Towards the Great Peace

by Ralph Adams Cram

However strange and erroneous the actual manifestation, there is no question as to the reality and prevalence of the desire for the recovery of spiritual power through the channels of religion. It shows itself, as it should, first of all in the individual, and it is only recently that organized religion, Catholic or Protestant, has begun to show a sympathetic consciousness and to take the first hesitant steps towards meeting the demand. Because of this the seekers for reality have been left unshepherded and have wandered off into strange wildernesses. The call is now to the churches, to organized religion, and if the call is heeded our troubles are well on the road to an end. If the old way of jealousy, hatred and fear is maintained, then humanly speaking, our case is hopeless. If the older way of brotherhood, charity and loving-kindness is followed the future is secure in the Great Peace. Nothing is wrong that leads men to Christ, and this is true from the Salvation Army at one end of the scale to the Seven Sacraments of Catholicity at the other. The world demands now not denial but affirmation, not protest and division but the ringing "Credo" of Catholic unity.

VIII

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of
Hosts.

We have tried to approach each subject in this course of lectures in the spirit of peace, and the greatest contributory factor in the achieving of the Great Peace is the individual himself, on whom, humanly speaking, rests the final responsibility. "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." Not by majestical engines and curious devices and mass-action, nor yet by an imposed human authority enforced by arms and the law, but by the Holy Spirit of God working through the individual soul and compelling the individual will. Peace is one of the promised fruits of the Holy Spirit, and like the others is manifested through human lives; therefore on us rests the preëminent responsibility of showing forth in ourselves, first of all, those things we desire for others and for society.

We have experienced the Great War, we endure its aftermath, and amidst the perils and dangers that follow both there is none greater than that which attaches to exterior war, viz., that the attention of both combatants is focussed on the faults and the weaknesses and the crimes of the opponent, with the result that both become destructive critics rather than constructive examples. Chesterton rightly says, "What is wrong with the critic is that he does not criticise himself * * * rather he identifies himself with the ideal." Seeing evil in others and flattering one's self is the antithesis of the spirit that would lead to the Great Peace, for in that spirit the field of warfare is transferred from the external to the internal, and the interior contest, which alone establishes lasting results, necessitates a recognition of our own error and the need of amendment of our own life.

If our modern devices have failed; if the things we invented with a high heart and high hope, in government, industry, society, education, philosophy have in the end brought disappointment, disillusionment, even despair, it is less because of their inherent defects than because the individual failed, and himself ceased to act as the sufficient channel for the divine power which alone energizes our weak little engines and which acts through the individual alone. There is no better demonstration of this essential part played by the personal life of man than the fact that God, for the redemption of the world, took on human form and became one Man amongst many men. There is no better demonstration of the fact that it is through the personal lives of individuals that the Great Peace is to be achieved, both directly and indirectly, than the fact that peace, the gift of the Holy Spirit, was promised to the individual man, by Christ Himself, as the legacy he left to his disciples after His Resurrection and Ascension. Since then the world has been under the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, the "Guide and Comforter" that was promised, even though it has blindly and from time to time rejected the guidance and therefore known not the comfort. The Old Law of "Thou shalt not" was followed by the New Law of "Thou shalt," and this in turn by the law of the third Person of the Trinity which does not supersede the dispensations of the Father and of the Son, but fulfills them in that it affords the spiritual power, if we will, to abide by the inhibitions and to carry out the commands.

Our search is for peace, the Great Peace, "the Peace of God which passeth all understanding," and we shall achieve this for ourselves and for the world only through ourselves as individuals, and so for the society of which we are a part, and in so far as we bring ourselves into contact with the Spirit of God. There is deep significance in the fact that the first time Christ used the salutation "Peace be unto you," was after His resurrection. It would seem that this special gift of the Holy Spirit had to be withheld from man until after the human life of God the Son had been brought to an end in accomplishment, for He says "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." "It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you: but if I depart I will send Him unto you. When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth." "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you."

