What the war has taught us

Preface

THE substance of the chapters contained in this volume was delivered in the form of sermons in the Broadway Tabernacle, New York City, on the Sunday evenings extending from the first of January to Easter in the year 1919. In the month of February, 1916, over a year before the United States decided to enter the war, the Pastor of the Tabernacle had delivered at the Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio, a course of five lectures on " What the War is Teaching." These lectures appeared at once in book form, but as that volume is now out of print, the author has incorporated in this new book several paragraphs of the Delaware lectures.

The standpoint of the author is from first to last that of the Christian minister. He looks at everything through the eyes of a preacher, and searches all experience for fresh revelations of God. He is not an expert in the science and art of war, and many lessons of high interest to military and naval strategists are completely ignored in these chapters. Nor is he learned in

6 PEEFACE

physical science. The scientific specialist can walk over the battle-fields on the land and on the sea and in the air, picking up valuable lessons at every step, but many of these lessons do not concern the preacher.

The war has taught the world a wide variety of lessons which will engage the attention of political economists and statesmen and educators and sociologists for many years to come. Most of those lessons do not fall within the scope of the author's purpose. It is the spiritual interpretation of the war which interests him supremely, and it is the religious lessons of the war upon which he fastens his attention. The war did not teach us anything new in religion, but it forced upon the public mind various religious truths and principles which in days of peace are too commonly overlooked by large classes of our people. War is vigorously stimulating. War vitalizes all the faculties of the mind, and arouses all the energies of the heart. War makes demands on the latent forces of the soul, and drives individuals and groups of men into forms of conduct to which they have hitherto been strangers. War compels men and women to live not only more intensely, but at deeper depths of their being than in ordinary days, and the consequence is that many of the laws of life flash out then with a new significance, and men see the virtue of va-

PEEFACE 7

rious principles whose operations had been previously unnoticed.

At many points the war illustrated most remarkably the truths which are written in the New Testament. ]\Iany men who had never before been interested in that book desired now to read it, and those who had read it for many years, found its pages becoming thrillingly vivid when read in the glare of the great conflagration. Paragraphs which had been dull, now became vivid, and truths which had made a feeble appeal to the imagination, now gripped both the understanding and the conscience.

This volume attempts to set forth a few of the lessons which the war has forced upon the minds of those whose work is the upbuilding of Christian character, and who are in the habit of thinking earnestly on the laws and processes of moral life. The war has supplied the Christian Church with new arguments for those who ask a reason for the faith that is in her. It has furnished graphic and piercing illustrations of the fundamental truths which Jesus taught. It has confirmed faith in the validity of the principles which lie at the foundation of the Christian philosophy. It has poured a flood of light into corners which to many minds were dark, and has lifted to glorious prominence the central idea of the Christian religion — sacrificial service. The whole experience of the war

8 PREFACE

is an illuminating commentary on the Gospels. A diligent reader of recent history finds at every step proofs that what Jesus and the apostles said of the human heart is true. It is now more clearly evident than ever before, that Peter's declaration to the City of Jerusalem concerning Jesus Christ, was the word of soberness and truth : " There is no other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved."

C. E. J.

Nczv York City,

Contents

I. The Mind's Thirst FOR God . , ii

II. The Hunger of the Heart for

Christ 22

II The Hunger Of The Heart For Christ

ON the last night of Jesus' earthly life, He said to the men who were nearest to Him : " You believe in God, believe also in me. I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me."

In the long days of peace, when the sun shone by day and the stars by night, it was enough for many of us to believe in God as an essence, a principle, a force. As the material universe went on expanding under the magic wand of Science, we found it impossible to localize Deity after the fashion of our childish days. There was no longer any " up " or any " down," and the heaven with the throne in the middle of it upon which God had formerly sat, vanished. Science had taken away the God of our youth, and we did not know where to find Him. In the minds of many the idea of God had consequently become vague and dim. His personality had faded out. Theoretically men believed He was everywhere, but practically it was difficult for

HUNGER OF THE HEAET FOR CHRIST 23

them to find Him anywhere. God was lost in the immensity of His universe. He remained to most men a reality, but He was little more to many than the First Great Cause, the infinite and eternal Energy from which all things proceed. Pantheism of a modern brand crept into the mind under the guise of the Divine Immanence, and while men could speak of God as vibrating in every atom of the material universe, they did not find it easy to establish personal relations with this diffused and unpicturable Deity.

