SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 47, 13 July 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING

IS MIGHT RIGHT? An Address delivered to the New Plymouth Brotherhood on Sunday, July 7, 1912, by REV. H. J. LEWIS. Our association exists for two purposes: the elevation of manhood and the consolidation of brotherhood. The two aims co-operate with each other. Everything which helps to elevate manhood helps to cement the brotherhood; and, conversely, everything which helps to cement brotherhood helps to elevate our common manhood. Nothing tells more powerfully on cither of these works than the ideals of life cherished in our minds. Ideals are to character what germs are to the blood. Every true ideal is to our ; manhood what the white corpuscles are I to the blood. Every false ideal is to manhood what microbes are to the blood. And, therefore, I want to speak to you this afternoon about ONE OF THE SPURIOUS IDEALS which through all ages of human hifftory has acted at once as a corruption of our manhood and a bar to our broth- < erhood. I refer to the ideal enshrined { in the old proverb, "Might is Tight." It may be said that few of us hold that cbreed. But the question.is not so much whether we hold it as whether it holds us. We are nearly all of us held in the grip of this false ideal before we are conscious of its existence. The child who : finds that it can get anything it cries for and consequently sets up a howl for everything it wants till it gets it, is an unconscious champion of the idea that might is right. And that temptation i clings to us as we grow up. Sometimes a trivial incident opens our eyes to the havoc wrought by harboring this idea. When I was a boy I lived in a country i village in Surrey, where the squire and rector practically held the whole population in their hands. The squire and the parson seemed to think they had all the right simply because they had all the might. There >as a carrier in the vil- i lage who used to tramp every week day j of his life backwards and forwards to ] the country town to fetch purchases for 1 the villagers. His children came round j at night to get orders, and he carried < the articles ordered home on his back. { : There was a short cut through the rec-) i tory park which saved him half a mile' 1 on each journey. For years he had I < been allowed to use that short cut with-1 '_ out any demur on the part of the rector. {c But by-and-bye his wife began to attend i evening service at the little country chapel of which my father was the min- | ( ister. Whereupon the rector sent for the carrier and asked him whether it ' was true that his wife was in the habit - of attending the dissenting chapel. He' ] replied, "Yes." "Then," said the rector, , "you will no longer be allowed to take i the short cut across the rectory park, , which, of course you know, is private \ property." And the consequence was ] that the poor woman had to give up go- \ ing to my father's chapel in order to , save her husband the extra walk round ( the high road, which would have added a . j mile a day to his journeys. The rector \ \ never dreamed that he was doing wrong, j because he thought that his conduct was ) eimply an assertion of the principle that might is right. A TRAGIC INCIDENT. Some years after that, when I was a young minister in Bradford, I saw a j second-hand copy of the "Septuagist" offered for sale on a stall in the market place. I could not afford the price asked for it, and offered the bookseller a little less. After some demur he consented to accept my offer rather than keep in his ; shelves a book which might be unsale- : able. A few weeks later I saw an an- : nouncement in the paper that that man had committed suicide, and the evidence '. taken at the inquest showed that the : poor fellow had been driven out of his mind by financial embarrassment. I had never entertained the thought of do- : ing him any -wrong, but every time I looked at that book I thought of that sad tragedy and could not help wondering whether I had done anything to contribute towards it. ACTIONS OF COMMUNITIES. But it is in the actions of communities that the pernicious influence of this principle is more clearly manifested. Grote, the historian of Greece, says that "bodies of men will do without compunction in their corporate capacity deeds from which the individuals composing them would shrink with horror." We see an illustration of this truth in the mania for war preparations now possessing the Governments of Europe. Of course, as long as Germany goes on building more Dreadnoughts Great Britain cannot afford to run the risk of being unable to defend herself against invasion by neglecting to follow suit. But the influence of the principle is evil all round, because if carried out to the extreme it will mean that eventually the nation possessing the strongest navy will have the power of dictating the policy of Europe and thereby tempted to put might before right. THE ETHICS OF STRIKES. But there is an application of the principle which comes far more closely home to ourselves at the present day. At the back of all lock-outs and strikes lies the temptation to