A SEEMON ON THE WAR.

White Ribbon, Volume 21, Issue 246, 18 December 1915, Page 1

A SEEMON ON THE WAR.

Among God’s thildren everywhere have been deep searching's of heart as to the why and wherefore of the ter rible war which is now devastating Kurope. We publish below the thoughts of a young soldier, Lieut. K. (iuy Melland, an ex-New Zealander. He was the only son of his family who adored him —a very line young man. He wrote this af er he joined the Army in August, i»j»4. He went to the front in October, and had eight months’ service in the tien lies wan the Ist Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment, being killed in action in Handers, *st Julv, it) 15, aged 2(j. Kvery thinking human be ng in the world has been challenged, and no one c:*n be .it peace with himself again uiail he has taken up this challenge, ihougm this matter fairly out, and answered it (even at the cost of ihc sacrifice of t herished opinions, or of having to remodel his entire philosophy, or of having to find an entirely new base on which to stand). Man has been given a mighty conundrum ; he has beiore ignored such others as the problem of the meaning of life, but this one is most self assertive, and man can hardly dodge it now. This is the question:— What is the meaning of it all? What the sense? What the purpose ? Now, let us think coolly and calmly, and duly clear the ground first, and properly understand this question. Firstly, some will say that there c no answer—it is fate; but this is opposed to the rules, for it is impossible

to discuss this question without one supreme postulate, and t~ it is; the fact of the existence of Hod, and of course, of His infinite power and love for man. To those who deny this, 1 have no more to say. k very one who is not an atheist, howt ver, must have in his head, at the outset, a clear idea that this world is run for man’s good by an all-powerful, .II loving God. Once that posluku.* i> granted, we can get on. But secondly, there are those wht say we are not me mt to know the answer to the question. They have no divine warrant for saying so, the' speak thus from their human intelligence, which is limited. 1 will answei them from my human will (which is free, and therefore unlimited), that I mean to find out, and that I will Know. Well then, what is the justification of the present state of affairs? I know that there is a justification, for that i> a sure corollai\ from our postulate. There is a meaning, and a sensible purpose in it, and ihe whole thing is not only for our good, hut it is the best thing possible for us (if it is not, then is God either not perfectly loving, or not omnipotent). What is more (though I am not of the school that attributes tin* death of every sparrow directly to God), this catastrophe may surely be legitimately termed an “ait of God.” Does man want- this war? No! Ninety and nine of every hundred men would have done almost anything they could to have averted it and yet, here it is. This, to my mil d, emphasises the whole matter strangely, and tells me there is some mighty reason, some overwhelming urgency.

Man has a great gift from God. It is (what 1 shall call) a sense of absolute good. It is not unerring, but we can rely on it as a rule; and it needs no finely balanced sense of good to declare this present war to be, in itself, an evil. Yet—it is the best thing for us, we know ; so though not good absolutely (1 use the word in a rather technical logit al sense) it is yet good empyrically, or relatively to some natural law, or set of conditions ot which we ire ignorant. What, then, is this unknown factor in the equation? There is some influence whe h has been at work on the Karth, which has caused this wide divergence between God’s will as done in Heaven (let us say, our concept of “absolute good”), and as done at present on Karth. We pray that God’s will be done on Karth, as in Heaven. It is done on Karth always, hut as yet in a different way for man has been allowed to decide on some large questions as to the method of its working ; though he cannot frustrate the Will, yet he can turn it into evil channels. Now how am 1 to proceed in order to find out God’s purpose in making —or allowing—man to suffer, for suffer he will in the coming months as man has seldom suffered before. My God is an efficient God ; and when He makes all this pother, He gains His end —which means that man gains something, for is it not all for our sakes? Then I propose to examine the ways in whi<h we shall stand to gain by this war, and to see if amongst them there is not one reason worthy of all this horror. Well, how shall we gain?

