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  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