REV. R. J. CAMPBELL'S TALK TO PACIFISTS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 147, 18 February 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

REV. R. J. CAMPBELL'S TALK TO PACIFISTS.

♦ Can a Christian go to War ?"Men Who Conscientiously Object to the Shedding of Blood==The State's Rights-A Gospel Which Must Go Under. They say that War is Hell, the great accurst The sin impossible to be forgiven; Yet I can look upon it at its worst And still see blue in Heaven. For when I note how nobly natures form I'uder the War's red ruin, I deem it true That He who made the earthquake and the storm, Perchance made battles too. —Bishop Alexander, of Londonderry.

iFrom "Illustrated Sunday Herald.") The time is drawing rapidly near when it may bo necessary for the Prime Minister to make? good lr.s word and exercise compulsion upon those inen of military age who have not voluntarily joined the Colours to defend their country in her hour of need. If Lord Haldane is right, and he ought to know, special legislation may not he necessary even for this step. It is a maxim of the British Constitution from the earliest times to the piesent day that it is the duty of every free-man to bear arms in the ration's causewhen called upon to do so by the nation's voice. T for one devoutly hope that wr shall never have to resort to compulsion. It would take away something from the splendour of our national achievements in the field and elsewhere since the war began if the confession had to be made that voluntaryism had broken down and that there were still a considerable number of England'i; able-bodied sons who refused to light for her. THE MEN AGAINST WAR. But "if compulsion does come, I r.m told we may have difficulty with some —there cannot surely be very many who are conscientiously opposed to the shedding of blood whether in their country's cause or any other, and whether that cause is a so-called righteous one or not. No cause can be righteous, these persons would argue, which involves strife and the exercise of brute force between one people and another any more than between one individual and another. War, they hold, is a barbarous and wicked method of settling international disputes. It is, as Mr. Norman Angell would say, irrelevant to the issue. Even if it were not, even if its cost to the victors were not out of all proportion greater than any material gain likely to be achieved, they hold it is still reprehensible from every ethical point of view. Better lose all than light to keep any. So reasoning, certain among these good people are prepared to undergo imprisonment, spoliation of their goods, and perhaps death itself rather than join the Army. There are other people who arc perplexed in mind about this question from the purely Christian standpoint, though not a few of them are already doing their utmost in the Army and out of it to help to defeat the Germans and save Europe. 1 had an instance of this brought to my notice some months ago. A fine young fellow who had just enlisted sa'd to me: I feel I must do my bit for the eld country along with others; we are all up against it, and I just cannot hang back while other men are being smashed and killed in a cause that is as much mine as theirs. lint I am quite well . a>varo that what 1 am doing is not Christian but the very opposite if we are to do what Jesus < hrist told ns to do. Now is that really so!- This is a question that ought to be frankly and honestly faced, for they are not all cowards who put it. Is it generally known, I wonder, that certain Quakers, whose pacificist principles forbid them to light, have, from the beginning of the war, been engaged in the hazardous service of nunesweeping in the North Sea and elsewhere? ! Person., who are willing to jeopardise their own lives m such an intrepid fashion as this are entitled to full respect in differing from their neighbours oil the subject of war in general. Ought a Christian ever under any circumstances to fight or approve of lighting? Can a true foP, lover of the Prince of Peace confront to or take part in the shedding of human blood on the battlefield or indeed anywhere? 1 believe it was Dr. Salter, of Be:- j mond-ey, a man whose self-sacrificing labours among the poor command universal admiration, who said somewhere, with reference to the present colossal t-trugg'e, that it was impossible to imagine Jesus bayoneting anybody or tearing human flesh and bones to pieces with explosives. A good many people feel that way. It would shock them to think of their Lord under any such a.-peet. ; TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK, j i This troubles them, as well it might, for what is out of character for Christ, ! what would be wrong for Him, ought ! to be wrong for us —on this question J anyhow. And then there are His re- • corded words. Everybody knows them. He inculcated non-resistance, the turning of the other cheek to the smiter, and MibstituU'd the law of love t'oi that of the resentment of injuries. What are we to say about this? 1 should not like to say what some of tlie German divines appear to find to ■-ay on the subject. Pastor Lobe; - , of Lei|>ic, for instance, appeal's to have been preaching on Christianity and War, and putting views before Irs j congregation that ought to please the Prussian and the Turk. Everyone, he maintains, serves God who makes the blood of an enemy llow. and it is because he is thus serving God that hecan re;.-lion on God's blessing. Tlie admonition of the New Testament to return good for evil cannot be appled in war, he adds. In war : ivil inu-t be met by evil, and wherever pass ble. by greater and increased evil. War demands Old Testament severity, not the niildne-s of the new dispensation. He is to lie praised and envied v, lio sees his enemies per sli. Tins, he concludes, is only another side of love for one's country, this desire for thorough revenge on the malicious enemy. And he adds: — \Ye tie (lag our houses, we ring oiii' hells, and sing, "Vow thank we all our (uid" when countless multitudes of Russians meet a terrible death in the Masurian swamps, or whe n two thousand seamen are plunged to the bottom

