1

just because keen spirits like Mr. Peile go on assuring the world, in the name of Christ's Christianity, "that no sweeping condemnation can be passed on War," 1 for the reason that strict purity of motive can justify it; and because distinguished students and good men like Prof. Bethune-Baker keep telling us that "the Christianity of Christ, here as always, looks to the motive, and every particular war must be judged entirely by its aim; "2-it is because of this, I say, that the gigantic evil intrinsic and inherent in War itself is fatally obscured. And it follows that the average mind, even among the clergy, is inclined to the belief that on the whole war can be safely classed among the lesser evils of life, with a considerable amount of good to its credit; and even grand old Bishops-as a delighted soldier wrote recently to The Spectator to point outglorify the growth of character under "war's red rain."

It is thus that the influence of Christianity. against War has been calamitously lessened all history through. When was there ever a war for which, in some aspect or another, no excuse of motive, either good or great, could not be made? Nothing else under-lay the whole of that extraordinary contradiction in terms known as Military Christianity," which for over two hundred years dominated the Europe which now groans under the anomaly of "Christian" Militarism. If by this criterion alone conscience is to be led, even religious persecution may assume the shape of virtue, and intellectual error may 2 Influence of Christianity on War, p. 18.

1 Op. cit., p. 84.

supply sufficient motive to justify the "religious wars " which it took humanity so many centuries to abolish.

2

By this line of teaching, continued for ages, incalculable moral force has been diverted into casuistical futilities, instead of quickening the world's Conscience. By lending his splendid intellectual powers to this theory, the great Augustine-the man in whom the Western Church for ages found the umpire of its disputes, in such degree that "for a thousand years those who came after him did little more than re-affirm his teaching," 1—still hypnotises the Church with hope of attaining the acrobatic triumph: "Be therefore, even while warring, a peace-maker," " (though even the wretched Chadband knew better than to try that); and we still delude ourselves with the conceit that "if thus the earthly state observes the Christian precepts, even wars will not be waged without benevolent intentions." 3 On the strength of this, how many "benevolent intentions," how much compulsion flowing from the temper of love," have flooded the world with strife, from Augustine's own violent repression of the Donatists, to the Quaker martyrdoms of the last century. Let but pía oíμn be μία ποίμνη mistranslated, and unum ovile be made the letter of Christ's word, and lo! there is "motive " enough to establish Force as a means of conversion; whereby is quenched the whole Spirit of the Good Shepherd's teaching, age after age. Thus such

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1 Allen Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 170.

:

2 Letter to Boniface, Ep. 189.

3 Aug. Ep., 138, § 9 sqq.

L

4 St. John x, 16.

infinite degradations- such Dead Sea fruit-become possible as, for single instance, provoked the Edict of Charlemagne, in 801, where he asks, "What hope could there be of victory, when the priests at one hour presented to Christians the Body of the Lord, and in the next with their own wicked hands killed. . . the pagans to whom they should have preached Christ." 1

But why disturb the ashes of an unholy past which sorely needs such apology as the Time-Spirit permits? No doubt the warlike ardour of the Goths infused itself into the gentler Creed which they adopted; and for centuries of course "the example and terrors of Mohammedanism" did immensely help to lower the standard of true Christian sentiment with regard to War. To unite the passion of the soldier with the passion of the devotee is indeed, as Mr. Lecky says, a fatal secret. To substitute Papal indulgences for the promises of a False Prophet was an only too obvious counter,-for great is the power of "motive "!-and even Papal Bulls began to belaud those who, "consecrating their hands in the blood of the unbelievers in the Lord, have after this world's warfare obtained the reward of Life Eternal." 2

Let, then, the dead past bury its dead horrors. My object has only been to illustrate the danger which has always attached to this perennial distinction, which does away the force of Christ's law by referring all Scriptural prohibition of carnal warfare "not to the outward act, but to the temper with which 1 Neander, vol. v, p. 140.

2 Bull, of Pope Alexander: Omne datum optimum . . .

weapons should be used." 1

Such was the conten

tion promptly advanced by Humbert de Romanis, General of the Dominicans, in defence of the principle of the Crusades, against those who, at the Council of Lyons (1274), had urged "that though Christians might be allowed to fight in self-defence, it did not follow that they might attack the infidels in their own country." And the same contention about temper and motive has no doubt played its part in the minds of the Roman Cardinals of to-day who assisted the éclat with which the latest Italian expedition was dismissed to Tripoli.

2

Surely in the year of our Lord 1912 the time has come for the Church and the World alike to cry, "Back to Christ." For this is no Modernist "heresy," be it remembered. The theology of the Western Church is admittedly based on the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. And are not those writings full of the idea of Christ as a Legislator, with a new law" to deliver? And was not the contrary view, that Christ was given to mankind as a Redeemer but not as a Legislator also, deliberately anathematised by the Council of Trent ?

3

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The search, however, for signs in the modern administration of the Latin Church of some practical regard for "the Angelic Doctor's" tenet of a Lawgiving Christ, is not encouraging. We turn with more hope to the language of those later theologians who seem increasingly informed by the inner idea of that pregnant Pauline phrase, "the Law of the

1" ad præparationem animi, non ad executionem gladii." 2 Influence of Christianity on War, p. 73.

9 Sess. vi, § 21.

Spirit of Life in Christ." They are learning from the Master to combine the opposite truths of immanence and transcendence. They grasp the necessity of making

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the passage made once for all by Him from the infinite objective to the infinite subjective; from the absolute without us in the form of law to the absolute within us in the form of spirit. The essence of the moral teaching of Jesus was the change of venue from the tribunal of law to that of spirit. . . . In Him eternal law had given place to eternal spirit; the letter that killeth to the spirit that giveth life." 1

Such language justly sets forth the striking difference in effect, amounting in fact to positive contrast, between Christ's treatment of motive and the use of it by many of His followers. The Inwardness characteristic of Christ's teaching made no holes for escape from the stringency of the literal command. Instead of slackening the reins of morality, it drew them taut, and increased their guiding power. By Christ's accentuation of the spiritual, the scope of the letter was never minimised or restricted, but always increased and extended. The Seventh commandment, for instance, might be broken by a lustful look, and the Sixth by nursing an angry temper. It must be clear to the commonest of common sense how such a Teacher must regard condonation of an outrage involving incalculable and enormous waste of life, by crying over this or that form of it, "Corban, Corban!" We can almost hear such distinctions crackling in the fire of His scorn, along with similar attempts to make up for the " gulping of camels " by meticulous care in "straining out gnats."

Seeing, then, that the " new law" of Christ is in

1 Du Bose: The Gospel in the Gospels, p. 24.