The War and the Gospel: Sermons and Addresses During the Present War

by Henry Wace

I think, indeed, we may thankfully consider, in reviewing our long history, that the wars by which our Empire has been developed and established have, on the whole, been of this character, and have not been prompted by either national or dynastic ambition. The wars under Queen Elizabeth, in which the germs of our Empire were laid, were mainly prompted by a just indignation against the cruel and superstitious tyranny of Spain; and the wars of Marlborough and Wellington were similarly fought to protect Europe against an overbearing and unjust domination. In the heat of those struggles we may have been betrayed, in some instances, into an unjust use of the sword; but, on the whole, we may thank God that the wars which have established Great Britain in its present position have been—at least mainly—fought in just causes. Certainly in the present instance we have no other motive or object. We covet no other nation’s possessions; we have not interfered—and do not desire to interfere—with any other nation’s affairs; we would not willingly exert our influence for any other purpose but that of promoting righteousness and freedom; and if, in our later history, we have erred, as human beings can hardly avoid erring sometimes, the errors have been due to a failure of judgment, and not of motive or intention. As to the particular occasion of this war, we have offered no provocation whatever, except what has been called “the strong antipathy” of right to wrong; the provocation which adherence to promise and treaties must ever offer to those who would break them; the provocation which defence of the weak must ever offer to those who would overbear them. We can say in a word, with a good conscience, that we are at least earnestly endeavouring to act as the servants of Him of Whom the Psalmist exclaims: “The Lord is King; the earth may be glad thereof; yea, the multitude of the isles may be glad thereof. Clouds and darkness are round about Him; righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His seat.” It is in the cause of that righteousness and judgment that we desire to act.

But there is one other condition that we must fulfil, if we are to dare to claim the favour of God in this great struggle. We must not only ask whether we are upholding righteousness in our public action but whether we are observing it in our own hearts, and in our national life. Sufferings, we are told in our Prayer Book, may be sent “to correct and amend in us whatever doth offend the eyes of our Heavenly Father.” Can we fail to be sensible that there is much in our lives, both private and public, which must offend His eyes? Our private sins must be left to our private consciences. But who has not listened during the last few years, with a painful sense of their justice, to reproaches among ourselves at the luxury, the extravagance, the reckless pursuit of pleasure, the general self-indulgence, which have been too prevalent among us? With what heart can men appeal for God’s favour and protection, in their hour of need, who, in their hours of well-being, have neglected His worship and disregarded His Word and Sacraments? Before going into battle as a nation and as individuals, let us seek His absolution in that comprehensive prayer of our Litany “that it would please Him to give us true repentance, to forgive us all our sins, negligences, and ignorances, and to endue us with the grace of His Holy Spirit to amend our lives according to His Holy Word.”

In so far as we approach Him in this spirit, we may humbly hope for His blessing on the bravery and the self-sacrifice of our sailors and soldiers. Those sacrifices, moreover, alike for them and for ourselves, will be relieved of their worst bitterness, and will be glorified by a sacred and Divine example. They will not be fruitless sacrifices. They will be sacrifices which will win for the fellow-countrymen of those who offer them, and for the world at large, grand additions to that edifice of righteousness and judgment, of Christian civilization, towards which the hopes of mankind are directed with an inexpressible yearning. If this war results, as we now pray that it may, in the reassertion of principles which were in danger of being forgotten or overridden, in the re-establishment of the faith of treaties, and in the protection of the weak against the strong, it will have established for Europe and the world a great consolidation and advance in the essential principles of national truth and justice. It is a comparatively poor thing to die for glory, or for power and wealth; but it is a grand thing to die for righteousness and equity, for the God who allows us to be His instruments in upholding them, and for the King and country whose call we are proud to obey. If, moreover, men go to war in this spirit, they may claim a still more Divine privilege. In the sacrifice which soldiers make in a righteous cause, they are following, in the most essential characteristic, the “author and finisher of our Faith,” the “Captain of our Salvation,” whose work is summed up in that soldier-like phrase, “He resisted unto blood, striving against sin.” The soldier who sheds his blood on the battlefield in a righteous cause, and with a righteous purpose, is doing the very thing that Christ did, and he may be assured of Christ’s approval and blessing. In quiet times we may fail to realize adequately the solemn truth that, whenever we receive the Holy Communion, we are receiving spiritual benefits which were won for us by the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ. If war, in one aspect, is a horrible thing, so was the Cross; but the whole hope of the salvation of mankind, here and hereafter, was won by that Divine bloodshed; and its grace and glory are reflected over every battlefield, in which blood is shed in the long struggle against unrighteousness. In these convictions, and with these solemn resolves, let us now appeal to God, in firm and humble faith, for His help in this hour of need; and let us enter into this dread conflict with the full assurance that “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”

