RELIGION AND THE WAR

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The present volume is the second work published by the Yale University Press on the James Wesley Cooper Memorial Publication Fund. This Foundation was established March 30, 1918, by a gift to Yale University from Mrs. Ellen H. Cooper in memory of her husband, Rev. James Wesley Cooper, D.D., who was born in New Haven, Connecticut, October 6, 1842, and died in New York City, March 16, 1916. Dr. Cooper was a member of the Class of 1865, Yale College, and for twenty-five years pastor of the South Congregational Church of New Britain, Connecticut. For thirty years he was a corporate member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and from 1885 until the time of his death was a Fellow of Yale University, serving on the Corporation as one of the Successors of the Original Trustees.

PREFACE

Religious interests are quite as much involved in the world war as social and political interests. The moral and spiritual issues are tremendous, and the problems that arise concerning "the mighty hopes that make us men,"—hopes that relate to the Kingdom of God on earth,—are such as not only to perplex our most earnest faith, but also to challenge our most consecrated purpose. It is the sincere hope of those who have contributed to this volume that it may prove helpful in the solution of some of these problems.

CONTENTS

Page

•    Moral and Spiritual Forces in the War11
  • Charles Reynolds Brown, D.D., LL.D., Dean of
  • the School of Religion and Pastor of the University
  • Church
    
    
•    God and History22
  • Douglas Clyde Macintosh, Ph.D., Professor of
  • Theology
    
    
•    The Christian Hope in Times of War33
  • Frank Chamberlin Porter, Ph.D., Professor of
  • Biblical Theology
    
    
•    Non-Resistance: Christian or Pagan?59
  • Benjamin Wisner Bacon, D.D., Litt.D., LL.D.,
  • Professor of New Testament Criticism and
  • Interpretation
    
    
•    The Ministry and the War82
  • Hallam Tweedy, M.A., Professor of
  • Practical Theology
    
    
•    The Effect of the War upon Religious Education105
  • Luther Allan Weigle, Ph.D., D.D., Professor of
  • Christian Nurture
    
    
•    Foreign Missions and the War, Today and Tomorrow122
  • Harlan P. Beach, D.D., F.R.G.S., Professor of the
  • Theory and Practice of Missions
    
    
•    The War and Social Work141
  • William Bacon Bailey, Ph.D., Professor of
  • Practical Philanthropy
    
    
•    The War and Church Unity151
  • Williston Walker, Ph.D., D.D., Professor of
  • Ecclesiastical History
    
    
•    The Religious Basis of World Re-Organization161
  • E. Hershey Sneath, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of
  • the Philosophy of Religion and Religious
  • Education
    
    

I
MORAL AND SPIRITUAL FORCES IN THE WAR
CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN

In one of our more thoughtful magazines we were favored last February with an article entitled, "Peter Sat by the Fire Warming Himself." It was a bitter, undiscriminating arraignment of the ministers and churches of the United States for their alleged lack of intelligent, sympathetic interest in the war. It was written by an Englishman who for several years has been vacillating between the ministry and secular journalism, but is now the pastor of a small church in

northern New York. The vigor of his literary style in trenchant criticism was matched by an equally vigorous disregard for many of the plain facts in the case. His tone, however, was loud and confident, so that the article secured for itself a wide reading.

"What became of the spiritual leaders of America during those thirty-two months when Europe and parts of Asia were passing through Gehenna?" the writer of this article asked in scornful fashion. And then after listing the enormities of the mad military caste which heads up at Potsdam, he asked the clergymen of the United States, "Why were you so scrupulously neutral, so benignly dumb?" His main contention was to the effect that the religious leaders of this country had been altogether negligent of their duty in the present world struggle, and that the churches were small potatoes and few in a hill.

It has been regarded as very good form in certain quarters to cast aspersion upon the ministers of the Gospel. When the war came men began to ask, sometimes with a sneer, and sometimes with a look of pain, "Why did not Christianity prevent the war?" It never seemed to occur to anyone to ask, "Why did not Science prevent the war?" No one supposed that Science would or could. It was the most scientific nation on earth which brought on the war.

It never occurred to anyone to ask, "Why did not Big Business, or the Newspapers, or the Universities prevent the war?" No one supposed that commerce or the press or education could avert such disasters. These useful forms of social energy are not strong enough. They do not go deep enough in their hold upon the lives of men to curb those forces of evil which let loose upon the world this frightful war. It was a magnificent tribute which men paid to the might of spiritual forces when they asked, sometimes wistfully, and sometimes scornfully, "Why did not Christianity prevent the war?"

The terrible events of the last four years have taught the world a few lessons which it will not soon forget. They have shown us the utter impotence of certain forces in which some shortsighted people were inclined to put their whole trust: The little toy gods of the Amorites—Evolution, with a capital E, not as the designation of a method which all intelligent people recognize, but as a kind of home-made deity operating on its own behalf! The Zeitgeist, the Spirit of the Age, all in capitals! The "Cosmic Urge," whatever that pretentious phrase may mean in the mouths of those who use it in grandiloquent fashion! The "Stream of Progress," the idea that there are certain resident forces in the physical order itself which make inevitably for human well-being and advance quite apart from any thought of God!

All these have shown themselves no more able to safeguard the welfare of society than so many stone images. They broke down utterly in the presence of those forces of evil which now menace the very fabric of civilization. The forces of self-interest unhallowed and undirected by any finer forms of spiritual energy have covered a whole continent with grief and pain. They have written a most impressive commentary upon that word of the ancient prophet, "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." Men are saying on all sides that unless hope is to be found in religion, in the action of the spirit of the Living God upon the lives of men, then hope there is none. What other guarantee have we that the greed and the lust, the hatred and the ambition of wrong-hearted men may not again wreck the hopes of the race!

But still that question presses for an answer—Why did not these spiritual forces for which Christianity stands prevent the war? I have my own idea about that. It was because we did not have enough of Christianity on hand in those fateful summer days of 1914, and what we had was not always of the right sort. In certain countries the churches had been emphasizing the personal and private virtues of sobriety, chastity, kindliness and the like; they had been preparing the souls of men for residence in a blessed Hereafter. But they had not given adequate attention to the organized life of men in political and economic relations. They had not sufficiently exalted the weightier matters of justice, mercy and truth in the social organism. These things they ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone.

The founder of our faith in the first public address he gave there in the synagogue at Nazareth struck the social note clearly and firmly. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, to set at liberty them that are bruised, and to proclaim"—in all the high places of the organized life of the race—"the acceptable year of the Lord."