In many circles of thoughtful people the man Jesus had receded into the background, crowded out by teachers more modern, and with a message seemingly more applicable to the problems of our time. His name was held in reverence, but He was not a vital factor in conduct or experience. He belonged to the distant past, and men sought fountains of inspiration in other quarters.

But when the sun was suddenly turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, and when the stars began to fall from heaven, and civilization threatened to slide into chaos, the heart cried out for a God of a very different sort. A Principle was not sufficient, an Energy was not satisfying, A God who vibrates in atoms did not calm or strengthen the heart. We wanted some One who would have pity on us, some One who would show mercy, some One who would sympathize with us in our confusion and distress. The universe became chilling, almost icy, and we wanted to cuddle near a heart that was warm. The world was swept by a tempest of hate, and we were hungrier than ever before for love. We believed in God but this was not enough. Other men also believed in God. The Mohammedans, for instance, believed in God. All through the war they prayed daily to God. The butchers who piled high the heaps of Armenian dead no doubt said their prayers before and after their horrid butchery. But the God of Mohammed is a God of Power. He is almighty and he is absolute. He holds all things in an iron grip, he rules the universe like an Oriental despot. But when the earth runs blood and the air is filled with sobs and cryings, we want something more than a God of Might. We want some one who will say to us tenderly: " Come unto me, and I will give you rest." In the thunder and uproar of battle, the soul longs for tones that are gentle. When all the barbaric appetites and passions leap into the saddle and trample the nations into the dust, we go in search of some One who will speak to us of compassion and pity and love.

And so the great war did this wonderful thing — it rolled the world toward Christ. Men who had never cared for Him, now became interested in Him, men who had used His name only in profanity, now began to think about Him with reverence, men who had followed Him not because of heart allegiance, but because of the traditions of their fathers, drew closer to Him and found in Him what they had

HUNGER OF THE HEAET FOR CHRIST 25

never found before. He had said long ago: " I am the bread of hfe," and when the great famine came in 191-i men began to understand what He meant. He had said : " I am the water of hfe," and men on long marches, weary and homesick, entered for the first time into the deep meaning of His words. He had said : " I am the light of the world," and when darkness fell upon the lands, many a heart turned instinctively to Him for guidance. The heart seemed to know the hymn even though the lips had never learned it :

" We would see Jesus, for the shadows lengthen Across this little landscape of our life; We would see Jesus, our weak faith to strengthen, For the last weariness, the final strife."

Men everywhere felt the need of a brother. This was consciously felt by multitudes of the people at home — it was the insistent need of the men at the front. The soldier wounded and deserted in No Man's Land yearned for the presence of a friend who sticketh closer than a brother. In the solitude and desolation of the swamp or the forest many a man realized for the first time how necessary is the assistance of a big brother, and it was not of a brother at home that he thought, but of Him who was glad to call Himself the brother of us all. Men wanted a brother who could pass over mountains and seas, and who could walk unharmed across shell-swept battle-fields, and who could breathe into the heart the tonic of patience and good cheer. The Christ of the Gospels was just the kind of friend which the soldier's heart cried out for. This is one of the thrilhng spectacles of the war — thousands of men reading the New Testament with hungry and eager hearts who had never read the New Testament before! The New Testament is the most precious of all books because it contains the portrait of Jesus — the man who reveals to us what God is and also what man ought to be.

Paul in writing to one of his churches said that it was his purpose to do nothing but preach Christ and Him crucified. The cross stands at the center of the Christian religion. All the New Testament writers bow before the cross. Jesus Himself had said: " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." The power of the cross was demonstrated all through the war, and nowhere was its power more manifest than at the front. Soldiers in the midst of their sufferings could not help thinking of the Supreme Sufferer of history. It was the suffering Christ who came to them in their moments of meditation, and sometimes even in their dreams. The life of a soldier is dreary and disagreeable beyond description. Military service has always been hard, but never has it been harder than in the last war. What the men on the fighting front suffered in the last four years can never be told. Many a man on coming home says : " I do not want to talk about it. I want to get the whole hideous experience out of my mind." To men who were suffering up to the limit of human endurance there was no life

