Religion and the War

HAMBERL

love. We hope for a new world-order organized to make war impossible, inspired by a spirit of co?peration and good will between classes and between nations. We hope as never before for an assured and abundant life after death. We put these hopes in some relation to each other, weighing one against another, subordinating one to another. And when we seek their right relationship and look for their ultimate grounds, we ask what Christianity has to say and to do about them. What is Christian in these hope

ople of God. We cannot question the strength of this hope of theirs, and its powerful influence toward bringing itself to realization. We and our Allies are resisting these nationalistic and arrogant hopes, and are appealing to the contrary hope of an inclusive human brotherhood, in which good will shall prevail between nations, and hence right and peace. The hope that is truer, more in accordance with the nature of things, the nature of man, the will of God, and the hope that is most deep

d untrue, and religiously harmful. To them the meaning of the Bible is to be found in the tendency and spirit of its teachings, and their hope is for the presence and rule of the spirit of Christ and the dominance of his principles in the common life of humanity. This involves a radical difference in the hope of Christians for a new world, a new human society, and in the ways in which this hope will affect their motives and efforts. There are also deep-going differences in regard to the hope for a life after death. That many are looking eagerly for material, "scientific" proof through physical communications from the dead, w

l take the place of suspicion and competitive struggle. We need not be blind to whatever motives of self-interest may have entered into the action of this or that one of our Allies in undertaking the war. The outstanding fact remains that while the German Government appeals to the self-assertion of the German State and seeks its aggrandizement through force at the expense of its neighbors, the allied governments appeal to national self-sacrifice for the sake of international redemption. It is to this appeal on behalf of the rights, the freedom, the happiness of mankind, that our sol

tianity will prove equal to this which is clearly the greatest task that the present imposes upon it. There are many who doubt its adequacy; many who see that it has brought division and warfare, and think it unfitted to create unity; many who see that it has withdrawn from the world, and think it unadapted to

der Dumas in 1893: "I believe our world is about to begin to realize the words 'Love one another,' without, however, being concerned whether a man or a God uttered them.... Mankind, which does nothing moderately, is about to be seized with a frenzy, a madness, of love." And Tolstoy's comment on this at the time of the Russian revolution, in 1905: "I believe that this thought, howev

"what the thinking peoples of the world desire, with their longing hope for justice and for social freedom and opportunity." On the anniversary of our entering the war, Gilbert Murray declared that England needed our help in battle, but even more in upholding their true faith. "Americans instinctively believe ... in freedom, peace, democracy, arbitration, and international good will.... When the war is over there will be a world to rebuild, and the only principles on which to rebuild it are these principles." Germany denies the truth of these principles, but in doing so it denies human nature and derives from physical nature a state-ethics of struggle and the survival of the strong. It denies the prophet of Galilee, and looks for its example to Rome. Sometimes it has seemed as if the German denial of humanity and affirmation of material and brute force were in dan

l, that is at stake in this struggle." From the miseries and slaughter and hate of war, "we can turn," he says, "to seek comfort only in the quiet confidence of our souls; and we look instinctively to the seers and poets of mankind, whose sayings are the oracles and prophecies of loveliness and loving kindness." They help us

ations that confuse and the prejudices that blind the readers of the greatest literature of spirituality and of hope which the world contains. In spite of this, the Bible will be looked to by multitudes for guidance and support in those hopes on which the future turns, while the poet's fine work will be prized by few. It is only too possible to fail to

nowledge of the way in which human progress is achieved. But there is nothing more instructive than the relation of these different hopes to each other as the histor

between Israel and its God. It inspired its early victories and created the kingdom of David. It sustained the nation amid calamities and enabled it to maintain itself when other small nations disappeared before the great world empires, and while these also came and passed. It was a natural and not unreasonable faith for its time, so long as Yahweh was only Israel's national God, even though he was believed to be better and stronger than the gods of other nations and destined to triumph over

