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