Everything is in the melting-pot. Even our ideas of religion are changing. The development of theology is being hastened by the 'big push,' and orthodoxy is being tested in the red crucible of war. There is a lot of confusion, and that all the contending nations claim God is embarrassing to us, but not to God. We may be sure that there is no jostling or confusion in the Eternal mind. The Good Shepherd knows His own and is not deceived by our claims and counter-claims. 'Gott mit uns' is engraved upon the belt of each German soldier, and the Kaiser claims God as the German God. He has been appealed to by the[by the] Austrian Emperor, by the Czar; even the Sultan's soldiers advance to the charge crying, 'Allah, Allah.' We appeal to God too. It is all natural and, from the human standpoint, right. We may be sure that the God of Battles knows the worth of all our claims, knows how much of truth is contained in our cause. In His name the conscientious objector declines to fight, and God only knows where conscience ends and cowardice begins. 'The Lord is a Man of War,' and if history shows anything it shows that God does not despise the sword as an instrument whereby men contend for the faith, and even the blood of men is not too precious to spill for the defence of the ideals of freedom and right. Like the pulsator on the diamond fields of Kimberley, war, the mill of God, throbs back and forth. We may throw on it the heaps of earth, but as it throbs it will shake away the clods and wash away the mire; the true diamonds will remain.
To the superficial, war seems to be a grim contradiction of the fact that God is the Ruler of the world. To them it seems as though this world were governed by a demon. But really war is a terrible confirmation of God's presence in the world and a lurid re-emphasis of His inevitable and inexorable Law.
The mental disease of selfishness, lust of power, and military glory was present; it was slumbering in the heart of the nations in times of peace. The disease (which shows itself in commercial competition too) broke out in the violent inflammation and irruption of war. War is a delirium, a delusion, and a degeneracy. It is made possible by the brute strength of a soulless people on the one part and the weak unpreparedness of an easy-going, prosperous, and pleasure-loving people on the other part.
Suddenly a bolt from the blue fuses all antagonisms into the mad storm which we call 'War.' A good deal of dross will be burnt up, but the pure gold will remain. Out of the collision of national ideals which are right or wrong, heroism and self-sacrifice are born. Out of the commotion of contending ideals, truth, single-eyed, in clear perspective and circular, containing every point of view in its comprehensiveness, will emerge. It is not to the balance of power or the inter-relation of dynastic connexions that we must look for peace, but to the balance of the naked truth and the essential solidarity and brotherhood of man.
The Concert of Europe has broken down in discord, the Conductor is rapping out with His baton the true music of humanity, and He insists that we should all recognize the Keynote.
The pre-millenarian sees in it all a superhuman interference with the human will which is the prelude to a forcible application of the Divine Will and a millennium of peace and perfection. But when we investigate, we see that there is no mental violence in the coming of the Great War. We are reaping what we sowed. It arises out of logical and adequate causes. It will not end until these causes have been removed.
Political excrescences must be sloughed off. Nations will be born or reborn in a day. So war is working the world-fever out of our blood, cleansing our hearts, and making us seriously face life's issues.
To get to particulars. We hear much about man-power to-day. It is the last word of the strategist, the first thought of the statesman, and the secret of victory. But who bothered about man-power a few years ago?
A Russian peasant in Petrograd, after the Revolution, said to an English press correspondent: 'We shall have fine times in the church now. There will not be so many long prayers for the Czar, the Imperial family, and all the nobility, with a little prayer for the poor peasants at the tail end.'
Yet it is the great mass of men which Russia possesses which forms the famous 'steam-roller' upon which so many have placed their hope for the liberation of Europe. It may be that the God of Battles has ordained that in saving Russia, and in part Europe, the Russian people are to save themselves.