This was the platform on which he stood. This indicated the spirit and method of his mission. Organized and corporate righteousness was to be an essential element in the Gospel of the Son of God. The leaders of our Christian faith should have been voicing that same demand for social righteousness all the way from Berlin to Bagdad, and from London to the uttermost parts of the earth. The only Christianity which can avert similar disaster in the future is that Christianity which, like the Apostles of old, goes everywhere, preaching and practising the Gospel of the Kingdom, the sway and rule of the Divine Spirit in all the affairs of men.

It was highly significant, however, that the one nation in Europe which had gone farthest toward an atheistic materialism, toward a philosophy of force, a complete reliance upon physical efficiency and mental cleverness quite apart from any moral considerations, toward a flat indifference to all those manifestations of the religious spirit which are found in public worship, in missionary effort, and in the cultivation of a humble, devout spirit—it was the nation which had gone farthest in that direction which did more than any other nation to bring on the war.

And, conversely, it was that nation which had gone farther than any other nation in Europe toward making the religion of Jesus Christ a power for good in public and in private life which did more than any other single nation in those fateful July days to avert the war, and when war came it was that same nation which did more than any other nation to resist the encroachments of lawlessness and crime as we have seen them in Belgium and in northern France. We have had abundant reason to thank God for the Christianity there was in the lives of such men as Herbert H. Asquith, Arthur J. Balfour, and David Lloyd George, and in the lives of the brave men and women who have nobly sustained them in their righteous contention. We could only have wished that the world had been possessed of a hundred times as much of that sort of Christianity; that would have prevented the war.

And when war came these spiritual forces still had something to say for themselves. Christianity had been pressing home upon the hearts of men those more vital principles until nine-tenths of all the earth was ashamed of the war. Not a single nation was willing to stand up and accept responsibility for bringing it on—not even Germany. That military caste in Potsdam has tried by all manner of intellectual shuffling to save its face by seeking to make it appear to its own people that the war was one of self-defense thrust upon them by unscrupulous enemies. The claim was so absurd that the whole world laughed it to scorn, even before the striking revelations were made by Prince Lichnowsky, the German ambassador at London in the summer of 1914. The effort did, however, serve to make plain the fact that the German Government has not entirely lost the power of being ashamed of itself.

One hundred years ago it was not so. The Napoleonic wars dragged out their weary length for twenty-two sad years, but it never occurred to Napoleon or to France to apologize for those wars which were, for the most part, frankly wars of aggression and conquest.

War was taken as a matter of course. It was costly, irrational, inhuman, then as it is now, but it did not have arrayed against it the moral sense of the race as that moral sense has come to be arrayed against this method of settling international difficulties in this twentieth century. In these days war is looked upon by all right-minded nations as the devil's own business, only to be accepted by right-minded nations as a last dire necessity when thrust upon them by governments which scruple not at either honor or right. It is something for the spiritual forces of earth to have accomplished that.

Moreover, when the war came never before in all its history had the world seen so much done in the way of humane service. It has been done to relieve the pain of wounded soldiers and to meet the necessities of those helpless people whose homes have been destroyed by the ravages of war. It has all been done in the name of the Red Cross—the name is significant, as is the spirit behind it. It is the flowering out, not of Buddhism or Mohammedanism, not of some fancy brand of atheism or some philosophy of force—men do not gather grapes of thorns nor figs from thistles. It is the flowering out of the religion of him who died for men upon a cross.

The people of this country alone came forward and in a single week by voluntary contributions gave one hundred millions of dollars for this humane service. Then within less than a year the same people contributed a further fund of one hundred and seventy millions of dollars for the relief of wounded soldiers and for the relief of stricken people in Belgium and Poland, in Serbia and Armenia, whose names we do not know, whose languages we cannot speak, but whose sufferings we have made our own in warmest sympathy. It was the response of a nation to the words of its Master—"I was hungry and ye fed me. I was naked and ye clothed me. I was sick and in prison and ye visited me. I was a stranger and ye took me in." It is something for the spiritual forces to have thus enthroned the spirit of humane service in the hearts of men.

More than that, never before in military history has so much been done to safeguard the moral welfare of the young men who have been called to the colors. The officers of our own army and of those armies with whom we are allied have by personal example and by public utterance struck a clear, firm note for sobriety and clean living, which cannot be matched in the history of any other war.

The Young Men's Christian Association by its work for the soldiers has leaped at a bound into a place of national and international significance. And the Young Men's Christian Association is simply the Christian church functioning in a particular way. Its honored head, John R. Mott, was converted in and is now a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Its secretaries and other workers are drawn, all of them, from the membership of our churches. And the money which makes possible its world-wide activities is given mainly by the people of the churches. The people of this country were asked for thirty-five millions of dollars, and in a single week they oversubscribed the request, giving fifty millions of dollars to carry on this fine form of Christian effort. It was the act of a nation saying to the young men under arms, "Fight your good fight but keep your faith, and finish your course with honor, that there may be laid up for every man of you a crown of rejoicing."

And more than that, the spiritual forces at work in this broad land have kept the motives of our country high and fine. We have not entered into this war with any selfish desire for conquest—as God knows our hearts, we do not covet an acre of territory belonging to any other power on earth. We have not entered this war with any sordid desire for material gain. We were already becoming disgracefully rich in the manufacture of munitions and in furnishing supplies to the belligerent nations. If they could have fought it through without our help, it would have been money in our purse to have stayed out—as it is, it will cost us no one can say how many billions of dollars. We have not entered this war in any spirit of touchiness because our national honor has been offended—it has been offended most grievously, but we are too strong and too sane to plunge a whole country into war for that.

We are not undertaking to punish Germany, greatly as we believe the present government of Germany needs punishing. We remember who it was who said, "Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord," and we are content to leave the matter of penalty in his powerful hands. We are not undertaking to dictate to the German people what sort of government they should have. We are willing they should have any sort of government they like, so long as they keep it for home consumption. We believe here that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. We confess to a frank preference for the methods of democracy, and we could wish no happier lot for any land than to live under the reign of the common people. We like to remember that in the year of our Lord 1815, Great Britain and her Allies put a certain island on the map—they put the island of St. Helena on the map by banishing to that island the disturber of the peace of Europe. And if in the year of our Lord 1919 the United States and her Allies should in similar fashion put some other island on the map by banishing to that island the present disturber of the peace of Europe, nine-tenths of all the human race would rise up and thank God.