of the ocean by our submarines. , And such expressions of gratitude i and joy are genuinely German and i genuinely Christian. | These are Pastor Leber's words, rc- : member, not mine, and are indeed the genuine. German blend of vindictive , lnurderoiusness with abominable pict- , ism. They remind one of " Punch's" sarcastic paraphrase of the first German Emperor's letters to his wife on the debacle of the French armies in j I*7o-71: i I write to tell you. dear Augusta, | We've had another awful buster: Ten thousand Frenchmen sent bebw, Praise God from whom al! blessings flo\v. MEETING FORCE WITH I'ORCK. But we need not emulate this blasphemous tosh. The question foi .s is I whether it is ever right to meet lore? j with force. We have to look to sjmething besides the letter of Scrpture j here. You can prove almost anything j from Scripture, and the mere citing of I isolated texts is a profitless i ncexlj ing. We have to look at Scripture as • interpreted bv the mind of the Jliurth during nineteen centuries. From the first the right of the State to make use of force, even to the taking of human life, was admitted by the Church, and from that admission she has never deviated. ; Th's must include the right, even the duty under certain circumstances, 1 to mak, l war; for the principle thus setforth extends much further the 1 coercion of the subject. If the State has the right to judge and condemn a ' criminals within her own borders —and 1 who would question it? —she has the : right to resist unjust aggression from without, or even to interfere on behalf of the oppressed and down-trodden he- ! yond the area of her sovereign jurisdiction. | Surely in taking this ground —which she did even in New Testament times, as we see from the Pauline rpistl.'s — the Church has all. along known the mind of her Lord. Is it so ee'iar that Jesus would not have sanctioned ttic taking of human lifer Y\ hat distinction is there between the taking of life and the employment of any other method than that of moral suasion in the overthrow of iniquity? i j TOLERATED IT TO A POINT. And it is as clear as clear can be that our Lord did contemplate bringing foico to bear in the long run upon human wrong-doing. His teaching about the last things leaves no room for doubt about tins. And the force was to be employed by Himself. People seem to forget 11 i s when talking about the example of Jesus. It ,vas only up to a point that He meant - > tolerate men's wickedness or appeal to their better nature. Beyond that point He declared He would overthrow it- with a strong hand. It makes not the slightest difference to the question at issue that He ex petted to be supported by heavenly l ather than earthly legions in so doing. The principle is just the same. 'lliere is to be a consecrated use of force t<> counter and overthrow force enlisted on the side of evil. Nor can we absolutely restrict the participation ill the struggle to angel hosts. That strange book called Revelation, not one of the latest in the New Testament, indicates otherwise in its mysterious allusions to Armageddon—a word often on the lips of journalists and public speakers to describe the present European conflict —and to a final and terrific trial of strength between the embattled forces of evil and those of good on the stage of human affairs. It is not all allegorical. It is a real world war that is spoken of. Moreover, our Lord's own very emphatic words about non-resistance are plainly addressed to the individual and are concerned with the avenging of personal affronts. He never told us to turn anyone e'seV cheek to the smiier. which is just the point. And lie never said a s'ligle word about refusing to obey the call of the State to defend one's home and kindred by force of arms. That the Church never understood Him to mean that is plain from her practice m the early centuries. There were plenty of Christian soldiers in the imperial armies. Being a ( hristian did not disqualify a man for undertaking such a service. On the abstract principle, there is no room for doubt. Christianity has always recognised that, the executive of the State "'bcareth not the sword in van. THE EARLY MARTYRS. Tt 'is n.>t so easy to say where .tiio limitations of that authority come in. In the last resort that i.s a matter for the individual conscience to -ettle. It might be a Christian duty to refuse to idled blood in a bad cause at the bidding of the State or any other authority. In the early days to which i have already alluded, tlu-re were martyrs who died lather than fight just as there were martyrs who died rather than render divine honours to Caesar. i am only pointing out, and it is we'd worth emphasising, that from tho very first the Christian Church, as a whole, did admit that, under certain eventualities undefined, tiie State had the rigid to make war and therefore toe right to require its subjects to servo in ita armies The Christian ideal wa* universal peace; but in such a very unideal world a.s ours it had to be Acknowledged that on the way to universal peace 't might sometimes' be the duty of a Christian | to draw the sword. 1 am not insisting that war itself is a good. It is not a good. Pain in itself never is. War may be a necessary purgation of the body politic, a bracing up of the energies of the soul: but it is a grim remedy even at the best. It is no more a good than a surgical operation is a good. It may be neccssnrv to got rid of a disease, but it would be better not to have the disease to begin with. We have to d : etinguish 1