act on the idea that might is right. I am far from denying that there may be, that there often have been circumstances which rendered a strike absolutely justifiable. But the principle which determines the iustice or injustice of every strike is this: A strike is a resort to force, and it is never right to resort to force until the resources of reason have been exhausted. A strike which is the only means of securing a right may be a duty. But a strike to enforce a claim the righteousness of which has never been fully and fairly considered is a crime. Take, for instance, the case of the recent strike at Waihi. I have lately been spending several weeks in the neighborhood of that strike and have seen something of the terrible distress it has caused. Twelve months ago Waihi was probably the most prosperous town in the Dominion; certainly the most prosperous town in | the North Island. The miners were well paid. Some of them were earning as much as £25 a month. There had • occasionally been trifling disputes between masters and men, but on the whole they were getting on well together. The miners had no real wrong of which to I complain, when suddenly a misunder- ' standing sprang up between the miners and engine-drivers. The engine-drivers had formed a union of their own. The Miners' Federation said to them: "You must dissolve that union and join our Federation." It would, of course, be presumptuous of me to pronounce any opinion on the right of that dispute. But there seems to have been no disposition manifested to discuss the question fairly and impartially. The engine-drivers persisted in their refusal to join the Miners' Federation. Then the Miners' Federation tried to coerce them into joining by threatening to call out the miners unless they consented. There was no dispute between the masters and men. The only dispute was between the rival unions. And because the Miners' Federation could not make the engine-drivers join their union they called out the miners on a strike which has shut down

the mines, paralysed the life of the town and plunged the whole community into distress as great as could have been caused by either a famine or a war. Eighteen shops 'have been closed down. The men are leaving the town at the rate of about 200 a week. One Monday morning 62 miners left by one train, none of whom were heads of families. HunBreda of women and thousands of children are reduced to the verge of starvation, and unless the strike can be stopped before long there is every probability that the town of Waihi will be •HOPELESSLY RUINED. And all for what? All for the determination on the part of the Miners' Federation to turn their might into right. I merely mention this as one instance of a temptation to which we are all more or less liable. The fallacy that might is right was ruthlessly exposed by the words of our great dramatist: "It is a noble thing to have a giant's strength, But 'tis tyrannous to use it like a giant." And the fallacy has been branded by a far higher authority for us than that of Shakespeare—our Master and our Brother. Our greatest Master, just because He is our truest Brother, never once in all His life resorted to force in the assertion of a claim to a personal right. He always put the brotherhood before Himself. The author of that classic work, "Ecce Homo," said many years ago that the core of the temptation to fall down and worship Satan was simply the temptation to resort to the use of force for the establishment of his kingdom. His whole life was a protest against the brutal motto, "Might is right." And the glory of His Kingdom to-day, a glory before which that of the providers of the empires who relied on the power of the sword, pales into insignificance is a proof that the motto of the brigand and the freeboother, "Might is right," is A BLUNDER AS WELL AS A CRIME. It is a proof that the motto of all true men is "Right is might"! As we look at the honor in which Christ's name is held and the power His influence wields to-day, we are compelled to say: "Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever and ever, amen." Let us resolve to make our life one great amen : to that doxology. The cure for all the tyranny, all the strife, all the wrongs of the earth is simply more brotherhood. The cure will not come in a year or a century. But it will come. It is coming. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. We are all 'brothers: the capitalist and the laborer, the producer and the consumer. The world is applauding to-day the words of the captain of the Titanic, "Be British." But it is ours to proclaim to the world an ever nobler motto, "Be brothers." Let us resolve to look on every social, every domestic, every na- > tional, every international question in a brotherly spirit, and the influence of { that spirit will be a solvent gradually, ■ causing every wrong of the earth to j crumble to pieces. It will be a silent, I irresistible force, slowly T>ut surely usher- | ing in the coming of the time — J When the war drum throbs no longer, When the battle flag is furled, When man meets his brother man In the parliament of nations in the federation of the world. \