We entered upon this war because we were not willing to stand by and allow other nations to be crippled and broken in the resistance they were offering to lawlessness and crime, and in the defense they were making for those principles of justice and freedom which are the glory of our own national history. And so we have come forward to do our part and to fill up that which is lacking in the sacrifices which other nations have been making for the sake of principle.

As I move about among my fellow citizens, north, south, east and west, these are the questions which I find engaging their minds: Is might to be allowed to usurp the place of right, or are we here to see to it that in the long run right is the only might? Is international good faith only an empty phrase, or is it a magnificent reality in the moral world to be upheld at any cost? Is that body of usages and agreements slowly built up by centuries of effort, which constitutes our international law, to be trampled under foot by any nation for the sake of some immediate advantage, or is it meant to be obeyed? Is the whole world to be permanently at the mercy of any military caste which may undertake to impose its will upon the rest of mankind by the practice of frightfulness, or is there possible some such World League of Nations as shall have both the mind and the power to keep the peace and good order of the world?

These are moral questions. They are religious questions, where there is a will of God to be ascertained and realized. And because our people have vision for the full recognition of the place spiritual forces have in the making of history, this struggle enlists the complete moral support of the nation.

It was the moral idealism of the war which brought Great Britain and all her distant colonies promptly into line the moment the moral quality of the German Government stood revealed in all its hideousness by its outrage upon Belgium. It was the moral passion of Britain which enabled her to raise by voluntary enlistment an army of more than five millions of men.

It was the moral idealism of the war which brought all sections of our own country strongly to the support of the President when the fact was made plain that it was a fight for the right of free peoples to live and move and have their being in honor. It was the moral idealism of the war which brought the choicest youth of our land, the sons of good fortune and the sons of toil, the young men of the colleges and the young men less privileged, to stand

shoulder to shoulder in this struggle for righteousness. We have seen it on the Campus here at Yale, as other men have seen it in all the colleges and universities of the land. The spirit of our youth has been nobly expressed in those lines on "The Spires of Oxford":

It was a great Christian statesman, it was William Ewart Gladstone, prime minister of Great Britain, who said more than thirty years ago, "The greatest triumph of the twentieth century will be the enthronement of the idea of public right as the governing idea in the affairs of Europe." We are here this day to assist with the last ounce of our strength and with the full might of our moral purpose in the enthronement and the coronation of that idea of public right as the governing idea in the affairs of the whole world.

The moral values which are at stake in all this national and international action have been made so clear in the fierce red light which has beat upon the world that the very conscience of the country has put on khaki. The moral sense of the whole nation has become militant. The brave men and women of this land are working and fighting for human betterment with their eyes upon that social order which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God. And because we feel that our cause is just, we feel in our arms and in our hearts, each man of us, the strength of ten.

May we not believe that this country, strong and brave, generous and hopeful, is called of God to be in its own way a Messianic nation in whose mighty unfolding life all the nations of the earth may be blessed? Hear these words of an ancient prophet and make them your own! "What people has God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon Him for? Has God assayed to take him a nation from the midst of another nation by signs, by wonders and by war, as the Lord hath done for you? Did ever a people hear the Voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire as thou hast heard? What nation has statutes and judgments so righteous as the law which I set before you this day? Keep therefore and do them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding among the nations."

It is for this country to keep its motives high and fine, to set its affections upon those principles of action which are above the dead level of self-interest, and to so bear itself in the service of the higher civilization that in its purposes and methods all the nations of the earth may be blessed.

II
GOD AND HISTORY
DOUGLAS CLYDE MACINTOSH

Most urgent among the religious problems of the day is the question as to the relation of God to the events of current history. As was to be expected, many erroneous notions are prevalent concerning divine providence and the present war. Some of these errors are owing to intellectual confusion; others, however, impress one as due to an almost wilful perversion of the impulses of religious faith. In any case, most conspicuous among the erroneous doctrines of the day with reference to divine providence is that voiced by the German Emperor, in speaking of the Teutonic triumph over disorganized Russia. His words are reported as follows: "The complete victory fills me with gratitude. It permits us to live again one of those great moments in which we can reverently admire God's hand in history. What turn events have taken is by the disposition of God." One could scarcely be blamed for inferring that the Kaiser imagines, or affects to believe, that the Almighty has entered into a favored-nation treaty of some sort with Germany. But even this would seem to fall short of what is claimed. We quote further from the same theological authority. "The year 1917 with its great battles has proved," he asserts, with almost incredible simple-mindedness, "that the German people has in the Lord of Creation above an unconditional and avowed ally on whom it can absolutely rely." This curious reversion to religious tribalism in the case of the German Emperor is not without its parallel in the belief of his subjects. Assiduously taught, as they have been, that they are fighting a justified defensive war, and praying, as they have been, for victory over their enemies, their conviction has come to be, pretty generally, what a German-American in the early days of the war expressed in these words, "If Germany doesn't win this war, there is no God!" Well, in view of what the world knows as to the causation and the conduct of this war on the part of Germany, the only answer so preposterous a doctrine deserves is that given by ex-President Taft, "Germany has mistaken the devil for God!"

But the Germans are not the only ones who are cherishing mistaken notions as to the providence of God in human affairs. We and our Allies reject the idea of a national God, and any notion of the "Lord of Creation" being our "unconditional ally." The morally perfect God is too just and impartial to have any favorites among the nations, whether Jewish, or German, or British, or American. Might does not make right, we know; and no more is might an infallible index to God's will. God is not necessarily "on the side of the heaviest battalions." On the contrary, the true God, as the God of righteousness, must be, we feel sure, on the side of right and justice, whichever side that may be. Being confident, therefore, of the justice of our cause, we feel that we have the best of reasons for believing that we are fighting on the side of God, as well as for the true well-being of humanity.

So far, good; but many among us proceed to put two and two together and find that they make five. If we are on the side of human rights and the will of God, and if God is sufficient for our religious needs, is it not clear that we may be absolutely certain of winning the war, whatever temporary reverses may have to be encountered? Moreover, especially since we have had our days of prayer for victory, are we not entitled to sing,

Indeed, so satisfied are we with the logic of our position that multitudes of us would agree with the sentiment expressed by a British-American in the early days of the war, "If Germany wins this war, there is no God."

