If Christianity is to be a living, efficient force in the coming readjustment, it must cleanse itself of some of these old barnacles of hypocrisy now clinging to it. Not that hypocrisy will be less prevalent under the new regime than under the old. Human nature will remain essentially the same, but it will demand new forms of hypocrisy. The specious, shallow reasoning of the charlatan, the fulsome adulation and extravagant promises of the demagogue, and other forms of humbuggery will still attract their thousands. Patient merit will still suffer its many spurns from the unworthy. But the followers of Jesus, if they will throw overboard their useless ecclesiastical and theological lumber, and return to the simple teachings and example of the Great Teacher, are sure to win.
The first and most important matter is to get rid of the hypocrisy of war. War is the most direful menace to the happiness and prosperity of mankind and, notwithstanding the bitter lessons of the Great War, little progress has been made towards averting it in the future.
And no permanent progress in that direction will be made until the Christian peoples of the world reject, root and branch, such views of national wars as are expressed by the late President Roosevelt in the quotations from his works already given (see [(a) War], supra). The underlying principle of this war philosophy is the same as that of the modern Germans, Treitschke, Nietzsche and Bernhardi, except that they express themselves with more brutal frankness. It was preached long ago by Machiavelli, Francis Bacon, Hobbes, Eichte, Hegel and others. It is in substance that the State, although all its component units are sincere followers of Jesus, should not be governed by any moral laws in its dealings with other States. The State can do no wrong. It should pursue its ends with utter, callous selfishness, and its only law is that might makes right.
President Roosevelt has been quoted, because, in his views, he unquestionably voiced the sentiments of the great majority of past and present Americans. If this be true, should we not look for the beam in our own eye, before we criticize Germany for starting the Great War? She was simply applying the law that might makes right, except that she underestimated the might of the enemies she was arraying against herself. If she had been successful (as she probably would have been except for the unexpected valor and self-sacrifice of the Belgians), would she have been any worse sinner (barring some barbarous details of her warfare) than the United States with its condonation and approval of the Mexican and Spanish wars? Both of these were wars of aggression against weaker nations, and the Mexican war, at least, is admitted on all hands to have been morally unjustifiable, even by such stalwart Americans as President Roosevelt. More than a hundred years ago, a distinguished admiral of the United States Navy is reported to have said: "Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong." Now, this is a high-sounding phrase and is a great refuge for Jingo politicians when they have precipitated the country into an unrighteous war. But before the bar of Jesus it is the veriest clap-trap. The sincere follower of Jesus should insist that we be sure we are right in the first instance, and, if it is discovered that we have been misled into a by-way of wrong and injustice, that we get back at once to the straight and narrow way of right and justice.
Our churches must denounce these Rooseveltian doctrines early and late, as a perversion of Jesus' laws. They must insist that opposition to wars becomes a service of the heart and not of the lip. They must mould us into a nation of sincere "conscientious objectors," condemning all wars as un-Christian, judging every aggressive war as prima facie unjustifiable, and insisting that the advocates of any war prove the justness of their cause beyond a reasonable doubt. Let our politicians and leaders understand that if they plunge us into an unjust war, they are to be punished, and not rewarded by the Presidency, as was Roosevelt after the Spanish war, and Taylor after the Mexican war. How many of our wars would have lacked advocates, if they had been obliged to plead their cause under the principles of the Sermon on the Mount?
As long as the people of the United States are animated by, and their conduct based on, the war philosophy of Roosevelt, it is hard to see how any League of Nations could be anything but a farce—a mere "scrap of paper." On the other hand, if all the Christian nations were sincere, ardent "conscientious objectors," wars would be avoided without the need of any League of Nations. If the Christian people of Germany had been "conscientious objectors" in this sense, there would not have been a Great War. But unfortunately they were of a different faith, and according to German writers still cling to that faith, after all their bitter experiences. (Germany since the Revolution. Yale Review, Jan., 1921). Nor may we flatter ourselves that we are free from the same views. For instance, there is apparently, at the present time (as there was before the Spanish war) a Jingo junto of politicians and newspapers who seize every opportunity to stir up prejudice and hostility against Japan, although it has always acted towards us as a peace-loving, neighborly nation. If it were as vulnerable to our attack as Mexico or Spain, these Hotspurs might quite likely drag us into a war, but the uncertainty of the contest in this case must give them pause.
