Article May 22, 1926 Issue

The Bond of Peace

CHRISTINE H. BEALS

There is a peace that comes to the human heart as tenderly and as graciously as the dew comes to the earth in the quiet of the evening, or as the breeze passes over a garden on a summer day. This peace is a mental one, which words can but poorly portray: it is man's unity with God consciously manifested. In moments of spiritual consciousness the material disappears from sight and the things of God live in beauty and truth; and men recognize that these realities are the only abiding things, that they give the deep, satisfying drafts which comfort and which heal all that is discordant and diseased.

Paul in one of his letters exhorts the Ephesians to endeavor "to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." When we speak of the peace of nations, the peace of communities or of families, this peace might under an inadequate or cursory analysis appear to be something other than the quiet, satisfying spiritual sense which comes with the consciousness of the realization of man's unity with God. But this misapprehension in regard to peace is only another evidence that the material sense of life is always claiming that its pattern of materiality is equal to, if not superior to, the pattern of spirituality, and that a material sense of life and conduct is more practical, more real, more livable than the spiritual. But the sooner we run error to cover and demand of it an accounting for its deceptions, its unreliability, and its dishonesty, the better.

There is but one kind of peace, and it is to be found in what Paul calls "the unity of the Spirit." How could there be anything other than peace between nations if each nation of the earth and all the individuals who comprise the nations were in the unity of Spirit? In this unity there can exist only that which exists in truth, in good, in true courtesy and brotherhood. It is, however, advisable for us to know that the nations can reach this condition only when all the footsteps leading to it are taken.

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