But there are reasons for doubting the correctness of this view. Right

makes God's will, surely enough; but is it certain that the side whose cause is just will win the war, simply because it is the side of right and of God? Ultimately, we may be sure, right must prevail, for wrong is not the sort of thing that can permanently succeed; it contains within itself the germs of its own ultimate destruction. But nothing in history can be surer than that this ultimate judgment upon evil does not necessarily involve the defeat of all unjustified military undertakings. The side with the greater moral justification has not always won its battles, nor even its wars. It is not enough to have justice on our side; we must use our might on the side of right. Right has to be worked for, and sometimes it has to be fought for. That is the kind of world that—not unfortunately for our development, probably—we are living in. And the fighting is no sham battle. Its issue is not predetermined. It is being decided while the fighting is going on.

Moreover, with reference to prayer as a military factor, it is only fair to note that in the present war many sincere and believing prayers for victory have been offered on both sides. It is not intended to deny that religion of a certain sort is an important military factor; sincere and believing prayer for a cause that is regarded as sacred and just undoubtedly helps morale, both in the army and throughout the nation. But it is a factor which in this war has operated on both sides. Man has the capacity for misusing not only physical, but even spiritual forces. But, on the other hand, when prayer and religious faith encourage an easy-going attitude, and are thus made to some extent a substitute for effort, such prayer and faith cannot but prove a serious military hindrance, no matter how just the cause may be that they are designed to support. They may even conceivably make enough of a difference on the wrong side to lead to the defeat of righteousness.

These notions as to God's providence in war, which we have criticized as manifestly mistaken and dangerously misleading, are symptomatic of confused and muddy thinking on the whole subject of the providence of God in human history. How does God secure his adequate providential control of the course of history? One theory is that he has secured it by having absolutely predetermined from the beginning all events of nature and history, so that all process is the simple unfolding of what has been eternally decreed. There are the strongest ethical and religious reasons for refusing to accept this unproved and unprovable dogma. On the one hand, it would mean that man's consciousness of free agency and moral responsibility would have to be regarded as quite illusory, since what has been decided and made inevitable before man's life began cannot have been originated by man himself. On the other hand, this predestination doctrine would mean that God should be regarded as the real and responsible cause of all evil, including what we call human sin. No such God would be moral enough to be trustworthy or deserving of human adoration.

Another theory as to how God secures his adequate providential control of the course of events is that it is by various sorts of arbitrary or unconditioned interventions in external nature, as well as in human life, in order to realize the ends he may desire to accomplish from time to time. It has often been suggested, for instance, that a miracle of this sort took place at the Marne, preventing the German entry into Paris. But this theory is open to the objection that it raises three unanswerable questions. In the first place, how can we be sure that such interventions have taken place, particularly in the external world? How do you suppose it will ever be established sufficiently for confident rational belief, that only by special miracle were the German armies turned back from Paris in 1914? In the second place, if such special miraculous interventions do take place for the sake of preventing evil, why do they not take place oftener, especially in these times of unprecedented disaster to human life? A miracle like that of the Marne, such as would have turned the Turks back from the helpless Armenians, would have been much appreciated. But, for a third question, if such miracles were to take place as often as this theory of providence would seem to call for, what would become of the order of nature, and how could man learn what to expect, or how to adjust himself to his environment?

As against these theories of absolute predetermination and arbitrary intervention, we may point out that God secures his adequate providential control of the course of history in two principal ways, viz., by enough predetermination of events to give man a dependable universe to live in and learn from, and by enough intervention to admit of a response to man's need of the religious experience of salvation, that is, of being inwardly or spiritually prepared to meet in the right way and with triumphant spirit the very worst that the future may bring. The predetermined order of the laws of nature and mind exhibits the general providence of God. By means of this order, or in the light of consequences, God is teaching man both science and morality, that is, how to adapt means to the realization of ends, and what ideals and principles of action must be employed if the most desirable results are to be obtained. The "intervention enough" of which we spoke—if indeed it is to be called intervention—or, in other words, the response of the divine Reality to the right religious attitude on the part of man, is an exhibition of the special providence of God. When one has found the right relation to God and gained access to the divine power for the inner life, one is virtually prepared for whatever can happen to him. But, as we have indicated, his preparedness is primarily inner, spiritual. He is in a position to meet danger with moral courage, to gain the victory over temptation; to make the most of opportunities for service; to endure hardship, pain and privation, as a good soldier, with patience and cheerfulness; to face death—his own or that of others—and whatever there may be after death, with faith and equanimity.

There are two possible ways, then, in which God may exercise his providence in the events of human history. There is his shorter and preferred method, and his longer and more roundabout method. If the individuals concerned come into the right relation to God, there is the best possible guarantee that they will be made ready for all there may be for them to do and to experience, and thus conditions will be most favorable for the speedy realization of the will of God. But if this shorter, preferred method cannot be employed, because men fail to rise to the occasion as they might if they would rightly relate themselves to God, the divine providence will still be exercised, although necessarily in the less desirable, more roundabout way. God will let man choose the wrong way, through thoughtlessness or wilfulness, and then let him take the bitter consequences of failure, that he may finally learn to guard against similar mistakes and faults in the future.

Let us now return to the more particular question of the relation of the providence of God to the present war. Before discussing again the question with which we started, viz., as to the final outcome of the conflict, we may deal with some other aspects of the problem. In the light of what has been said of the two possible methods of divine providence, it may be denied that the war was providentially caused by God in order to curb other evils, such as softness and idleness, or the selfish pursuit of wealth and pleasure, or drunkenness and vice, or thoughtlessness and irreligion. It is true enough that in the face of war conditions some of these evils have been decreased, and the martial qualities of self-sacrificing courage and fortitude have been stimulated. But it is notoriously true that the advent of war introduces a host of evils, in some cases necessarily, in others almost as inevitably. Drunkenness tends

to increase greatly, unless stern measures are taken for its repression. Vice, with the resulting transmissible diseases, ordinarily becomes much more prevalent. Hatred, cruelty, and even the most fiendish brutality are given ample opportunity to develop, and in many instances they become relatively fixed attitudes and attributes of character. So far from the biologically fittest tending to survive, under modern war conditions these are the very ones who, for the most part and to the incalculable detriment of the future of the race, are killed off, even granting that of those who are "fit" enough to get to the front, the weakest are those who have the poorest chance of survival. And finally, when the stress of war conditions becomes acute, innumerable enterprises for social betterment are constrained to be given up, at least for the time being. In view, then, of all this, not to dwell upon the unspeakable suffering, physical and mental, on the part not only of combatants, but of noncombatants as well, and considering the merely problematical nature of the good to which the crisis involved in a state of war may prove a stimulus, it must be regarded as incredible that a God good enough and wise enough to be worthy of absolute dependence and worship could have ordered so stupendous a catastrophe as a possible means of human salvation. Neither is it reasonable to suppose that God is prolonging the war, in order that some social evils, such as drunkenness, may be eradicated before victory is finally secured. This might, perhaps, be the outcome, if the war were greatly prolonged; but it could not be at all certain beforehand that any such improvement would be permanent enough to offset the evils involved in the continuation of the war. We cannot suppose anyone who was wise enough and good enough to be God would be so far below our best human standards as to will either the existence or the continuation of the war as a whole, with all its attendant evils, in order that final good might abound. Any God who might be thought of as doing so would be a false God; his condemnation would be just.

