THE KING’ S BUSINESS
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primarily interested in meeting the needs o f their foreign customers, and only second arily in their own profit, if the repre sentatives o f financial houses, won the con fidence o f the lands in which they oper ated as truly concerned to develop their resources, not to exploit them, there would be no lack o f open doors for American business.- “ Godliness” (and the ministering spirit is the very essence o f godliness, for the God of all is servant o f all), “ godliness is profitable.” But such* commercial min istry must depend upon its own inherent merits. It must ask no assistance from representatives o f our government in gain ing concessions^ or securing contracts, or placing loans. Least of all must it expect armed forces from the home country to guarantee its property rights, collect its debts and interfere for its interests in another land. It may suffer serious losses; these are business risks, the risks all o f us, even the best o f men, encounter in this world. “ Forasmuch as Christ suffered in the flesh, arm ye yourselves also with the same mind.” The gravest danger to our peace at present lies not in the attack of some foreign power jealous o f our wealth, but in our own imperialistic commercialism eager to pre-empt for its selfish advantage the markets o f the world. For our safety we must divorce private business enterprise from government backing in any form. Let commerce dedicate itself to a holy min istry o f supplying the wants o f other lands and it will not need to be aided by a mailed fist. This is the mind o f Christ. 1 That mind is further emptied o f the sense o f personal honor and personal rights. Much has been said o f “national honor,” ahd almost everything that has been said reveals a pagan conception of honor. There is but one kind o f Christian honor—the honor o f usefulness. “Whosoever would be great among you shall become your servant.” A nation’s honor is impugned only when its own bad manners or quick temper or pride or vengefulness o f self- seeking prevent it from being useful. W e lose our honor when we lose our courtesy,
as a reassertion of loyalty to this country it had its-value. But so far as it was a demonstration for military preparedness it was' a march into yesterday. If everything which the advocates o f a larger army and navy ask for be granted we are somewhere on the road to the condition in which Get- many and France and Britain found them selves prior to this war. W e are no safer against attack, no likelier to refrain from attacking others, than were they. W e would not be leading the world into any thing less pagan, we would not have made o f ourselves a nation one whit more Chris tian/ than were they. This is certainly no time to be preaching unpreparedness, nor is it in any sense Chris tian to advocate a helpless passivity. There is a preparedness o f the nation s soul, a readiness for an heroic and sacrificial strug gle, that the Christian Church must press upon the conscience of American citizens, if our land is to take the part of a Christian nation, and know in this its day the things which belong unto peace. It must hold up the ideal o f a nation armed with the mind o f Christ, and call on its people to take that very long march out of the ideals of semi-heathen today into those o f a fully Christian tomorrow. To begin with that mind is self-emptied. “He emptied Himself,- and took upon Him the form iof a servant.” Our nation must want nothing in the world for itself but to serve the needs o f other lands. It must em ploy not “ dollar-diplomacy,” but “ service- diplomacy.” This is not without precedent. Our ambassador to Turkey has had few American interests to care for but those of various institutions that were there to help the inhabitants o f that Empire; and as a result the American ambassador has held a unique position o f respect among the diplo mats accredited to the Sublime Porte. Nor would commerce carried on with the same missionary motives suffer. Any other com merce is unchristian, and has no place in the thought of those who are honest in wishing this land Immanuel’s land. If our merchants gained the reputation o f being
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