HUNGER OF THE HEAET FOE CHEIST 27

which broui^ht such encouragement and comfort as the hie of Him who was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Just to think of Him brought the heart peace. Jesus also had been loyal to a cause. He also had given up everything which men count dear. He also had subjected Himself to hardships and sufferings unspeakable, all because of His devotion to a high ideal. He had been willing to sacrifice His life in order that there might be a happier and better world. Because Jesus died for a great cause it becomes easier for others to die. The cross of Christ was foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews of the first century. It has been a rock of ofYense to thousands in each succeeding generation. In our own day scornful words have been written about the crucified Jesus, and how necessary it is that we should get away from the conception of a suffering and dying man. But the war has demonstrated that it is a crucified Jesus which this world is most of all in need of. He draws men to Him now as He has drawn them from the beginning by His sufferings and His death. So long as men live in a world in which goodness triumphs only through sacrifice, they will need the inspiration of the crucifixion. God makes His sympathy with us real and potent through the sufferings of His Son. Many war writers have dwelt upon the place which the Sacrament of the Last Supper made for itself in the lives of the soldiers at the front. IVIen who had never cared for the sacrament at home, putting it aside as a needless bit of ritual, now found that they needed it, and partook of the bread and the wine with glad and grateful hearts. There came a fresh meaning into the words : " This is my body which is given for you, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, even that which is poured out for you. This do in remembrance of me." Men who have given up school or business, and kindred and home, and who jeopardize their lives for others, are spiritually prepared to understand the deepest passages of the Gospel story.

There is no doubt that for thousands of men the cross of Jesus will shine henceforth with an augmented splendour. They will sing with a new accent :

" When I survey the wondrous cross, On which the Prince of glory died, My richest gain I count but loss,

And pour contempt on all my pride."

And their hearts will go like a tidal wave into the words of the great hymn :

" In the cross of Christ I glory Tow'ring o'er the wrecks of time."

To many Protestant boys the Roman Catholic crucifix will no longer be obnoxious. They will remember the day when a crucifix awakened in their minds a train of thought which brought comfort. A Protestant chaplain has told us of the consolation which came often to him and

HUNGER OF THE HEART FOR CHRIST 29

the men who were with him from the representations of the crucifixion which Hne the French roads. In the daytime they imparted strength to the men who marched by them, and sometimes at night a bronze image of Christ on a stone cross, Ht up by the glare of the distant guns, would bring to the heart a fresh assurance of God's love. Not far away young men were being sacrificed for the deliverance of the world, and this cross of Christ kept reminding the heart that God has declared that it is only through sacrifice that the world can be saved.

What Christ on the cross meant to all the men who participated in the great war agony we shall never know. There is no doubt that Sergeant Joyce Kilmer, who was killed in the battle of the Marne, told the story of many a heart in his little poem : " Prayer of a Soldier in France ":

" My shoulders ache beneath my pack,

(Lie easier, Cross, upon His back) I march with feet that burn and smart,

(Tread, Holy Feet, upon my heart) Men shout at me who may not speak,

(They scourged Thy back and smote Thy cheek) I may not lift a hand to clear My eyes of salty drops that sear.

(Then shall my fickle soul forget

Thy Agony of Bloody Sweat) My rifle hand is stiffs and numb,

(From Thy pierced palm red rivers come) Lord, Thou didst suffer more for me Than all the hosts of land and sea. So let me render back again This millionth of Thy gift. Amen ! "

But it is not simply the revelation of manhood that the heart needs in its deepest hours. It craves a revelation of God. " Show us the Father." This is the cry of the human spirit through all the generations. It is not enough to know that Jesus was a patient and kindhearted peasant, a philanthropist and patriot, a teacher and saint. We want to know God. Can Jesus show us God? Can Jesus give us a vivid conception of God? Can Jesus lead us to God? Can Jesus make us sure of God? Unless we know God and are sure of Him, the heart is hungry and the spirit has no rest. We want an unveiling of God's mind, a revelation of His heart. We want to know how He thinks and feels, what is His attitude to us, and what are His purposes for the world.