Understanding, then, that in so far as human hatred, selfishness and stupidity have been factors in leading to the war, it has been originated, not by the will or in the providence of God, but against his will and providence; understanding also that in so far as it has been prolonged by human inefficiency or stupidity, or by the efficiency of evil wills, or of wills in the service of wrong, its continuation has not been in accordance with but in opposition to his will and providence, let us turn to the more positive aspect of the divine providence in connection with the war. It may be said to begin with, that in so far as going into this war has been correctly judged by any party to it to be the necessary alternative to national perfidy, or ignoble servitude, or any other evil greater than those involved in passing through the ordeal of war, and in so far as the task has been accepted as a solemn duty and entered upon in brave and self-sacrificing spirit, the act of going to war is to be regarded as in accord with the will of God. Indeed, if we may regard the divine spirit as immanent where we find the divine qualities present in human life, we may go further and say that such righteous participation in the war is the work of God within the soul of man, fighting against the forces of evil. Moreover, in so far as the war is prolonged by the fortitude of men of good intentions and their fidelity to a just cause, the war may similarly be said to be prolonged in accord with the will and even by the work of God in and through the good will and work of men.

But of providence in relation to the war as a whole, it can only be said that man's evil choice has compelled God to use the long, roundabout method. It is the second best method, although the best possible under the circumstances. The sinful choices of men and nations were not, of course, divinely predetermined. What has been divinely predetermined, we may well believe, is the law-abiding order of nature and of individual and social mind, according to which the disasters and sufferings incidental to war are the inevitable consequences of certain forms of individual and corporate wrong doing. In this roundabout way certain reforms may be providentially forced upon the nations by the war. The evil consequences of certain former evils tend to be more acutely felt under the strain and stress of severe and prolonged warfare. Let us suppose that in order to win the war we and our Allies may yet find it necessary to take drastic steps to eradicate drunkenness with its attendant evils, or even to prohibit the waste of food-stuffs and fuel involved in the manufacture of alcoholic beverages. This would not mean that the war had been divinely caused in order to realize this end, but only that it was and always is the divine will that man should learn the lessons of the law of consequences, which lessons are in some instances more readily learned in time of war.

But what God is teaching most directly through the law of consequences in connection with the war is the necessity of correcting certain immoral international relations. He is teaching the nations through bitter experience how imperative are international righteousness and some practicable and adequately democratic scheme of world-government.

But we must not close our eyes to the possibility that through our failure to do our part, God may be forced to take the long, sad, roundabout way of exercising his providence in connection with the end, as he had to in the beginning of the war. What we must wake up to is this, that in spite of the justice of our cause, in spite of its being the cause of humanity and in essential accord with the will of God, and in spite of our days of prayer and our optimistic religious faith, Germany may win this war! If our consciousness of being right and our religious optimism make us so complacent that we shall fail to exert our utmost strength on behalf of our righteous cause, they may be the very factors that will turn the tide of war against us. We have resources enough for the winning of victory. If we fail it will be a moral failure. If we fail to rise to the moral demands of this great occasion, God may have to let us fail to win the war and then learn what we can from the bitter consequences of this failure. We and future generations may have to learn through tragic experience how imperative it is that right be not left to enforce itself, but that we devote our full might to the cause of right, and that before it is too late.

At the time of writing these words—in the early days of May, 1918—it seems not yet too late, however critical the situation, for the winning of victory for the cause of liberty and justice. But the surest way of providing for success would be for all who recognize the right so to surrender themselves to the will of God for self-sacrificing service, and so to depend upon the indwelling power of God for inner preparedness for whatever may have to be faced and whatever may have to be done, that their whole might may be made use of in this warfare for the right. Our primary need is morale—morale in the government, morale in the shipyards, morale in the munitions factories, morale among all our people in their business and home life, as well as fighting spirit in our army and navy abroad. Enough religion of the right sort may make enough difference in morale to make all the difference between defeat and victory as the outcome of this war. And if in this way victory for the right should come as a result of religion, it would be not only a crowning example of the short and preferred method of divine providence; it would be, literally speaking, victory by the Grace of God.

In any case, the situation for the Western Allies is such that neither faith without works nor works without faith can accomplish what waits to be done. There must be, if we would win, faith and works together.

Before leaving this topic of God and

history, a word may be said on the question of what, on this interpretation of providence, we may expect to be the final outcome of this war for the future of the race. Will the result be more harm than good, or more good than harm? It is very certain that the war will need to be the occasion of an immense amount of good to balance up to the race the evils that have been involved in it thus far and that will be involved in its prolongation. Much possible evil will be avoided if the immoral Prussian militaristic ideal is finally crushed. Moreover, there will be the tendency for humanity to learn, at least temporarily and as an intellectual conviction, the undesirability of war and of the conditions that make for war. But attention and moral effort will be necessary to retain this lesson with sufficient impressiveness, and to put it into effect, and the best power of thought will be needed to determine just how this putting it into effect may be most fully and lastingly secured. There seems real danger that the human race on earth will be permanently poorer and worse off, spiritually and socially as well as biologically and economically, as a result of this nearest approach to racial suicide. Undoubtedly it will be so, if the nations fail to learn and to put into effect the lesson of the necessity of international righteousness and a just and efficient system of world-government.

It is perhaps still possible for the race to learn enough from this period of strife and carnage for the resultant good to out-balance the total evil. But even then no one would have the right to credit the war with having been the means of greater good than could have been accomplished without it. All its moral evil at any rate will be regrettable forever. And the only possible way of guaranteeing beforehand greater good than evil as an outcome of the war, even supposing the side of justice and liberty to be victorious, will be for individuals and groups so to relate themselves to truth, to right and to God that flagrantly immoral international relations will become practically impossible. The only safety of the race lies in an essentially Christian international morality, and the only adequate guarantee of this is an essentially Christian personal religion. The only failure of essential Christianity of which the war may fairly be regarded as evidence was its failure to be given an adequate trial; which means, of course, not a failure of Christianity as an ethical or as a religious system, but a failure of the human will to be adequately Christian.

