Article August 5, 1933 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from John McDowell, Edward A. Thompson, William E. Brooks, L. B. Ashby, Adolph S. Ochs, Merle E. Fish, Bishop of Chelmsford

[William E. Brooks, in the Federal Council Bulletin, New York, New York]

War is not alone a thing which is indulged in by nations. Individuals, also, are guilty of it. When two men fight we call it a quarrel. When two families fight we call it a feud. When two nations fight we call it a war. It is all the same thing, the only difference being in the scale on which it is waged. And it is the necessary consequence of hate, just as hate itself is the necessary consequence of thwarted selfishness....

This, then, is the task of the Christian church, to bring about that change of heart in which war shall be impossible. To do it the same way Paul and his comrades did, in the warridden days of Rome. Of course they did not end war, but they made a beginning of the process. Not many years after Paul died by Nero's sword another was writing to another Roman emperor about the Christians as he saw them: "They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. they obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time they surpass the laws by their lives." "They surpass the laws by their lives"! Only men who are born again, who have left the natural man behind and put on the new man in Christ, can and will do that. They and only they can end war, for they will have banished the causes of war from their hearts.

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