NATIONAL CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO PEACE AND WAR.
THE Peace Society has of course solicited Lord Palmerston to use all his influence to prevent a collision with the American Government ; and in favour of moderation it has put forth a better letter than usual;—argued, like Mr. Bright's speech, not on the non- resistance hypothesis, but on the assumptions of the rest of the world. Christian ministers—such of them at least as have the courage to discern that the great questions of political ethics deserve a full religions examination—are examining anew the moral right of the nation to go to war under the present provocation, and one preacher of some note among the Dissenters, Mr. Newman Hall, having de- clared that the Christian duty of forgiving personal injuries applies with exactly the same significance and force to nations as to indi- viduals, has laid it down distinctly that " if for the future the law can be made plain, and obedience to it secured," we ought to pass over the affront to ourselves. Few, probably, would be inclined to dispute such a position. The nation certainly goes to war with more complacency, more hearty acrimony of temper, in order to resent a national affront as well as an injustice, than merely to redress an injus- tice. But though few people scruple to speak with something almost of epicurish eagerness of the prospect of chastising the impertinence of a long succession of American statesmen, few or none would justify a war for no better object than to "relieve" the British mind of its surcharge of fretful, vindictive impatience. If the law could be made plain, and obedience to it ensured, to-morrow, no British ministry, whatever its bias, would venture upon a war for barren glory. But it is well worth while at the present crisis to note how far the parallel between the individual and national duty of forgive- ness really holds; for the knowledge that some of our fellow-country- men do heartily condemn all war not strictly self-defensive as un- christian and vindictive, has the effect, not of shaking our resolve, but of rendering us secretly uneasy in identifying ourselves with the national cause. That Christian ethics have never been distinctly ap- plied to international morality we are quite willing to admit ; nay, conscientious people shrink from any attempt to apply them, under the uncomfortable impression that there would inevitably come some collision between Christian principle and national honour which would either force religious men to betray their nation, or patriotic men to disobey their God. This state of feeling is very unhealthy. Every man who wishes to keep both a manly faith and a manly political creed should force himself to bring the two constantly face to face.
We hold, then, that the great Christian duty of forgiveness of inkuies is expressly founded by Our Lord on the Divine forgiveness of human sin, and, in order to be of any worth, must be in essence of the same kind. Just such forgiveness as we receive from God we
are commanded by the Lord's Prayer itself to extend to man, and the parable in which the master first forgives his servant the great debt owing to him, and then retracts his forgiveness on finding that he has cast his fellow-servant into prison for a much less cause, sustains the same view. It is the Divine forgiveness of injuries which we are to
endeavour to emulate, and to embody in our treatment of each other. But in what does this consist ? Not certainly in any acquiescence in
evil, or even passive endurance of it, which no man who has any true faith ascribes for a moment to the divine government,—still less any one who accepts the Christian revelation of the spirit of God as for ever warring, with the sword that divides asunder soul and spirit, against human sin. We take it that the true distinction between Divine and human resentment is that the one is directed purely against evil as such, the other against injury as it affects our own self-love, and that it is the whole duty of Christian forgiveness to put away absolutely all the rankling of personal irritation, and to treat an enemy exactly as in impartial mood we should most approve another for treating him, were the offence directed elsewhere. Further, besides expelling all selfish motives, we are taught to deal with purely personal injuries exclusively in that way—whether it be active or passive—in which there is most hope of bringing home the sense of injustice to the mind of the aggressor. The rule of the Jewish vendetta, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," is disallowed by Christ for all time ; but the only principle substituted is to make the highest g ood—instead of the suffering—of your enemy, your true aim—as God does with those who offend Him. Sometimes this may be effected, in the case of personal injuries, by leaving the outward injustice its full swing, so that it learns to know itself—just as God permits all the evil results of human free-will to swell and accumulate till sin awakes to its true nature and becomes its own punishment. But where any except ourselves are concerned, the law must be maintained and fulfilled, lest injustice multiply and corrupt the earth.
The application of these principles to international offences seems at first sight very simple. In what affects England as a national per- sonality only, that is, as a matter of feeling and sensitive honour, we must so far as we can, forgive. On the other hand, we have no right to surrender any principle which may affect the highest interests of in- ternational intercourse for generations to come. And whatever may best tend to save and consecrate such a principle, whether the policy be sharp or gentle, is the true policy. This would seem to be the complete answer to the whole question. Yet there is really a much more difficult point quite untouched. England is not a single per- sonality. The real motives which animate her people and her states- men are exceedingly complex, and not very easy to gauge. The same practical national policy may be advocated by some from motives of Christian principle which in others is preferred for very much coarser considerations. There is no single national conscience by which to try the real spirit of the English people. It is scarcely possible to deny that this must partially affect our jmiginent of the true line of national daty. It is quite fair to say that England, if she were all she ought to be, should act one way, and yet, seeing that she is what she is, should act another way. A course of action that in one man would be ignoble, because unreal and hypo- critical, would in another be noble and Christian. Nor could we advise either, till we knew how far the higher action would really strike thetrue chord in the man's own heart. So, suppose, what is likely enough, that the leaders and great body of the English nation were brimful of what we may call honourable resentment, keenly eager to " wipe out" insult, quite unable to forgive anything like a national indignity, although by no means forgetful of the higher question of legal principle at issue— ought even the clearest-sighted man to wish, in such a case, that by a combination between a handful of true Christian politicians, if such there be, and that class of politicians who dread nothing in the war but its commercial mischief, it should be avoided ? We exceedingly doubt it. We are disposed to think that the best thing a nation can in such a case do, is to act on the highest principle which is honestly present to the mind of the leading politicians in the nation at large, even though that be not the highest principle and not the absolute Christian principle; we believe that this may be often better far for 'a people than a coarse capable of being defended on yet higher and more Christian prin- ciples, but actually favoured by the nation at large only for lower and less Christian reasons. And this is the true knot of all national ethics. There is comparatively little difficulty for any one mind in judging of its own line of duty; we know enough of ourselves to know the best that would be really sincere and bond fide in us. But it is not so with a nation. And subtle-minded Christian politicians, like Mr. Gladstone, not unfrequently rather injure the national morale by trying to colour over with their own high-toned motives a course of action which, if adopted at all, would rest in the minds of the mass of Englishmen on a very much more ignoble an' selfish class of considerations.
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