Article December 17, 1910 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from Washington Gladden, R. J. Campbell, Harold Begbie, Pemberton Hale Cressey

[Washington Gladden in Continent.]

The arguments which are intended to prove that peace is visionary and impossible are largely inspired by human rapacity and greed. And, strangely enough, the predatory classed have always been permitted to set the standards of thought and conduct, so that the ruling ideas of Christian society have hardly included the conception of social peace and good will as attainable under present conditions. We have not considered the promise of the angels as having application to the existing state of society. We have supposed that business must be carried on and politics conducted under the law of conflict—of strife and struggle—by matching wits against wits and wills against wills; by contending for advantage and mastery. And we have been quite content for the most part to have business and politics go on in that way; we have assumed that that was the right way—for business and politics. It now begins to appear that this partial, half–way, one–sided interpretation of the promise of Christmas has been a pernicious and paralyzing error. In the minds of a great many people the question is arising, "What right have we to put the fulfilment of this promise so far away? Who has authorized us to say that peace on earth and good will among men are no to be looked for until the millennium? What is the reason why they should not be looked for here and now? Is there anything that hinders their coming except the selfishness of men? Would they not come at once if men believed in them and desired them?"

Granted that the rapacious and the cunning and the greedy do not desire them, and therefore, of course, do not believe in them, has not the time come when we should no longer permit the rapacious and the greedy and the cunning to tell us what we ought to believe in and wish for? We are not all beasts and birds of prey; we are men and women. we want to be friends; to live together peaceably and helpfully; and this, as we understand it, is just what Christmas means. The song of the angels signifies this. What is it but the deadliest and most damning unbelief that puts the fulfilment of such a promise a thousand years away? Let us claim it now, and have it now. Nothing is needed to bring it but faith in it. As soon as men begin to believe that it can be, it will be. And there is nothing in the world to hinder any of us from beginning to believe what the angels said, and beginning to act as if it were true. It is a fact, no doubt, that a great many of our neighbors do not believe that it is true and do not intend to act as if it were, but I do not know that that is any reason why those of us who do believe in it, and are sure that it is the only right way to live, should hesitate about living up to our own convictions.

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