THE KING’S BUSINESS
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their day plead for compromise, for courses less risky; but they believed in the God o f truth and o f brotherhood, and ven tured as seeing Him who is invisible. The slavery o f our age is war, not merely the bloody struggle itself, but the burden some preparedness against war, taking mil lions o f men from productive employments and subj ectirig them to the discipline that fits them to be slayers o f their brethren, deflecting billions o f money from the needed undertaking for human welfare to keep up these establishments for human slaughter, enslaving men’s souls to faith in the false- god o f brute force. The will o f God for our generation is the war upon war. “ Some trust in chariots and some in h o r s e s t h e y pit Baal against Baal, might against might; “but we will remember the name o f the Lord our God.” That name for us is given in the life, teaching, cross and resurrection to power o f Jesus o f Nazareth. It is no talisman against pain: “ Forasmuch as Christ suffered in the flesh.” But it is a guarantee o f victory. He is alive forever more. For the sake o f a war-torn world that waits for some nation o f daring faith to lead it by actually starting out in the paths o f Christian national righteousness, which alohe are paths o f peace; for the sake o f the millions who have sought our shores as a refuge from the burdens and the ideals and the institutions o f big-armied and big- navied Europe; for the sake o f the Amer icans o f many centuries to come who will rise up and call our generation blessed, if we dare to leave the beaten track o f a ' bloody past and venture out in the spirit which alone can end the curse o f war; for the sake o f heathen hearts who have put their trust in reeking tube and iron shard, and are paying the awful damnation of their unchristian folly, and must be redeemed;- for the sake o f the God o f peace, whose suffering love is forever before us in the cross o f His Son, who is Himself crucified afresh in the strife o f His children and who will faithfully bring to pcjjver them that trust H im ; “ Arm ye yourselves also with the same mind.”
tious. W e may be held up to ridicule by the nations of. the world, and not many have the courage to be laughed at. The Son of Man was scoffed by the soldiers o f His day and mocked by the eminent ecclesiastics. W e may be called on to suffer terribly in our national pride; that might not be with out good effects in our characters, but it would be humiliating. Are we prepared for the discipline o f the Son o f God who learned by the things which He suffered and was made perfect? W e may be shbjected to heavy losses—losses in prestige, losses in trade, losses that would bring widespread poverty. These would not be permanent, but they might be exceedingly hard for some time. I f Christians as individuals cannot escape a cross, can a Christian nation expect to avoid Calvaries? In any case, we may tell ourselves that the opposite course has not delivered the nations o f Europe from unspeakable woe. It would assure us national existence for some generations or even centuries, more or less, and inevitably leave us “one with Ninevah and Tyre,” unless the whole history o f the pa'st is fallacious. There is- a new, an untried way, the way of Christ for nations. And being Chris tians is always venturesome; faith means taking a risk for righteousness, taking a risk in the God o f love. It was a venture when the first disciples threw down their nets and followed the Master, who called them to be fishers of men. It was a supreme venture when that Master went up to Jerusalem' and staked everything on love faithful to death: “ Father into Thy hands I commend My Spirit.” But a whole world blesses Him and them for their daring; and the God they trusted proved His reliability. It was a venture when a little company o f pilgrims embarked with their wives and children and .set their faces westward towards the bleak shores o f New England to found a commonwealth on the will of God. It was a venture when their descen dants set their faces in another protest for the will o f God in their generation against human slavery. The wise and prudent of
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