between what is ideally and what is praetici'ily right. The Christian ideal of marriage, for example, is tlie union < 1' one man and one woman for life oil the basis of pure mutual affection and loyalty. But in practice we have to recognise that it is not always attainable with human nature as it is, and we legislate accordingly. The Christian ideal, again, is that of the angel song at the birth of the world's Redeemer, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will amongst men." But while tyranny oppression, and cruelty remain thero must be war. I WAR'S GLORIEICATION. But. further, I utterly and entirely dissent from the view that there is something essentially uplifting in war as war. The late Mr. Lecky, in his "History of European Morals," says: "That which invests war, in spite of nil the evils that attend it, with a certa n moral grandeur, is the heroic self-sacrifice it elicits. With perhaps the single exception of the Church, it is the sphere in which mercenary motives have least sway, in which performance is least weighed and measured by strict obligation, in which n disinterested enthusiasm has most scope. A battlefield is the scene of deeds of self-sacrifice so transcendent, and at the same time so dramatic, that in spite of all its horrors and crimes, it awakens the most passionate moral enthusiasm." Is there no otiier way of arousing this moral enthusiasm, no other way of evoking to the same degree the spirit of self-sacrifice? Yes, if civilsation as a whole could rise to the moral level requisite for it. The late Professor William James, of Harvard, used to maintain that one great thing which modern civilisation had yet to do was to find a moral substitute for war, an incentive to action that would bring out the grandest qualities of human nature without the accompaniment of slaughter and the suffering and anguish that follow in its train. Oh, that we were sufficiently great of soul to do it, and to do it as one man! i Every normal human being must dread, loathe, and detest war, for if it reveals some things that savour <;f heaven it reveals humo that reek of hell. Sec what ! the glorification of war has done for Germany. I have not the slightest hesitation in admitting that as a people the Germans arc intellectually better trained and more efficient than we, their resources better dscipimed and equipped for tho business of life in its material aspects. But look at the temper of mind that goes with 'it —hard, arrogant, domineering. unable to appreciate the rights of others or even to urderstand others' point of view. It has given Germany the most unscrupulous Government of modern t'mos; for as sure as you get a nation mastered by the monster of militarism, a nation in which everything else in administration is subordinated to militaristic ideals, you get a Government without sentiment, without humanity, without respect for the ordinary obligations of truth and honour. TWO IDEALS OF STATE. Two ideals of tlie State confront each other on the battlefield to-day. For the sake of the future welfare of mankind which were it better should prevail? I think we could fairly appeal to civilisation on that issue alone without fear of the verdict. Is the State a moral entity or is it not? Our enemies hold that whatever the State chooses to do it may do, if it thinks it to be for its advantage, that considerations of right and wrong have no meaning as applied to the State. Xo question of conscience, they say. must deter the individual from carrying out its behests. A more cynical uoctrine the world has never heard. If Germany were to win this war that doctrine would be triumphant. It is for us to determine that it shall not be. We war not for revenge nor for our own aggrandisement. We war to set mankind free from a bondage under which it has groaned for generations, Germany even more than ourselves. We are lighting the battle oi the German people as well as our own, paradoxical though it seem to say so. Wo are lighting tlie buttle of America as well as of Euroix*. and America knows it. We are fighting for democratic institutions, for international justice, for the right of the weak to live in safety alongside of the strong. International Law has broken down. We have got to rebuild it. Political and social idealism has been swept under by this flood of cultured barbarism from Berlin. We have got to restore it to its proper place. We are warring to end war. The world has an object lesson before it to-day as to what militarism leads to. Hiaven grant that the outcome of the present awful collision of spiritual and material forces may be the end of militarism and. as our Prime Minister said a year ago. the cieation of a pact of the nations to prevent it from ever Ffting its head aga ii. not in Germany only but anywhere else tnrfiiL'hout the world. R. J. CAMPBELL.