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THE KING’S BUSINESS We seem no nearer the end of this awful war than we were months ago. All predictions of its close have failed utterly. The day this magazine is mailed will be just a year from the beginning of the war. Scarcely
When Will War Cease?
any one believed then that it could last a year, but the end is not in sight. New nations are constantly being sucked into the vortex of the maelstrom. This particular war may come to a close with unexpected suddenness any day, but war will not cease. Those optimists who a year ago were saying that there could never again be a great war among civilized nations are now saying that this war will result in good by making another war impossible; that it will result in the death of militarism. They had better read their Bibles, where they will learn a true optimism that has some foundation in fact and in reason. In the Word of God they will learn that the Prince of Peace is coming—the same Jesus the Apostles saw ascend from Olivet into Heaven. When He comes there will be peace, permanent peace, and not till then. Even so, come Lord Jesus! A recent article by M. Henri Lavedan, once an atheist, caused the editor of Evangelical Christendom to say in the May-June issue of that publication, that “among the many documents dealing with the effect of the break down of European civilization, none published has been more striking than the article of M. Lavedan.” He says, in part: “I laughed at faith and I thought myself a wise man. When I saw France, bathed in blood, weeping, my laugh gave me no pleasure. I halted in my ways, and I saw soldiers walking calmly to death. I asked myself, ‘How do you do this?’ I considered the sacrifices of our people, and I saw them accepted by those who had faith in their hearts. It consoled me to think of the eternal country. . . . How difficult it is to be an atheist in the presence of a national cemetery! One cannot be so. I deceived myself. I was a fool. All has been a terrible dream. O France, France! return to your faith and to your better days! Separation from God means ruin. I do not know if I shall be alive to morrow. I must tell all my friends that Lavedan cannot dare die an atheist. Hell does not frighten me. This -thought dominates me, ‘God lives, and you are far from Him.’ My soul, rejoice that you have been permitted to see the day on which I, on my knees, learned to say, ‘I believe, I believe in God— I believe!’” “What M. Lavedan has expressed in literary language,” adds the editor of Evangelical Christendom, “has been experienced by thousands in the trenches and in the presence of battle. God is speaking to men in the solem nity of these hours of trial, and many true conversions have taken place. As a distinguished scholar once said, ‘I suddenly awoke to the belief that God is, and I became a changed man. I did not return to the faith I had discarded, because it meant nothing to me. I saw myself in the presence of God, and knew I needed Him, and He proved Himself to be my stay.’ ” The Return to Faith
In some quarters it is fashionable to declare that God did not make man, but that man (and usually it is charged to those theologically termed “orthodox”) made God, and made a poor job of it, too. 1
Gods Made by Human Minds
As a matter of fact, it is not the orthodox but the heterodox that are running the factories. The process seems to be something like this: “If I
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