WAR AND - CHRISTIANITY.
THERE has been a good deal of discussion of late whether there is any real and essential conflict between the genius of Christianity and W ar,—in other words, whether war can be considered righteous under the Christian theory. Archbishop Manning seems to have held last Sunday that while Christianity has always aimed at putting restrictions on the use of physical force such as the pagan morality never once dreamt of impos- ing, it regards war much as it regards capital punishment, as an extreme remedy against an extreme evil, and an extreme evil which ought, at least, to involve extreme guilt ; and he interpreted the saying of our Lord, 'They that take the sword shall perish by the sword,' as a mere statement of fact, which rendered it right for the Apostles and all other missionaries of a new faith to abstain from provoking a violent and early death. But we doubt if this passage is the one on which mainly the Quaker view of Christian doctrine rests, for it comes immediately after the saying, he that has no sword let him sell his garment and buy one,' which seems to be a much stronger authority on the opposite side then the argument, addressed exclusively to an apostle, against the useless employ- ment of force on behalf of his master. The impression that Christianity discountenances all use of force rests far more, we believe, on the passage in which our Lord expressly condemns the principle of revenge than on any other: " Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil : but whosoever shall smite thee -on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you ; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven : for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." We quote the whole passage to show how entirely its drift is one in relation to interior motives rather than external actions,—the substitution for the precept of revenge, which was external in form, of a series of equivalents equally external in form, but intended to impress on the disciples the opposite state of mind. Instead of wishing to inflict on any one who had injured them an exactly equal injury, they were sedulously to discourage in their hearts every trace of the feeling of personal resentment, so as to be willing to suffer further injury rather than resent the former. The injunction to " give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn thou not away," refers equally, we believe, to the case of a personal enemy, and is meant not as an universal injunction, but as a test of complete forgiveness. Else it would hardly stand as it does between the condemnation of revenge and the exhortation to "love your enemies," and to be like him who " maketh his sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." As almost the whole Sermon on the Mount is devoted exclusively to the delinea- tion of the tree divine temper, and to the suggestion of tests of the true temper, — for instance, strict secresy to discriminate between the spirit of charity and that of ostentation,—and willingness to lose eye or ear rather than commit a deli- berate sin, as a test of the fear of sin ; so the difference between the spirit of love and that of revenge is to be tested by the willingness to bestow any kind of good on the object of offence, and even to undergo readily further injury rather than indulge the desire for retaliation. We find our Lord always using the strongest figurative language, and explaining to his disciples when he found them misunderstanding him, that " it is the spirit which quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." He told them that his flesh was the true bread without eating which they could have no eternal life; that his flesh was meat indeed and his blood drink indeed ; and when they were offended, he added the explanation we have spoken of as to his spiritual meaning. He warned his disciples of the leaven of the Pharisees, and when they said, in their matter-of-fact way, it is because we have taken no bread,' he explained that the leaven of the Pharisees, that which gave a specific flavour to all their modes of thought and speech, was hypocrisy. He told them that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God, and when he saw them aghast and dumb with astonishment, added, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God.' It is clear that vividly metapho- rical and startling forms of speech were found specially useful by our Lord for the interest which they excited in somewhat wander- ing and inattentive minds. His drift, however, was never, as far as we know, to condemn any outward form of acknowledged pro- fessional duty at all,—only to explain the divine spirit in which life should be lived.
We hold, then, that war would only be inconsistent with Christ's teaching, if it could be shown that any one spirit which he inculcates is absolutely inconsistent with a soldier's life. Is it impossible for a soldier to forgive his enemies, to pray for them that despitefully use him? If so, a soldier cannot be a Christian ; but if not, if it be quite as easy, and perhaps somewhat easier for a soldier to perform his spiritual duties towards his enemies in the field, than towards his private enemies, then there is no neces- sary inconsistency. But it will be said, How can a man really love another at whose life he is deliberately aiming ? Is it pos- sible to pray for those into whom you are plunging the bayonet ? Is it possible to pray for those who are plunging the bayonet into you V We should say, unquestionably, yes,— not only possible, but comparatively very much easier indeed, than to pray for a man who comes boring you day after day with selfish worries of a trivial kind, or for one against whom you are competing in a commercial enterprise which it is life or death to you to win. The true soldier feels real respect and pity for his enemies. He is aiming not at them, but at a particular cause through them. It is far easier to bless those who kill you than those who curse you ; and in war it is far oftener not those against whom you fight, but those with whom you fight, who curse you most liberally.
