Editorial October 15, 1904 Issue

The Peace of God

If we base our judgment upon the history of the church militant, we can but conclude that one of the last things which the followers of Christ Jesus are willing to learn is that the weapons of their warfare are not carnal. Apart from Peter's impulsive exhibition of the fighting instinct, the early disciples seem to have entirely discredited the use of the sword, but their successors soon accepted the world's way, and from that time the history of Christianity has been written in blood. Jesus' coming was announced with the promise of "Peace on earth,"byline"My peace I leave with you," but this concept of his rule has been little more than a tradition or a hope in all the succeeding years.

At the opening of the twentieth century the contrast between the spirit Jesus inculcated, and the spirit exhibited by Christian sects and nations is still saddening indeed. And yet there are encouraging indications of a great awakening. The earnest faces and more earnest words of those gathered from many countries at the thirteenth annual meeting of the Peace Congress, recently held in Boston, gave tokens of a nobler sense — the promise of a nobler day. No one could question the genuineness of their patriotism. the unselfishness of their zeal, the purity of their love for mankind. They are companioning with a great idea, they are committed to a great enterprise, and in the providence of God their cause will win. Christian Scientists are deeply interested in this, as in every other humanitarian movement, and they are peculiarly fitted to contribute to its success.

A fighting Christian is the ally of a fighting God. The Christ concept of the divine nature and method of government, may not be a stranger to his thought, but it certainly does not dominate his habits. The gospel was committed to a fighting people, and its seeds were first sown in the soil of The Dispersion. The Christ-truth was thus but imperfectly reflected by the human media which for centuries had been dominated by the thought that God was a king of irresistible might and authority, who in unnumbered instances in their racial history had encouraged a vigorous militarism, and who in the person of his chosen representatives, a Joshua or a Gideon, had led his people to the slaughter of their enemies. Though the concept has varied, this sense of a God of battles has obtained in all the years, and in so far as it remains to shape conscious or unconscious determination, Christian men and nations are disposed to recognize a necessity for the arbitrament of arms in the settlement of their differences. Though honored in many a resonant line; though sung by the worthies of many a heroic struggle, and though made serviceable, perhaps, in many an instance, to racial advance, nevertheless this concept of the fighting virtue has no place in a Christian life or a Christian civilization. In the feudal ages it was saved from something of its animalism if not its cruelty by the spirit of chivalry, but in modern times its gross selfishness is unredeemed, and the horrors it is precipitating to-day in the far East bring a shudder to every Christian sense.

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