These are some of the questions that the War has quickened in human minds. But it is not enough to pose these questions. We want an answer. The answer will depend upon each man's general philosophy. In effect, these problems are not new. It is our relation to them that is new. They are new for us, in so far as they have just come into our experience, and have invaded it with tremendous force. But the nature of the problems is as old as human experience and human thought. What is the answer of the religious person? (a) There is a God in the world, or a Power that makes for the advancement and vindication of Righteousness. But for the presence of such a Power, the world would be chaos, and without belief in it life would not be worth living. (b) Man is spiritually related to God and he is designed to maintain his relations with God. This he can do by the exercise of his spirit in communion with God and by the pursuit of Righteousness in his active life. In other words, he can pray to God and coöperate with Him. (c) In the conduct of his life, man ofttimes is forced to face evil. Why evil exists in the world, it is not easy to explain. Yet, it is a means of chastening and improvement. Man is called upon to fight against evil and in the combat his true greatness and divinity are unfolded. (d) War is part of the evil of the world. It is a sign of our distance from the goal of Righteousness. If mankind lived according to the ethical and the spiritual law, war would cease. But as long as man violates the law of Righteousness, war will continue, and the good will have to suffer with the bad, for the sake of the common perfection. (e) If the War stimulates the world toward a greater love and more continuous practice of the law of Righteousness, the terrible sacrifice and hardships it has involved shall not have been in vain. (f) As for the individual victim of the war, his death is part of the universal mystery of Death, save that it is glorified by its cause. To believe in God is to believe in the continuance of His love beyond the tomb. Where faith dwells, there is no fear of death. "I place my soul within His palm It is natural to ask what the Bible has to say on these subjects. The Bible is the foundation of our faith. It also is full of war and rumors of war. What is the attitude of the men of the Bible - of its poets and seers toward war, and what message have they for us? Can they help us to think, to pray, to act, and to hope to-day? To answer these questions, we shall aim in these chapters. THE ATTITUDE OF THE BIBLE TOWARD WAR THE question of the attitude of the Bible toward war is often complicated by prejudice. On this, as on other subjects, people find in the Bible not what it really contains, but what they like to put into it. Before the outbreak of the War, the ideal of peace was in the air. There was more discussion and praise of international peace than during any other period of human history. In those halcyon days who will not remember? - the Old Testament had become a stumbling block to some and unto others foolishness, because it had so much to say about war. Some theologians actually proposed the abandonment of the Old Testament by the Christian Church. It was a millstone round the Christian's neck, they said, because it spoke too much about strife, and warfare, and bloodshed, and not enough about love and peace. On the other hand, at present extreme pacifists do not hesitate to affirm that all war is against the spirit of Religion, that the Bible disapproves of it, and that the genius of the Jewish people" had always been opposed to it. If one knows the Bible at all, one must realize that both these views are unfair: the Bible is neither the blood-thirsty book that the ante-bellum assailants made it out to be, nor the pacifist tract it is depicted by demagogues of to-day. "Our knowledge of Scripture," says Spinoza, "must be looked for in Scripture only. The universal rule in interpreting Scripture is to accept nothing as an authoritative Scripture statement which we do not perceive very clearly when we examine it in the light of its history." There is only one way to determine the attitude of the Bible toward war. It is the historical way. It is by realizing, first of all, that the Bible is not one book, nor the product of one period or of one man, nor addressed to one audience. The Bible is a collection of books; it took hundreds of years to come into being; the thoughts of various groups of historians, prophets, and poets are reflected in its pages, and a large variety of audiences are addressed by its authors, and by the Spirit speaking through its authors. It addresses itself not only to Israel, and not only to the several groups and classes of Israel, but also to peoples other than Israel both friend and foe- and particularly on the subject of War. Amos, for instance, chastises Syria, Philistia, Moab, and others for their barbarous warfare; Isaiah of Babylon welcomes Cyrus as the Anointed of God; Ezekiel denounces the arrogance of both Tyre and Egypt, and so forth. It would be foolish to expect all these poets of the Bible to speak in one uniform strain about war. - THE ATTITUDE OF THE BIBLE THE question of the attitude of the Bible toward war is often complicated by prejudice. On this, as on other subjects, people find in the Bible not what it really contains, but what they like to put into it. Before the outbreak of the War, the ideal of peace was in the air. There was more discussion and praise of international peace than during any other period of human history. In those halcyon days who will not remember? - the Old Testament had become a stumbling block to some and unto others foolishness, because it had so much to say about war. Some theologians actually proposed the abandonment of the Old Testament by the Christian Church. It was a millstone round the Christian's neck, they said, because it spoke too much about strife, and warfare, and bloodshed, and not enough about love and peace. On the other hand, at present extreme pacifists do not hesitate to affirm that all war is against the spirit of Religion, that the Bible disapproves of it, and that the genius of the Jewish people" had always been opposed to it. If one knows the Bible at all, one must realize that both these views are unfair: the Bible is |