THE K I N G ' S B US I NE S S
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righteousness when all other means have failed, might as well deny his own existence. Yet the faith such as lt was—of thousands was shattered completely during the war, simply be cause they had been permeated all their life with the false belief— the natural result of the soothsaying to which they had been accustomed— that the chief function of the Deity was to make everything pleasant and comfortable for everybody. They seemed to have no idea that the vast and ever increasing volume of sin of every kind,— vice, crime, atheism and general lawlessness, — all of which is traceable in the ulti mate, to the breaking-down of the au thority of Scripture— in which destruc tive criticism has played so deadly a part—must of necessity reap the har vest it has sown and that, in addition to this natural and inevitable conse quence, God must, in righteousness, cause His voice to be heard so that if men will not yield Him voluntary obedi ence, they shall be compelled, ‘by the rod, to recognize His sovereignty. When we reflect that, with the ut most knowledge we can obtain from every source, we know only an infi nitesimal fraction of the vast sum total of human depravity, whereas God sees it all, the wonder is, not that He some times smites men with the rod of His anger, but that He does not summarily sweep out of existence all the workers of iniquity. War is the natural outcome of man’s pride and arrogance and his contempt for God’s laws. The last war differed from others only in its magnitude. Every evil has, in some degree, flour ished in the earth from time immemo rial. Death, cruelty, and every vile ness which springs from the root of militarism, have always been rampant, in greater or less degree, since the dawn of history. Men, by their own actions, make a rod for their own backs, and there is a sense in which God .uses the rod they have themselves
It was because of this very denial of the possibility of severity from a God of love, that God had to say to the Jews of Malachi’s day, ‘ Ye have wearied the Lord with your words.” While it is true that vice and the grosser sins exact their own penalty and that men suffer in body and estate in consequence of their sins it does not end there. There is still the rod of the Supreme Master of the world to reckon with and that rod may be, and often is, used in addition to the punish ment which is the natural consequence of sin. He may, and does, allow men to go to the utmost limits of wickedness but when in His judgment the time has come He unsheathes His sword. Sometimes it is wielded by angelic hands, sometimes it is placed in human hands, oftentimes in such a way that those who wield it and those upon whom it falls, alike feel its weight. Many people saw in the late war a great judgment of God pn all the na- tions-^-and rightly. For, as He said to Jeremiah, “ I will call for a sword upon all the inhabi tants of the earth; for the Lord hath a controversy with the nations. Never before has there been a war in which all nations were so involved. All the inhabitants of the earth did indeed drink of the cup of His wrath and are still drinking it. For when man’s cup of wickedness has been filled to overflowing God also has a cup which He compels man in his turn to drink. “ Take the wine cup of this fury at My hand and cause all the nations to drink it and they shall drink and be mad, because of the sword that I will send among them.” “ Behold, evil shall go forth from nation to nation and a great whirlwind from the coast of the earth. . . . in the latter days ye shall consider it.” The fnan who denies the Sword of - God, whereby He chastises the inhabi tant’s of the earth that they may learn
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