Consistency was not reached, yet glimpses, sometimes clear momentary visions, of this individual, universal, ethical religion are to be found in the great prophets; and in them the Old Testament religion reaches its height. It is the prophetic denial of national claims and hopes, not the older and always prevalent assertion of them, that constitutes the reality and truth of the Old Testament hope. It is hope for Yahweh and his righteousness, not for Israel and its glory. It finds its highest expression in such predictions as Isaiah's promise of security to the humble and believing; and Jeremiah's expectation of the time when no special revelation will make known the

avenly, the present and the future, does not succeed in making them really different. Supernaturalism always fails to find the real difference between man and God and so the way in which the difference is to be overcome. This supernaturalism of the apocalypse is seen also in the ways in which the hope is revealed. The seer interprets in literal or artful ways the language of prophetic scriptures regarded as divine oracles, or he is translated in ecstasy to heaven and shown the secrets of the upper world and the future. The coming of this new heavenly world men may pray for, and the time of its coming they may seek to discover from sacred writings and traditions and from the signs of the times, but only divine powers can bring this evil world to an end, and only from heaven where they already are can descend, in heaven's own time and way, the scenery and the actors in the last great drama of history. There is in this hope no strong ethical appeal, no prevailing sense that in the inward region of the heart and in its instincts and desires and wills, God's presence is to be found and his work for man experienced. Moreover this hope for a new heav

d the intolerable morals and preposterous religion that finally result from such claims, the aggressors in the present war have supplied it, and the rest of the world is united in the resolve that no further demonstration of this hope be undertaken. The early histories of the Old Testament and parts of its laws, its psalms and even its prophecies, contain expressions of just this belief in a peculiar people, for whom God made the world, and to whom the

method of self-renouncement," in the religion of the apocalypse. The righteous kernel of Judaism, the holy few who feared the Lord, expected an invasion of divine forces on their behalf, the destruction of their oppressors and their own elevation to angel-like natures and God-like authority and blessedness. It could hardly be expected that they would exhibit Isaiah's virtue of humility, or Jeremiah's of inwardness and satisfaction in the communion of the soul with God, or Deutero-Isaiah's impulse to turn their present lowliness to greatness by ministry to those who persecuted them and even by death for others' transgressions. The greatest of the apocalypses are no doubt the canonical ones, Daniel and Revelation; and they are great in their confidence in the divine government of the world, and in its final vindication, and in their as

nd the suppression by Hadrian of the final Messianic, political uprising under Bar Cochba; that is, from 108 B. C. to 135 A. D. It is of the highest importance to note that Christianity took its rise in the midst of this period, and that the apocalyptic hopes which these events encouraged and which in turn

e reign on earth of Messiah and his saints, the living and the risen dead, for a certain period, during which they will overcome all the powers of evil. 3. The immortality of the spirit, the transformation of the righteous into angelic natures, fitting them to b

soon to share its beauty and blessedness. Among those whom Enoch sees there, one is above all significant for man. He has the appearance of a man, with a face of graciousness and beauty, like an angel's. He is described as the Son of Man to whom righteousness and wisdom belong. He has existed from before the creation, and has been revealed to the righteous. Faith in him and hope for his coming have sustained the righteous in times of trouble, and by faith in him and in the Lord of Spirits and the heavenly dwelling places, they "have hated and despised the world of unrighteousness and have hated all its works and ways." Here is a religion of pure other-worldliness. The calling of this heavenly Son of Man is to be the judge of the world at the last day. He will then "sit on the throne of his glory," will "choose the righteous and holy" from among the risen dead, will condemn and send away to destruction the kings and mighty of the earth, who because of their unbelief in the unseen world have been proud and worldly and unjust. The righteous will dwell in the new heaven and earth, with the Lord of Spirits over them and t

91-104. In a short Apocalypse of Weeks, after seven weeks of world-history up to the writer's present, an eighth week is predicted, in which the righteous shall wield the sword against their oppressors and establish the Messianic king

old national and earthly hope of Israel to a new, more universal and transcendent form of faith and hope. In the religion of the "Parables" of Enoch the transcendent practically transforms and displaces the earthly. In the millennial scheme, the heavenly follows the earthly in time. Resurrection enables s

k of Enoch (especially chapters 102-104). Enoch solemnly assures his readers that he has seen it written in heavenly books that joy and glory are prepared for the spirits of those who

his coming, though he receives this from primitive Christianity and does not doubt its literal and early fulfilment. It is, I believe, beyond question that Paul's Christian hope is chiefly, as Royce has argued, the hope for a new humanity created by the spirit of Christ, which is the spirit of love. This is in a measure already experienced. Christ dwells in the Christian and makes him a center and source of love. His spirit breaks down barriers and ends divisions. Unity and peace are its effects. Through this one, present spirit of Christ each man becomes a distinct but essential member of the new body; and Paul's greatest hope is for the completion of this unification of man in mutual helpfulness and brotherhood. Paul attests also the other tendency away from the outward future coming of Christ to the hope for a life with Christ and like Christ's after death. This eternal life with Christ is also experienced by Paul as in some real sense present. The indwelling spirit of Christ is already transformi