H**re is one who says that in such markets as South America, we shall profit by Germany's misfortunes. Fool! was 1 talking of England’s Ra n in commerce over the Continent? And what amount of wealth, 1 should like to know, is the price of one broken heart? (In any case, and on your own ground, what we gain from Germany, we lose—and more —to the States, and no gain of that sort would compensate us for the awful wreckage of our world’s finance.) No I mean the real gain of man. Then come answers with more in them—that this war, being the last straw, will cause the peoples to rise; and that, with a bloody revolution, if necessary, they will sweep away the tyrants, and establish peaceful socialistic communities, managed by an educated democracy. 1 cannot think that tins will be so, as yet. Moody war or revolution has never brought peaceful freedom in its train. Hopes of such things are farther from realisation now than they were before. 1 reject this answer. God would not have recourse to so < lumsy and contradictory a method of giving us peace.

It is said that this war is caused byour autocratic diplomacy; but God needs not to plunge the world in blood and tears, because its political machinery is rathei stupid and out of date. (My God is a reasonable God.) These things are superficial; they may be the occasion they are not ihe cause of the war. They say too, that the war is useful in demonstrating to man the real unity of mankind (il only financially); and the need tor effective government by man, so that Ins deeds follow, instead of thwart, his intentions. He who says that this war is to demonstrate everything, 1 do not reject, for his answer is ine luded in mine. Good for man, and enough to pay for all, will »ome thus. Starvation, torture, and death will be* rampant in Kurope, but worse than any physical agonies will be the torture of human hearts and souls. (Have you seen a woman crying yet, in these days?) Hut now the crowning grace. In these conditions (and apparently only in these conditions), the human soul, thrown back upon itself, turns to two things: first, to thought deep, searching thought, and, ultimately, to prayer. When man acknowledges himself beaten, he can but turn to

God, and this is what it is for. Yes, that is all. 1 had no great secret after all. Would no man stop to ask himself the meaning of his life? Now he must (arid he is led by the Jester, Punch). Would no man really acknowledge his God Now or soon — what else will be left? There it is, so simple, so obvious, and yet so vitally urgent. This European civilisation, which in a few months may be in the throes of its death struggle, has men of mighty intellect but they are materialists, and their thoughts dwell on superficialities. They are essentially atheistic; they do not believe in God. For man acts on his beliefs (if they be real), and one need not to have lived long in England or elsewhere in Europe, to realise that belief in God plays an almost neglible part in mail’s life nowadays. Some ignorant peasams still believe in God; of course they know no better. Hut we with oui blood and iron, our sensuous indulgences, and our greed of gold, have passed all that. With man’s natural leaders engulfed in materialism, the light of spirituality on Earth was growing dim, and so ‘‘So this is a divine punishment for atheism ?” The idea of punishment is utterly wrong. (If you choose, you may think of it, in one aspec i, as a retributory or repurcusstve action set in operation by some occult natural law.) God never punishes, unless you say you are punished for putting your huger in the hre, by getting it burnt. It would seem that tt is highly dangerous tof man to ir> and live without God; and so He in His wisdom is giving us a lesson not it) serve us right, but to ensure that wc shall not try it again. Let this lesson suffice, then. Without wanting war, we are all at war. Desirous of preserving and perfecting our civilisation, we are straining our utmost to destroy it. We have failed in our sell-imposed task of ruling this planet without God. Let us own up—we were stupidly complacent, ignorantly selfsufficient. Let us get this new and really solid foundation, and start again. God’s purpose will succeed; but we have power to modify the working of His will on Earth. On us, then, rests a responsibility. We must co-operate, and use our wills

with God’s, and drive home this point. To make men think, and to make them turn to God (for their own sakes), for this has God allowed the war. The war is the lesser of two evils, and by it God strives to shield us from the greater. Ihe greater is the victory of material.>m over man s soul, and the extinction of the spiritual light. Let us not rebel, but learn our lesson thoroughly and at once (lest a worse repetition of it be necessary). W e an* late enough now let us wait no longer.