In this great conflict on what are we to found our hopes? To what are we to look? Are we to trust only to the strength of our battleships and the perfect training of our sailors? Are we to look to the new armies produced with such marvellous skill by Lord Kitchener's patient hand? Are we to look to the three millions whose services will be asked for, and no doubt offered, in the next six weeks? No doubt we are to look to all these things; God does only help those who help themselves. But, standing before you as your Bishop, I tell you frankly that my belief in the final victory of our arms is founded on something far beyond these things. I am full of unshakable confidence and hope, because, like Archbishop Temple, I look to God. I try to say with the psalmist every morning:
"And now, Lord, what is my hope?
Truly my hope is in Thee."
"Lord, Thou had been our refuge from
one generation to another."
Notice I do not claim that God is some tribal deity who with partial favouritism supports our side; but I claim, with the great Lincoln, that we are on the side of God.
1. I do so in the first place (and this comes out the more clearly the more you study the previous history of the question), because this is a wantonly provoked war, planned and desired and finally launched by one Power, and one Power alone—that is, Germany.
Now, if God is a God who "makes men to be of one mind in a house," if He made of one blood every nation in the world, and meant them to dwell at peace together; if the teaching of Christ is really the teaching of God's own Son—then the nation which wantonly plans and provokes war, and war on such a scale, must be against God.
You have only to read two such books as "J'Accuse," said to be written by a German, and "Ordeal by Battle," by Mr. Oliver, to see that this is no idle assertion or party statement, but the literal truth. If I mistake not, "J'Accuse" will be for all time the accusing finger of the civilised world pointing at Germany as Nathan pointed at David, saying, "Thou art the man"; and as to "Ordeal by Battle," while it suggests many political questions which I should not think of discussing here and now, as to why we were so unprepared after the warnings given us, the fact stands out as plainly as daylight that Russia, France, and Great Britain one and all made every effort short of national dishonour to keep the peace.
This, then, is my first ground for claiming that we are on the side of God. Those who wantonly provoke war act against God, and those who honestly try to prevent war act on His side. But this is only the beginning of the matter.
2. There has always, up to now, been a kind of chivalry in war which has lighted up the more terrible aspects of it. All through history there have been bright flashes of this chivalry even among non-Christians: the conduct of Saladin in the Crusades, the chivalrous bearing of the Black Prince to the captured French King, and many similar incidents, testify to the fact that you need not cease to be a Christian or a gentleman because you have to fight. Many of these laws of chivalry were embodied by the great Christian nations in the Hague Convention; certain modes of warfare were not to be allowed; women and children must be tenderly and chivalrously treated; the wounded of the other side must be treated as fallen comrades; the dead must be decently buried; the Red Cross must be respected; civilians must be spared; the rights of neutrals guarded.
No one can doubt that God must have approved of such humane regulations, for they are all founded upon the New Testament; they are a softening, and a valuable softening, of the horrors of war.