The Warning of the Tower In Siloam.

PREACHED IN CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, OCTOBER 25, 1914.

“I tell you, Nay; but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”—Luke xiii. 1-5.

“Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” In these solemn words, twice repeated, our Lord affords us a flash of light upon the principles and methods of the Divine judgments, and utters a solemn warning; and I think that both the revelation and the warning will be found intensely applicable to the distressing sufferings and anxieties through which we and our country are now passing. Our Lord had been speaking about the severity of the Divine justice, and about the blindness of men in not foreseeing the approach of His judgments. “Ye hypocrites,” He said, “ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time? Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?” and He warns them that if they fall into the hands of justice, they will not depart thence till they have paid the very last mite. At this mention of the Divine judgment, some who were present told Him of a dreadful act of violence which had recently occurred, of some Galilæans, “whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” It would seem they were members of an extremely zealous sect of Jews, who objected to the custom which then prevailed of offering sacrifices in the Temple for the welfare of the Roman Government; and Pilate treated their conduct as treasonable, and had them slaughtered in the Temple while they were offering their own sacrifices. The object of the interruption seems to have been to ask our Lord whether these men had brought such a punishment upon themselves by unusual sin, and it may also have been intended to tempt Him to pronounce some censure on Pilate, and thus to bring Himself into conflict with the Roman authorities. But our Lord’s reply lifts the matter at once out of any personal or local bearings, and lays down a principle which applies to all such tragedies. “Suppose ye,” He said, “that these Galilæans were sinners above all the Galilæans because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay; but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” He drives the truth home by applying it to another recent tragedy, which might have seemed a mere accident. “Those eighteen,” He said, “upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay; but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” It is not for you, He seems to say, to be curious about the reason why these particular men have suffered in this way. What you should do is to learn that you are all liable to suffer in the same way, and that you will do so unless you repent.

Now, it will be seen that there is a momentous revelation contained in these words, respecting the real cause of such dreadful disasters as these two incidents illustrated. When He says, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish,” He clearly intimates that a Divine judgment is going forward in the world, which sooner or later brings suffering and destruction upon men in consequence of their sin. Even what we might call a physical accident, like the fall of a tower which kills eighteen persons, is a warning to men that they are liable to such a death at any moment, and that, therefore, they should repent and be prepared for it. It is an example of what may befall any of us, and of what will befall all of us in one way or another, unless we repent. If we look more particularly into the example of the men whom Pilate slaughtered, we shall realize that it has a peculiarly close application to our own day. These men, who were resisting the Roman Government, were examples of the vehement passions which were at that time surging among the Jewish people. Our Lord Himself was the victim of the fierce hatred of foreign influence which prevailed among the people. The priests and Pharisees said among themselves, “What do we? For this man doeth many miracles, and if we let Him thus alone, all men will believe on Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” And the High Priest, Caiaphas, replied, “Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.” Thus it was that the passions of the Jewish people were worked up into such blindness and wickedness, that they committed the awful crime of putting our Lord to death; and then in forty years the prediction of our Lord was fulfilled, and the great mass of them perished in just such a slaughter as that which Pilate committed, the blood of the nation being shed in torrents in the Courts of the Temple, and amidst its sacrifices. These events—the massacre by Pilate, the murder of our Lord, the destruction of the Jewish people—were not separate and disconnected events. They were all the consequence of the sins and evil passions which our Lord denounced among the Jews of His time; and the disasters which the Jews suffered were the judgments of God’s righteousness upon those sins.