III
THE CHRISTIAN HOPE IN TIMES OF WAR
FRANK CHAMBERLIN PORTER

Of Paul's three things that abide, hope is the one of which we are now most conscious of our need. Never before in our experience has hope been so much the center of our inner life and the heart of our religion. Our mood alternates between hope and depression, hope and fear; and we look to our religion to make hope strong, and turn to our sacred book to seek secure grounds and satisfying expressions for our hope. We hope for the winning of the war. We hope for the safety and the home-coming of those we love. We hope for a new world-order organized to make war impossible, inspired by a spirit of coöperation and good will between classes and between nations. We hope as never before for an assured and abundant life after death. We put these hopes in some relation to each other, weighing one against another, subordinating one to another. And when we seek their right relationship and look for their ultimate grounds, we ask what Christianity has to say and to do about them. What is Christian in these hopes that are filling the mind and heart of the world? The importance of this question is very great. The future of the world depends on the truth and the strength of the hopes that now inspire and direct men's purposes and efforts. The future of the Christian religion turns in no small measure on its ability now to keep the hope of mankind high and pure, free from self-seeking and from material interests, and true to the ultimate reality of things, and to give this hope confidence and prevailing strength.

Christians are not at one over the question what, as Christians, they have a right to hope for. Most evidently is this the case between us and our enemy. We differ in things hoped for; and it is perhaps not too much to say that the truth of our hope and the strength of our hope constitute and measure our spiritual equipment for the winning of the war. The Germans are fighting for their hope of national expansion and domination, for their dream of a new world empire of the chosen and fit people of God. We cannot question the strength of this hope of theirs, and its powerful influence toward bringing itself to realization. We and our Allies are resisting these nationalistic and arrogant hopes, and are appealing to the contrary hope of an inclusive human brotherhood, in which good will shall prevail between nations, and hence right and peace. The hope that is truer, more in accordance with the nature of things, the nature of man, the will of God, and the hope that is most deeply felt and most loyally served, with most conviction and most sacrifice, will prevail in the end. That is the hope that will come true. Ours is inevitably a religious hope, for it is universal in range, big as the world, and needs not only every power of ours but the Power not ourselves to bring it about. It is for every one who holds it intensely, in a real sense, a hope in God and a hope for God. But is it certain that it is also a Christian hope, a hope in Christ and a hope for Christ?

There are, not only between us and our enemy, but among ourselves, radical differences as to what a Christian should hope for in the present world crisis. There are those who search the Scriptures for predictions of the Kaiser and his overthrow, and see in the anti-Christian philosophy and in the anti-Christian arrogance and cruelty of his militaristic state, a sign that the end of this evil world-age is near, and that Christ will come quickly and set up his reign on earth. And there are those to whom such literalism in the use of Scripture and such externality in the hope for Christ's coming are intellectually impossible and untrue, and religiously harmful. To them the meaning of the Bible is to be found in the tendency and spirit of its teachings, and their hope is for the presence and rule of the spirit of Christ and the dominance of his principles in the common life of humanity. This involves a radical difference in the hope of Christians for a new world, a new human society, and in the ways in which this hope will affect their motives and efforts. There are also deep-going differences in regard to the hope for a life after death. That many are looking eagerly for material, "scientific" proof through physical communications from the dead, while many, on the other hand, are feeling that immortality belongs to the race and not to the individual, and that the sacrifice of the young and the strong finds its only and sufficient end and justification in the new humanity they die to create, indicates that Christ has not yet brought life and immortality to clear light for humanity. Such differences are not to be desired. If Christianity is to be the religion of the present eager and pressing hopes of mankind and give these hopes elevation, truth, and victorious endurance and enthusiasm, Christians should be clear and united in the contents and character of their hope.

Among these hopes of mankind there can be no doubt which one has the first place in the minds of the intellectual leaders and the actual rulers of the allied nations. Never before has a truly prophetic note been so clearly sounded by leading men of affairs, and by the press and the leaders of public opinion, as well as by the poets and preachers to whom prophecy naturally belongs. From all sides we have expressions of a hope which four years ago was judged to be the dream of impractical idealists, the hope for a new order of human life, in

which good will and mutual coöperation shall take the place of suspicion and competitive struggle. We need not be blind to whatever motives of self-interest may have entered into the action of this or that one of our Allies in undertaking the war. The outstanding fact remains that while the German Government appeals to the self-assertion of the German State and seeks its aggrandizement through force at the expense of its neighbors, the allied governments appeal to national self-sacrifice for the sake of international redemption. It is to this appeal on behalf of the rights, the freedom, the happiness of mankind, that our soldiers respond; for humanity, not for national gain, that our peoples are prepared to give and to suffer. This hope takes concrete form in the word Democracy, and in the idea of a League or Federation of free, democratic nations, bound together for the defense of human rights, for coöperation in all that concerns human welfare and progress, and the repression of every attack upon the peace of the world. So viewed the war becomes definitely a war to end war, and as such it is engaged in and supported by peace-loving peoples, against the nation that glorifies war and would perpetuate it.

Is this great hope Christian? Is Christianity the religion which a hope so high and so difficult needs if it is to keep its height amid the many influences that tend to lower it, and if it is to prove possible and become actual in spite of powerful forces that work against it? It is not self-evident that Christianity will prove equal to this which is clearly the greatest task that the present imposes upon it. There are many who doubt its adequacy; many who see that it has brought division and warfare, and think it unfitted to create unity; many who see that it has withdrawn from the world, and think it unadapted to provide the moral principles and spiritual energies of the new social and political world-order. It is for us who believe in the sufficiency of Christ to prove that he alone provides those religious and moral principles and forces without which no democracy, still less any federation of democracies, can stand.

The ideal of human brotherhood which the war has revealed as the deepest desire and faith of men and has put before us as a goal that we must now set out to reach is of course old in its beginnings, and for a generation it has been taking ever stronger hold on the minds of men. Prophetic utterances of this ideal could be quoted in abundance. A striking example is a saying of Alexander Dumas in 1893: "I believe our world is about to begin to realize the words 'Love one another,' without, however, being concerned whether a man or a God uttered them.... Mankind, which does nothing moderately, is about to be seized with a frenzy, a madness, of love." And Tolstoy's comment on this at the time of the Russian revolution, in 1905: "I believe that this thought, however strange the expression, 'seized with a frenzy of love,' may seem, is perfectly true and is felt more or less clearly by all men of our day. A time must come when love, which forms the fundamental essence of the soul, will take the place natural to it in the life of mankind, and will become the chief basis of the relations between man and man. That time is coming; it is at hand."