Another field for church action is in working towards making Sunday like the Sabbath of Jesus' time—a day of joyous relaxation and recreation, but always remembering that deeds of mercy and the promotion of the happiness of others, are to feature the day, as the offering acceptable to God. One of the marked features of the time is the growing spirit of unrest and discontent among the mass of the people. This spirit of unrest manifests itself, in part, by an increasing appetite for amusement. While this outlet for people's uneasiness may perhaps not be of the highest, it is much preferable to others, to which their discontent might turn. The churches should recognize this present need of man, realize the truth of Jesus saying that the Sabbath was made for man, oppose all new Sunday Blue Laws, and seek the repeal of those now existing. Instead of putting the ban of the church on all Sunday amusements, it should encourage such harmless recreations as it can well sanction under the example of Jesus. There should be meetings in the churches, as in the synagogue in Jesus' time, but as an incident, and not the chief end, of the day.
In the matter of temperance vs. prohibition, a great Christian nation has, for the first time in history, recently inaugurated the experiment of a general prohibition law. What the results of this policy may be, remains an uncertain question for the future to decide. Certain it is that the Anglo-Saxon race has reached its present stage of progress and civilization under a regime of practically unrestricted use of alcoholic drinks. Of the eminent names in its history—in government, war, literature, arts, sciences, industrial work and invention—the percentage of those who all their lives have been consistent abstainers from liquor must be exceedingly small. The prohibitionist will say that all this progress has been made in spite of the evils of drink. But that can only be proved by generations of experience under prohibition laws. The other hypothesis is, prima facie, equally tenable, that this progress has been due in part to the stimulus which the temperate use of liquor undoubtedly does, at least temporarily, give to the physical and mental activity of man. The thirteen centuries of experience of the followers of Mahomet demonstrate that prohibition does not of itself produce great men, or general virtue, progress or prosperity.
Theoretically the success of prohibition is handicapped by the fact that it is opposed to the evolutionary processes of nature. The basic idea of prohibition is to improve man by removing the cause of evil. For no one can deny that excess of drinking is an evil, just as is excess of eating, of fasting, of prayer, or any other form of human activity. Even excess of charity may be an evil, if it results in impoverishing one's family. But nature works on the contrary idea. It develops its highest types by exposing them to evil, and teaching them to conquer it. Take the matter of climate, for instance. A priori one might have reasoned that a mild, equable climate, like that of the South Sea Islands, where the means of subsistence are easily obtained, would be the best for the human race. It could plausibly be argued that man would have more time and energy for his intellectual development if he were not absorbed in a continuous, laborious struggle for his physical existence. But experience has shown that just this contest with the extremes of heat and cold—this continual battle for subsistence under uncongenial conditions—has produced not only the most efficient workers in material progress, but also the highest types of intellectual development. Whether the prohibition theory of wrapping men in lamb's wool, instead of putting them out to fight the battle of life, will not produce more evil than good, is at least uncertain. It may be that, after some time of experimenting, men may come back to the idea that Jesus was right in thinking that temperance is better for the human race than prohibition.
Furthermore, prohibition, besides being opposed both to the laws of Jesus and the laws of nature, has the essential weakness, as a remedy for intemperance, that it attacks the means or rather one of the means, of intemperance, and not the cause—the causa efficiens, as the logicians would say. The Anglo-Saxons have for centuries been meat-eaters and liquor-drinkers. What end they would have attained on a diet of vegetables and cold water, we can only guess, but all science is wrong if it would not have been some end quite different. Now, this appetite for stimulants—the growth of centuries—is not to be eradicated by prohibiting the use of alcoholic drinks, any more than the appetite for fornication can be eradicated by the suppression of houses of prostitution. In spite of all the prohibition laws in the world, the appetite for stimulants will continue to exist in the Anglo-Saxon race, and will seek its gratification in one way, if not in another. Whether these substitutes may not be worse in the end than alcohol, remains to be seen. Suppose, for instance, that accustomed liquor-drinkers should now substitute, as their stimulant, large quantities of strong tea or coffee, or, possibly, some concentrated product of one or the other of those plants. Probably nine-tenths of our medical authorities would agree that the change would be, generally speaking, undoubtedly for the worse.