness and disobedience and perverseness of man, what we individually have to consider is, whether we will associate ourselves with what we know to be His voice, or whether we will ignore it, neglect it, prefer to it ideals of our own, measures of right which are not His.
4. We have to consider then what it means to the Church that it is the custodian of this treasure, the body through which the Son of Man speaks His message of redemption. It is not as isolated individuals, but as members of a group organically connected with Christ Himself, through which circulates the sap of the living Vine, that we shall find as a people the answers that He would give us to the world’s pressing problems. It is only so that we shall make our best contribution to the work of the Universal Church. Are we preparing our young people with this conception of what Church membership means, and are we providing opportunity for them to put their very best into this supreme task that lies before us? Do our meetings for discipline face their duties in the light of this task, and devote as much time to the solution of these problems in the various localities as the urgency of the situation demands? We must remember that to those outside who are moved by such aspirations it is organized Christianity, as seen in the life of the Churches, which seems to be unsympathetic or antagonistic. Individual Christians may be acknowledged to be exceptions. But the Church, which ought, in her corporate life, to embody and express the sympathy of her Lord for all mankind, which ought to bring His message of comfort and hope, which ought to be filled to overflowing with His redeeming life—the Church it is which is weighed and found wanting.
5. To make its influence felt, against the mighty forces that are on the side of war, the Church must be united, both in will and in act. It must be true to itself. For the Church by its very nature transcends differences of nationality and race. Its members are united to one another not by natural bonds but by participation in a common Divine life. Sharing in this common life, they are members of one Body. This unity is more real and more fundamental than ties of race or blood or political obligation. The tragedy is that the Church has failed to express, in the world of actual fact and experience, this essential unity of those who are in Christ. Because of this failure the Church had not the power to avert the recent catastrophe.
At this time, above all others, when the real meaning and calamity of the failure of the Church is patent to all, it is incumbent on Christians to return with a new conviction to the foundation principle of the Christian society. “One is your teacher, and all ye are brethren.” “We, who are many, are one body in Christ.” It has been admitted that, in consequence of the failure of the Church in the past, it may be that, in the service of a cause which Christian men recognize to be binding on them, those who are brethren in Christ should have been compelled to shoot and stab one another. But this awful necessity must compel us to grasp more passionately the unity thus violated. Now, more than ever, the Church must affirm the truth on which its existence depends. And this it may do in two ways.
(1) It may hold steadily before the minds of Christian people the fact that the unity which binds together those who are in Christ is a more fundamental and more important thing—something more deeply rooted in the heart of reality—than the national antagonisms that are now finding violent expression. They will pass; it remains. As this conviction deepens within us, we shall seek for opportunities to give practical expression to the unity which is fundamental in our consciousness, but which everything around us appears to deny. The help that missionaries of the warring nationalities have been able to give to one another in the mission field is a notable illustration of what is meant.
(2) Again, it is the duty of the Church to hold before the eyes of men the higher conception of nationality that it derives from its own ideal for human society. At no time has there been greater need for a voice speaking with the authority of God to remind men that all nations have their part to play in His plan—that all are needed for the building up of the body of Christ. The Church will be false to its own nature and genius, if in this crisis it allows its aims to become identified with an exclusively national cause.
I remember an angry interview with an ecclesiastic in Berlin, a personal friend of the Kaiser, though for many years an ardent admirer of England.
He paced up and down the room with noiseless footsteps on a soft carpet.
“It is no time for bland words!” he said. “England has insulted us. Such acts are not to be tolerated by a great nation like ours. There is only one answer to them, and it is the answer of the sword!”
I ventured to speak of Christian influences which should hold men back from the brutality of war.
“Surely the Church must always preach the gospel of peace? Otherwise it is false to the spirit of Christ.”
He believed that I intended to insult him, and in a little while he rang the bell for my dismissal. [Note: Philip Gibbs, The Soul of the War, 9.]