Bat there is a more formidable argument. War, as one sees, brings, almost if not quite inevitably, a whole host of moral evils with it,— ravaged land, plundered houses, oppressed citizens, murdered spies. Hatred, jealousy, and malice, if not the essentials of a battle, are ab- solute essentials of a prolonged struggle, of invasion and conquest. How, then, can war, which mast lead to the riotous development of a whole host of passions, be justified? We should answer that it is a very different thing, indeed, to show that war involves, as a moral certainty, with such creatures as we are in such a world as the present,' a whole host of moral evils, and to assert that war consists in such evils. No man may consciously sin against light to save his life or another's life ; but every man may, and must, every year, if not day, of his life, do what will, in all human pro- bability, nay,with something like moral certainty, involve a number of other beings in such sins. The man who manufacturesbeer orapirit, does what in all human probability will lead to the drunkenness of some of his fellow-creatures. The man who publishes a police re- port does what in all moral probability will involve some of his fellow-creatures in temptation and crime. The man who prosecutes& thief condemns him to almost certain deterioration in our prisons ; the man who pardons him does what he can to diminish the fear of crime and the respect for law. Just criticism is almost cer- tain to produce ill-feeling and bitterness in some one. Pane-
gyric, or even complaisance, is almost certain to produce vanity and self-sufficiency. Almsgiving corrupts the poor ; and the appearance of indifference to their sufferings hardens them and increases the chasm between class and class. It is, in short, no final objection to any sort of external life, that it involves a moral certainty of a great number of evil passions. What you have to consider, when once the question whether it is absolutely identified with those evil passions is answered in the negative, is not whether it involves a great deal of moral evil, but whether it involves more or less than the other -alternatives open to you.
Nor can it be truly said that defensive war at least, does involve more evils than, or even so many as, the submission to external ag- gression. Can it be said that in the present state of the world, there is half so much moral evil caused by a war of defence, and the lesson it teaches that a causeless and insolent aggression will be resisted with all the force of the nation oppressed, and, should that be insufficient, with a good deal of the force of other nations too, as there would be, were it known that such aggressions might be perpetrated with impunity, in consequence of the reluctance of -Christian peoples to resist them? Suppose Germany had been too non-resistant to repel the French invasion, would there not now be a host of raging passions infinitely more permanent and more fierce than even this awful war has produced? Non-resistance to aggression, practically means submission to external slavery. Do we not know enough of what slavery means to declare at once that nothing involved in war is half so evil or so lasting ? Or suppose France had tamely submitted to give up Alsace and Lorraine after .Sedan, and had refused to strike a blow for her own provinces. Would not the wrath of the inhabitants against both conquerors and conquered, the broken trust of the rest of the nation in their brother Frenchmen, the collapse of all the sense of national cohesion, the feeling that a rude threat was all that was necessary to tear up the bonds of country and dissolve the mutual obligations of society, be prolific in results far more mischievous and evil than even the international savagery of this savage war ? It is full of evil that Germans should despise and hate Frenchmen, and that Frenchmen should loathe Germans for another genera- tion, as they undoubtedly will. Would it not be far worse that, in addition to feelings of this kind hardly less strong, the French -should have learnt to despise and distrust each other, and feel that there was not enough of disinterested loyalty in that ' fraternity' of which they boast, to nerve them for a few months of stern self- sacrifice for their own people?
If we add to these general considerations that our Lord came of -a race great in war and the traditions of war, and never formally declared that a warrior could not be one of his disciples ; that he said of a Roman centurion, " I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel," without adding even a hint that his profession was inconsistent with true faith ; that another centurion was the very Sint of St. Peter's Gentile converts, and that we find no trace of 'his being called upon to give up his duties ; that St. Paul delighted to take his spiritual metaphors from the profession of the soldier, and when enjoining submission to the civil power of Rome spoke of that power as " not bearing the sword in vain,"—we think it is pretty clear that the immediate disciples of our Lord did not in the least understand him as absolutely forbidding war, and that our interpretation of his meaning in the passages in which he seems to inculcate absolute non-resistance, is not far at least, from that of his own immediate followers.
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