The New Testament assures us that Christ is God manifest in the flesh, that He is the image of the invisible God, that He is the very image of God's substance, and that if we have the mind of Christ we have the mind of God. The war drove us in search of a God who could meet imperious needs. We wanted a sympathizing God, one who could and would suffer with us, one who could be afflicted in all our afflictions. We wanted a God of mercy and compassion, one who would not be deaf to the cry for help, one who would pity mankind in its immeasureable woe. We wanted a God of righteousness, one who is on the side of justice, and before whom the wicked cannot stand. We wanted a God who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and

HUNGER OF THE HEART FOR CHRIST 31

whose ultimate triumph over all the forces of evil is certain. We wanted a God who is a consuming fire, who is infinitely holy, and who blazes with wrath against all who work iniquity. This is the God-ideal which arose in the deep places of the heart, and when we looked upon Him we discovered that He had the face of Jesus. Jesus is the heart's ideal of God. He combines all the traits which the soul most craves in Deity. He offers us all the blessings for which we long. He promises to do all that we can ask or hope. We cannot think of a moral perfection which He does not possess. It is impossible for our imagination to add to His glory. The Christian heart always sings:

" Thou, O Christ, art all I want ; More than all in Thee I find."

The war subjected us to a tremendous test. All our conceptions and ideals were thrown into the crucible to be purged. In the darkness and misery of the long night it was possible for us to find out just what kind of God the heart is willing to enthrone. We have found out that He is the God who has manifested Himself in Jesus Christ. No other God can ever win us now. The war has blown away the mists of misconception, and we now behold Jesus Christ more clearly as He is. He is indeed King of Kings and Lord of Lords. In the year of our Lord 1914 certain kings of the earth set themselves, and certain rulers took counsel together against the Lord, and against His anointed, saying: "Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us," but He who sits in the heavens laughed, the Lord held them in derision. It has been made certain that Jesus' insight was infallible, when He declared that those who take the sword shall perish with the sword. It has been demonstrated that He is the Commander of an army which will subdue all the kingdoms of this world. He is our Brother, our Friend, our Teacher, but He is more than all these. He is our King — our Ruler — our Master. Savonarola in the fifteenth century lifted the shout: "Long live Jesus Christ our King! " It was the dream of that mighty preacher to make Jesus the acknowledged King of Florence. Let it be the aim of all Christians everywhere to make Jesus Christ the King of all the world. God is undoubtedly in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Christ's name is deservedly above every name, and every knee will some day bend to Him. Browning is right when he says :

" The acknowledgment of God in Christ Accepted by the reason, solves for thee All questions in the earth and out of it."

The war has compelled us to face with deepened seriousness the great mystery of the incarnation. He that hath ears to hear can hear a voice saying: " Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." War is the offspring of suspicion and fear and hate, but war

HUNGER OF THE HEAET FOR CHRIST 33

has revealed the world's crying need of a God of love. It has made clear that v^ithout the revelation of God in Christ w^e are lost. We cannot trust the conjectures of Science, or the speculations of Philosophy, or the maxims of the men reputed wise. To know who God is and what is His attitude to mankind and what are His purposes for the world we must sit at the feet of Jesus.

" So, the All-Great, were the All-loving too. So, through the thunder comes a human voice Saying, O heart I made, a heart beats here. Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself Thou hast no power, nor mayst conceive of mine But love I gave thee, with myself to love. And thou must love me who have died for thee."

The final victory was won by generals and admirals who worship God in Christ. Marshal Foch is a devout Christian. When men pour out their praises on him for his glorious achievements he says: "It is not I, it is God." He carries an image of Christ in his tunic. One day when some men were eulogizing his prowess and success he pulled out this image of Christ, saying: " It is that crucified One on the cross who has delivered France." Amid the loud singing of the national anthems, the song which the heart should lift highest is :

" All hail the power of Jesus' name ! Let angels prostrate fall ; Bring forth the royal diadem.

And crown Him Lord of all."

Ill

THE NATURALNESS OF PRAYER

PRAYER is an instinct. It is a native part of our make-up. When God created man He implanted in him the impulse to pray. Prayer is therefore a feature of the divine world-plan. It is something conceived and ordained by the Almighty. It is natural for men to breathe and to eat and to drink and to sleep, and it is just as natural for them to pray. It is said that when the hunted hare realizes that the hounds are gaining on it, and that there is nothing more which it can do for itself, it screams aloud. When the soul is overtaken by a terrifying experience it instinctively cries out to God.