The world war seems like a violent contradiction of the truth of such prophecies. It seems for the time to have made love inadequate as a summing up of morals and religion. We almost feel that the Sermon on the Mount must be kept in reserve for other times. The war has made love itself a hope. We renounce it for a time that we may resist a power that threatens to destroy it altogether and put selfishness and cruelty on the throne of the world. But the war has not in fact disproved the faith that God is love and that love is the supreme law and power among men. It has made mankind more conscious of its ideal of community and fellowship, and seems to be carrying us faster toward the realization of human brotherhood than peace and prosperity were doing. The greatest and most widely approved sentences of President Wilson's war papers are those that give expression to "what the thinking peoples of the world desire, with their longing hope for justice and for social freedom and opportunity." On the anniversary of our entering the war, Gilbert Murray declared that England needed our help in battle, but even more in upholding their true faith. "Americans instinctively believe ... in freedom, peace, democracy, arbitration, and international good will.... When the war is over there will be a world to rebuild, and the only principles on which to rebuild it are these principles." Germany denies the truth of these principles, but in doing so it denies human nature and derives from physical nature a state-ethics of struggle and the survival of the strong. It denies the prophet of Galilee, and looks for its example to Rome. Sometimes it has seemed as if the German denial of humanity and affirmation of material and brute force were in danger of justifying itself by the only test they admit, that of physical success. Where can we look for help toward a living faith in liberty and brotherhood over against the powerful demonstration we are offered of faith in material force and in the progress of nations through aggression and tyranny? We must look no doubt first of all to our own souls and oppose to the faith in physical and animal nature a faith in human nature and in the truth of its best instincts and ideals; and then to those who know best and most worthily express the human soul and the reality of its spiritual possessions. Not from the Bible alone, and not only from Christ are such reassuring testimonies to be gained; and we are not renouncing the unique value of the Christian religion when we find that the faith and hope which it teaches are the faith and the hope of the universal heart of man.

The poet laureate of England made his special contribution to his nation's needs in time of war in the anthology, "The Spirit of Man." "Our country," he says, "is called of God to stand for the truth of man's hope." "Truly it is the hope of man's great desire, the desire for brotherhood and universal peace to men of good will, that is at stake in this struggle." From the miseries and slaughter and hate of war, "we can turn," he says, "to seek comfort only in the quiet confidence of our souls; and we look instinctively to the seers and poets of mankind, whose sayings are the oracles and prophecies of loveliness and loving kindness." They help us gain the conviction our time most needs, "that spirituality is the basis and foundation of human life," that "man is a spiritual being, and the proper work of his mind is to interpret the world according to his higher nature, and to conquer the material aspects of the world so as to bring them into submission to the spirit."

But the Bible also is a witness to just these convictions and contains prophecies of just such hopes. Bridges includes very few citations from the Bible, chiefly because it is so well known, but also because "this familiarity implies deep-rooted associations, which would be likely to distort the context." Alas, for these associations, for the interpretations that confuse and the prejudices that blind the readers of the greatest literature of spirituality and of hope which the world contains. In spite of this, the Bible will be looked to by multitudes for guidance and support in those hopes on which the future turns, while the poet's fine work will be prized by few. It is only too possible to fail to find in the Bible its testimony to that "hope of man's great desire of brotherhood and peace" which constitutes the most living religion of our time; and this failure will mean loss to the hope itself of its most powerful support, and loss to the Christian religion of contact and sympathy with the most urgent spiritual need and aspiration of men today.

The Bible does contain various and contradictory hopes, and can encourage expectations that are not in accordance with the best conscience of our age, nor with

our knowledge of the way in which human progress is achieved. But there is nothing more instructive than the relation of these different hopes to each other as the historian understands them and there is nothing more worthy and inspiring than the language in which the most spiritual and the most universal of these hopes are expressed.

The original hope of the religion of Israel was that involved in the unique and exclusive relation between the nation Israel and Yahweh, its God. It was the hope of Israel's prosperity and power through the certain favor of Yahweh, and his intervening help in times of danger, most of all his help in the nation's wars. These were "the Wars of Yahweh." Both the strength and the defect of the Old Testament religion lie in this fundamental faith, the peculiarity and exclusiveness of the relation between Israel and its God. It inspired its early victories and created the kingdom of David. It sustained the nation amid calamities and enabled it to maintain itself when other small nations disappeared before the great world empires, and while these also came and passed. It was a natural and not unreasonable faith for its time, so long as Yahweh was only Israel's national God, even though he was believed to be better and stronger than the gods of other nations and destined to triumph over them; but when Israel's God was believed to be the one and only God of all the world the doctrine of Israel as his peculiar people must either lead to false claims and have bad effects upon temper and conduct, or else be reinterpreted and radically changed. Nothing can be more instructive as to the nature of religious hope than to follow out two main lines of development by which an adjustment was attempted between this primitive nationalism and the later, larger thought of God and the world.

The great prophets before the exile, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and after exile Deutero-Isaiah, were those through whom the faith was attained that Yahweh is the one and only God; and the modification of the national exclusiveness of Israel which they made was in the direction of its complete subordination to ethical and spiritual ideals. The one God of all was the God of righteousness, and of Israel only on the condition and for the end of righteousness. But an ethical in place of a national relation to God meant, if it was carried through consistently, a universal relation of God to all men as individuals, instead of a peculiar relation to one favored nation. Consistency was not reached, yet glimpses, sometimes clear momentary visions, of this individual, universal, ethical religion are to be found in the great prophets; and in them the Old Testament religion reaches its height. It is the prophetic denial of national claims and hopes, not the older and always prevalent assertion of them, that constitutes the reality and truth of the Old Testament hope. It is hope for Yahweh and his righteousness, not for Israel and its glory. It finds its highest expression in such predictions as Isaiah's promise of security to the humble and believing; and Jeremiah's expectation of the time when no special revelation will make known the will of God to a chosen few, but when everyone will have his own inward knowledge of God; and Ezekiel's belief that the new inward nature which every man requires if he is to do that will of God which he knows, will be achieved not only by his own free moral choice (18:31), but also by the divine spirit, the transforming presence and power of God (36:26, 27); and in Deutero-Isaiah's interpretation of the peculiar relation of Israel to the one God of all the world as that of Yahweh's Servant, his prophet to all nations, who brings light to the heathen and deliverance from bondage, and who effects this ministry even through his own shame and suffering for others' sins.