literalism accepts scripture throughout, and refuses to distinguish between higher and lower, between truth and error, in what is written. In regard to hope, this view leads to great stress on prediction and fulfilment. The assumption is that the Biblical predictions that have not been fulfilled will come to pass in the future. This is precisely a fundamental assumption of the apocalypse. It is solely upon this co

our own souls, upon our faith, our desire, our will, to unveil and shape the future. But the historian is in danger of doing less than justice to the ethical and spiritual contents of the hopes of the Bible because of his very love of truth and willingness to sacrifice his wishes to it. The unpardonable sin to him is the modernizing of an ancient writing because of reverence for it, and the effort to find in it what he likes rather than things outgrown and unwelcome. This conscientious fear, I cann

ing, not in the mere form, of what they say. Historians no less than other men have the right and duty to ask in what direction an ancient teacher is looking, toward what goal the movement of his mind is tending, what final effects he produced, what therefore he would think and say if he lived in our time. We are told that it is unhistorical to seek in the New T

ed the speedy coming of the Son of Man and the end of the world, and whether he identified himself with this transcendent Messiah-Judge, are questions made difficult, not by our wishes, but by the nature of the evidence. My own inclination is, at this point, to attribute more to the influence

rld out of two; Jesus by affirming the reality of a goodness in God and in man capable of conquering evil. That God is Father, the Father of all men, even, and especially, of sinners, is not the basis of an apocalyptic hope. Jesus did not chiefly foretell the end of the world through the catastrophic intervention of God or of the Son of Man. He did chiefly teach that the power not ourselves is fatherly, that it is human, that we can trust our own souls at their best to teach us the nature of God, that our highest human values are the ultimate realities of the universe. Jesus found that the chief fears and hopes of men were concerned with bodily welfare and possessions and with power over others. Mammon and dominion were the false gods men worshipped. Wealth and power seem now the objects of the hope and the religious devotion of the Central Powers. Jesus declared that it is the heathen who are anxious about food and raiment. It is the heathen who lord it over their fellow men. Not so was it to be among his disciples. Since the Father knows our needs and wills to gi

something universal in its range. Not again one league against another, but a league that at least aims at being inclusive of humanity. Spirituality and universality, inwardness and good-will, belong to the hope that is now inspiring the nations; and these are just the marks of the religion of Christ; they are what Matthew Arnold called the method of inwardness and the secret of self-renouncement, controlled by the mi

ope of men. It can fail if it confuses itself in the details of Biblical predictions, if it becomes involved in apocalyptic fancies. It can fail i

le, the prophets of the Old Testament, Jesus and Paul in the New, are the chief creative sources of just such hopes. These hopes must have religion beneath them if they are to endure and be real

not the God of the dead, but of the living. Here again the Christian religion has an opportunity and an obligation in times of war. Men are seeking assurance of life to come for those who have given their lives for human right and liberty. It is not to be desired that this pressing religious need of our day should turn to physical evidences, to messages from the dead through abnormal experiences and dubious agencies. The Christian faith in immortality is to be experienced as faith in the God wh

ght. He feels no need of sacrificing one to the other, but holds his hope for this world and the oneness of men in love side by side with the hope for the other world. He does call upon individuals to give their lives

n ... Are not ye of much more value than they? Your Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye his kingdom and righteousness. Be not afraid of them that kill the body. The very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore. If ye being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father give good things to them that ask him. All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord ... but he that doeth the will of my Father. Freely ye have received, freely give. It is more blessed to give than to receive. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. I thank thee, Father ... that thou hast hid these things from the wise ... and revealed them unto babes. Except ye turn

ld at war to end war most needs, that man is a spiritual being and that his proper work is "to interpret the world according to his higher nature," and to bring the material aspects of the world into subjection to the spirit.

he spirit of God is already a love that creates unity and fellowship among men; and it is already the presence and power of divine and eternal life. The Christian hope unites the community and the individual, and contains the clue to the mystery that now obscures our minds. We know that the ruthless sacrifice of individuals for the abstract idol called the State is a denial of Christ's reverence for the human personality. But we know also that the devotion of the soldier's life to the cause of human liberty and right, to the destruction of the idol of nationality and the creation of the ideal brotherhood of man, is in accordance with that giving of life for many which Je

uman organization. Christianity is the chief source of this hope, and is summoned to prove itself equal to the task of keeping the hope high and giving it inward energy and resource. But it will require boldness of faith and the spirit of sacrifice, a s