In long seasons of fair weather the prayer instinct may not be given opportunity for expression, and like other endowments of the soul, it may become atrophied from disuse. Like all our other powers, the prayer-faculty grows by exercise, and the more one prays the easier it is to pray and the more rewarding. But we are living in a busy world, and there are many things to do. The days are crowded and we are compelled to run from task to task with a speed

THE NATUEALNESS OP PKAYER 36

which is sometimes breathless. Men absorbed in multitudinous details of business often forget to exercise their muscles. The body is treated as though it were a negligible factor in the life of a human being. The penalty for the neglect is rigorously exacted. The hospitals and the cemeteries bear witness to the fact that the laws of the human body cannot be trampled on with impunity. Nor can the laws of the soul. There is a law of prayer, and the soul that does not pray deteriorates and gradually loses its higher capacities for living.

A worldly life — a Ufe which is bounded by the material horizon — makes prayer seem a superstition. Men cease to pray and later on discover reasons why it is not necessary to pray. They can accomplish all which is included in their program without speaking to God about it, and why then do a superfluous thing? A shallow life always makes prayer look ridiculous. If a man is content to buy and sell, to read the newspapers and attend the theater, without taking on his heart any of the tasks or problems which belong to full statured men, it is difficult to find reasons why that man needs to pray. A selfish life does not need for its prosperity the strength and vitality which come from prayer. When you hear a person say, " I never pray," you have an indication of the kind of life he is living. He is floating on the surface of existence, and is not attempting work which calls for the forth-putting of the deepest resources of the soul.

The world before the war was bent largely on material ends. The ambition to make money was never more general or more intense. In many circles it was an obsession and a fury. Entire groups of men were crazy to build colossal fortunes. Every section of society felt the blighting touch of this materialistic hunger. Men lived in the world of time and sense, and what they supremely craved were material satisfactions. Invention had supplied the human family with numerous interesting toys, and men were playing with these with the hilarity and thoughtlessness of little boys and girls at Christmas.

It was in a time drenched with the materialistic spirit that the objections to prayer became to many minds insuperable. Not only was there no desire to pray, but there seemed to be many and valid reasons why men ought not to pray. Certain features of scientific theory were eagerly seized on and converted into arguments against the efficacy of prayer. The conception of universal and unchangeable law was diligently exploited, and so also was the idea that a loving God will give His children all they need without any trouble on their part of asking. Out of the very book which insists upon it that men ought always to pray and not to faint, there was taken a conception of God which made all prayer absurd. The intellect is a sort of spider which spins webs in which to catch our holiest instincts. The worldly intellect has no difficulty in spinning threads to bind men toaprayerlesslife.

Under the combined influence of the worldly

THE NATUEALNESS OF PEAYEK 37

heart and the so-called scientific objections to prayer, multitudes of men and women grew careless in the ordering of their devotional life; the family altar was discontinued in thousands of homes, and not a few members of the church became so skeptical on the subject of prayer that their prayer life became a burden and a mockery. Some confessed, with a touch of regret in their tone, that they had prayed in earlier life, but had given up that habit, while others openly derided prayer as an efifete form of superstition. They said much about the reign of law, and never suspected the power of the reign of worldliness. They quoted sundry scientific writers, but they never quoted Jesus. They paraded the arguments of famous men to prove that prayer is futile, never suspecting that these arguments were all rooted in the shallow soil of a worldly heart.

But when the war, like a big black storm, swept in fury across the world, men and women in every country fell upon their knees. The same report was returned from every nation. As by a flash of lightning we saw that God has indeed made of one all the nations of the earth. Men are everywhere alike, and in tinie of distress turn to a Supreme Power for succour. We had often seen this fact illustrated on a small scale. We knew that men and women always pray on a sinking ship, that in railroad accidents men cry out to Heaven, that even infidels and profeF>sed atheists when trapped in a burning building throw themselves on God, but never before had we seen the whole world drop suddenly to its knees. The churches became crowded. Extra services were held. The most satisfying part of the services was the prayers. Men who had not been in a church for years were found there. Men who had convinced themselves that it is not worth while to pray now prayed with zeal. The elemental instinct of our humanity mightily asserted itself, and in the twinkling of an eye all the cobwebs of the brain were swept away, and men did instinctively what they were created to do. They spoke to God,