But there was a second still later way of adjusting the original nationalism of Israel's faith and hope to monotheism and the conception of a unity in nature and history; and this proved easier and more popular than the other. In late prophecy and apocalypse the hope of Israel's national and worldly prosperity and power takes on an unearthly character. Instead of righteousness and spirituality as in the earlier prophets, transcendence and heavenliness interpret or displace the primitive hope. The heavenly region to which apocalyptic prophecy transferred Israel's hope was a refinement of the physical, but it was still essentially physical, a region whose riches could be as sensibly enjoyed and as selfishly desired as the palace and throne of an earthly kingdom. The heavenly powers by which this hope was to be realized were divine, yet they were essentially material forces. The prophetic hopes at their highest rest on human nature at its highest, on the conscience and reason of man recognized as the will and thought of God. But the apocalyptic hope, though it strains language to magnify the contrast between its two worlds, the earthly and the heavenly, the present and the future, does not succeed in making them really different. Supernaturalism always fails to find the real difference between man and God and so the way in which the difference is to be overcome. This supernaturalism of the apocalypse is seen also in the ways in which the hope is revealed. The seer interprets in literal or artful ways the language of prophetic scriptures regarded as divine oracles, or he is translated in ecstasy to heaven and shown the secrets of the upper world and the future. The coming of this new heavenly world men may pray for, and the time of its coming they may seek to discover from sacred writings and traditions and from the signs of the times, but only divine powers can bring this evil world to an end, and only from heaven where they already are can descend, in heaven's own time and way, the scenery and the actors in the last great drama of history. There is in this hope no strong ethical appeal, no prevailing sense that in the inward region of the heart and in its instincts and desires and wills, God's presence is to be found and his work for man experienced. Moreover this hope for a new heavenly world means no hope for the present world. It is evil and must grow more evil until God intervenes to destroy it and brings down from heaven the realm of good. To renounce the world and withdraw from it is the course of wisdom and holiness. As a way of adjusting Israel's national hope to monotheism it is not comparable with the prophetic way of ethics and inwardness. It is still Israel, or the true Israel, that is to inherit the world to come; and at its coming the world empire must first of all be overthrown, for the new kingdom, heavenly and supernatural though it is, is enough like the kingdom of Greece or of Rome to require its fall and to take its place. The apocalyptic hope is the end of Old Testament prophecy, but not its height. It was no doubt in some sense fitted for its times, hard times, always, when the evils of life seemed irremediable. It knew the need of divine help, and it encouraged endurance and fidelity even to death. But it was not grounded in the nature of men, and it was mistaken in its conception of the nature of the world. It never quite escapes this inherent falseness and confusion in its fundamental assumptions.

It cannot be hard to pass judgment on the relative value of these three main hopes of the Old Testament. The primitive hope for God's special favor to his own peculiar people who are destined to have dominion over all others would have seemed, before the war, safely outgrown by humanity. If the world still needed a demonstration of the danger and falsity of any nation's belief in its peculiar excellence and in its exclusive right and destiny to rule, and the intolerable morals and preposterous religion that finally result from such claims, the aggressors in the present war have supplied it, and the rest of the world is united in the resolve that no further demonstration of this hope be undertaken. The early histories of the Old Testament and parts of its laws, its psalms and even its prophecies, contain expressions

of just this belief in a peculiar people, for whom God made the world, and to whom the right belongs, secured by the divine favor and promise, to rule over all other nations. Some of the inferences and consequences of this faith that now shock the world, something of the hatred and the cruelty toward foreign peoples, the exaltation of vengeance, the arrogance and the inhumanity, find unreserved expression in this literature. But the meaning of the Old Testament is to be found in the denial and overcoming of this doctrine and of its results.

In regard to the two ways in which this denial and correction were chiefly undertaken, there can be no question where the greater value and truth are to be found. The prophet's criticism of the national hope and reinterpretation of it as the hope for righteousness really struck at the heart of the materialism and selfishness of the popular national hope, its false pride and its denial of trust and of good will toward mankind. But the apocalyptic modification of the older hope, though it fitted it for a wider view of the world and of history and a deeper experience of the power of evil, did not correct those moral and spiritual faults which were inherent in the older hope. There is no generosity, no faith in human nature, no sense of the present prevailing rule of God and power of good, no thought of the "secret of inwardness" and "the method of self-renouncement," in the religion of the apocalypse. The righteous kernel of Judaism, the holy few who feared the Lord, expected an invasion of divine forces on their behalf, the destruction of their oppressors and their own elevation to angel-like natures and God-like authority and blessedness. It could hardly be expected that they would exhibit Isaiah's virtue of humility, or Jeremiah's of inwardness and satisfaction in the communion of the soul with God, or Deutero-Isaiah's impulse to turn their present lowliness to greatness by ministry to those who persecuted them and even by death for others' transgressions. The greatest of the apocalypses are no doubt the canonical ones, Daniel and Revelation; and they are great in their confidence in the divine government of the world, and in its final vindication, and in their assertion of the martyr virtues. But they do not believe in man, and in God in man, though their belief in a God above is heroic. They do not hope for the world, or find God in the world; nor do they feel that they are in any sense responsible for the evil of the world and for its salvation from evil. Righteousness and blessedness belong only to heaven, and can come only from heaven to earth, and only by an act of God which will bring the present world to a sudden end. The faults of materialism and of self-interest which belong to the naïve nationalism of Israel's beginnings are still present in the conscious and sophisticated other-worldliness of the apocalyptic hopes, and reveal the inner untruth of a supernaturalism which reckons in terms of place and time, and looks above and ahead instead of about and within for the Kingdom of God.

The post-canonical apocalypses of Judaism fall within the period beginning with the attempt of Antiochus IV to make the Jews Greeks, and the successful resistance of the Maccabees and their establishment of an independent Jewish kingdom, and ending with the Jewish-Roman wars, the destruction of Jerusalem and the suppression by Hadrian of the final Messianic, political uprising under Bar Cochba; that is, from 108 B. C. to 135 A. D. It is of the highest importance to note that Christianity took its rise in the midst of this period, and that the apocalyptic hopes which these events encouraged and which in turn partly shaped the events, formed the immediate environment and inheritance of the new religion. The question as to the nature of the hope of the New Testament becomes therefore largely the question of the place which Jewish apocalyptical expectations had in the new religion and in the mind of its founder.