IX

LESSONS OF THE GREAT WAR1

LOOK THEREFORE CAREFULLY HOW YE WALK, NOT AS UNWISE, BUT AS WISe; redeemING THE TIME, BECAUSE THE DAYS ARE EVIL. WHEREFORE BE YE NOT FOOLISH, BUT UNDERSTAND WHAT THE WILL OF THE LORD IS.-Ephesians v. 15-17.

I. LIFE is not of uniform value and importance. As in the history of nations, so in the course of individual life there are times of critical moment, and quieter times when the years pass on without any apparent change, and society seems to stand still. Physiologically, we know, there are critical periods, and long spaces of time during which the body seems to change little. We have a common expression which from another point of view indicates the same truth. We speak of "the battle of life," and by so doing we remind ourselves that in life, as in a battle, there are desperate turns when the whole fortunes of the day are in

1 Preached in Bristol Cathedral on May 9, 1915.

the balance. In the text, ST. PAUL uses a metaphor drawn from the world of business, when he bids the Ephesians "REDEEM THE TIME," or, as perhaps we may better render the Greek, "SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY." He pictures a merchant on the look-out for the changes of the market. When the chance of selling his goods to advantage comes he must be quick to make use of it. Life is filled with opportunities. Christians ought to be like intelligent traders who watch the markets, in order that they may be able to make the most profit by the sale of their wares. Most especially is such keen vigilance needed when, to use the common phrase, "times are bad," and the ordinary conditions of trade have been disturbed. Then only the bold and resourceful merchant will be likely to escape bankruptcy.

2. I have chosen ST. PAUL'S words for the text of my sermon because I wish to speak to you about the effect which the great War ought to have upon our personal lives. None will be disposed to question that we are living in one of the critically important times of human history. Thoughtful men generally, not only among ourselves but also in other countries, are agreed in thinking that the civilized world has been suddenly confronted by

the necessity of deciding on what principles it will order itself. We have been accustomed to speak of the civilized world as forming a Christendom, and we have not done so without reason; for the salient features of the civilized world as we have known it -those features which make it different from other forms of civilized order-are quite evidently connected with the fact that the Christian Religion has coloured the process of social life, and stamped a distinctive character on human conceptions of social progress. It is no doubt true that there is much that is flagrantly opposed to the teachings of CHRIST in modern Europe and America—vice, cruelty, oppression, materialism of the coarsest kind. But these are common to all forms of human society, and therefore cannot be held to be distinctive of any. Along with these dark features, there are in Christendom other traits which are not at all, or are not in any similar degree, found in any nonChristian civilization. Respect for human life, care for children and women, a relatively high standard of marriage, a steadily growing resistance to economic hardships, political equality, responsibility of rulers to the people, humaneness in penalties, liberty of conscience, the faith in social progress,these are marks of the civilized world as it exists

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to-day, and they are all demonstrably connected with the ideas of the Gospel, and the Example of JESUS CHRIST. The War has suddenly disclosed to us a rival set of principles, avowedly antiChristian, on which a quite different kind of society may be built. Human life is to be treated as of slight value, all doctrines which inculcate chivalrous regard for the weak are to be set aside as unworthy of strong men, the measure of right is to be might, and the reign of Law is to be superseded by the Power of the Mailed Fist; Peace is to be only valued as the means to War, and Mankind is to find in War its loftiest inspirations and the instrument of its true progress. This Religion of Hatred and Violence has been shown in action on the soil of Belgium, France, and Poland. It has poisoned the mind of the German People, and inspired them to a vehement attack on the civilized World. This aspect of the War as really a conflict. of Principles, by the issue of which the whole character of human civilization must be determined, is now very generally perceived. The first effect of the War, then, has been to direct our thoughts to the foundations of the social order, and to make us realize the priceless value of the Christian Religion as providing the true principles of human progress.

3. We have discovered with a start of unwelcome surprise that those principles can be lost by a modern nation more easily and more quickly than we had thought possible. A generation ago Germany waged war with conspicuous humaneness, and (though it is the case that Prussian policy was even then marked by a cynicism and lack of good faith which augured ill for the future) German public opinion was not out of harmony with the general sentiment of Europe. "C 'The conduct of the German troops in the war of 1870 was in the main good," observes SIR HARRY REICHEL, and he adds that "in particular it was comparatively free from the most odious form of military outrage, viz. crimes of violence against women." How different must be the verdict of History on the present War!

"Had

anybody told me," he continues, that the sons and grandsons of the German soldiers of 1870 "would have signalized their march through Belgium by ruthless barbarities for the like of which one must go back to the Thirty Years' War, I should have said it was a foul calumny." Yet nothing less must be said, and with this addition, that not only are the destructive weapons of the twentieth century vastly more powerful and horrifying than any of which the seventeenth century had knowledge, but the soldiers