Religion and the WarYale University. Divinity School
Religion
Religion and the War
Yale University. Divinity School
World War, 1914-1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- Religious aspects
Is there a God, and can we actually lead men to experience him and to
grow like him? Is there any power in Jesus to save a brute and a
drunkard, a selfish worldling and a contented prig, not from a hell of
fire after death from which he is snatched by some theological
transaction, but from his degradation and meanness in the present,
until he is fit to be a husband and a father, a patriot and a friend?
Are the fruits of the Christian spirit "love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, goodness, meekness, faithfulness, and self-control,"
the qualities of character which alone can make heaven anywhere, and
without which a potential Paradise would be transformed into an actual
hell? Are the wages of sin death, or does the good man simply lose a
deal of fun and prove himself to be a foolish prig and superstitious
other-worlding? Does death end all, or are there many mansions in the
Father's house? Such are the great questions; and to them Christianity
has very definite answers, capable of being tried out in experience.
In the past much of so-called religion has seemed to thoughtful minds
remote from the facts of life, unreal, a bit queer if not abnormal. If
the flames of war are purging it from such unrealities and
abnormalities, the facts which lie at the heart of the world's faith
are being saved, yet so as by fire. The Christianity of the camp is no
pious sentimentalism, no sweet dream or unvirile worship of a "gentle
Jesus." It is a living, indubitable experience, full of strength and
of joy. Men are fighting to the death a thought and a purpose in the
German armies which Prince Lichnowsky, their own ambassador to the
British Court, characterized as "perfidy and the sin against the Holy
Ghost"; and in that fight they hunger and thirst for the power of a
religion of the Spirit, which--however the battle of bodies and of
brute force may be decided--in God's good time is bound to win the
day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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