It is the spirit that quickeneth. After God had revealed the Law and given to us the great redeeming and atoning Life, He saw that we had need of a further manifestation before we should be able to keep the law and live the life. Therefore the Holy Spirit was sent to quicken us and give us power to do what we had both heard and seen. Today we accept the moral law, we recognize the perfection of Chirst's life, but we need to be reminded again that the power to be "sons of God" is present with us if we will but use it. As this power is a spirit it can only be apprehended spiritually; when our minds and hearts are set on material things, even on good material things, the "still small voice" of the spirit remains unheard: but if we listen first to that inward voice and then use the means of grace afforded us, we are enabled to lift up our hearts and minds to the Creator and then to use in His service all the material universe which is also His creation. We can not get a right philosophy by working for right philosophy, but only by living in the right relationship as individuals: then as a by-product of religion a right philosophy will come. We can not get a right industrial system by searching for a right industrial system, but if we show forth in our lives the Christian virtues, a right industrial system will come as one of the by-products of religion. So with each one of our so-called "problems." Life rightly lived has no problems. This is a hard saying for an intellectual age whose temptation is to trust in its own power rather than in the power of God, but "except ye become as little children" and walk by faith and not by sight the Kingdom of God is withheld. A soldier who suffered in the late war, and out of his suffering found peace, says, "Christ's hardest work is to teach the wise: Those who are entrusted with authority and responsibility will be the least prepared to make the venture of the Spirit, however much they may believe in it. They are sacrificing least now: they will have to sacrifice most when the Spirit comes. They have so much to unlearn: children and working men have so little. The whole of our world today is rooted and grounded in intellect. Our machinery, our institutions, our great systems, the entire body of enterprise is governed by brains. It is this that will alter. Just behind intellect there is a vision that is purer, keener, more powerful than the vision of your eyes, than the hearing of your ears, than the touch of your hands. This world is being transformed into another which comes into being at our spiritual touch. The world needs something personal, something from the heart. It is sick to death with the cold machinery of the intellect. But before men see this they must change their view of life, they must be born again. The scientists, the historians and theologians, the philosophers, have made the universe too big. It is not a big place: it is very tiny. Life is so simple, really. Our wise men have made it so difficult, so ugly. It is only children who can see the risen Christ; children, perhaps, out of whom seven devils have been cast. The world needs not critics, but teachers, and children are waiting everywhere to teach, but men, shutting the windows of their souls, try rather to mould these little ones to fit into the vacant spaces of their own stupid world. Are not children the true artists? They won't tolerate anything but Beauty. They see Beauty everywhere, not because it is there, but because they want it there. Everything they touch turns into something far more precious than gold: every word they utter is a song of praise. You are almost in heaven every time you look into the eyes of a child." Remember, please, these are the words of a man who has faced the horrible realities of modern warfare, and so do not dismiss them as mere poetry, or with Nicodemus' question, "How can a man be born again?", but listen to a modern interpretation of the answer to that question:—("The Life Indeed.") "We must be born again even to see the spiritual kingdom, must be born of water and the spirit to enter its gates at all. So to his little audience of disciples Our Lord says it is not an affair of legislation, of discovery, of which men say, 'Lo here, lo there! but the kingdom of heaven is within you. Why a second birth? This is a second birth because it must needs supervene at a point where two elements can work together, the element of an appealing, vitalizing spirit from the unseen and the element of free human choice. Being of the spirit, it is the birth into freedom: it is the soul emerging from its prison into the open air of liberty and light and life." Note the element of free choice. Our first birth is outside our choice and the gifts are unconditioned; our second birth, when again we become as little children, demands our response to the Holy Spirit and our persevering cooperation with Him to make His influence effectual for ourselves and for the "communion of saints" and the corporate religion into which the Spirit also baptizes us. In a recent sermon a bishop of the Episcopal Church says, "This is the creed of the Church—the Divine Father and Forgiveness: the Divine Son and Redemption: the Divine Spirit and Abundant Life. Therefore the Church still insists upon the creation of moral rectitude and spiritual character as the end and purpose of religion, aye, as the basic problem underlying all questions relating to human life—social, industrial, civic, and political. The Church still preaches the gospel of the Grace of God, the obligation and blessing of worship, the meaning and virtue of the Christian Sacraments." Also "My brethren, we shall not be content to criticize and find fault with our own age and time, but rather we shall pray for the power to see within its questionings, unrest and discontent—aye, its recklessness and apparent failures—the strivings of the Spirit of God. But each man has to voice for himself the conviction of the reality of the spiritual order and the spiritual life. Therefore, let us believe in and practice the worship of God, 'praying always' as St. Paul says, 'with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit,' or as St. Jude says, 'building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.'"

Let us accept this suggestion and try to find in the unrest of our own time evidences of "the strivings of the Spirit of God," waiting our perception and response. The soldier of the Great War, having faced death and imprisonment and suffering in many forms says, "compared with the depth of good in the world the evil is shallow." The first evidence of good in our own day is the almost universal discontent with evils and the desire to find a better way. The humility which recognizes that so widespread a condition cannot be the fault of any one nation or group but is rather the responsibility of each one of us, is cause for hope. Some of us believe that war can breed only war, hatred only hatred; that governments cannot make peace, but can only cause cessation of open hostilities, and that the real peace, the Great Peace, must await the action of the Spirit. This Spirit, of love and forgiveness, breeds love and forgiveness, indeed is far more potent than the spirit of hate. Because of this very strength and potency its evidences are not so immediately apparent, but they are deeper-rooted. Perhaps in this material sphere we human beings must see, and to a certain extent experience, hate, before we can really know love, and consciously and freely choose it. When that choice is made, when we, knowing all that hate and evil and malice can accomplish, yet deliberately choose to love our enemies, we have slain the Adversary and made hate and evil powerless. Of course we have not power of ourselves to do this but only through the grace of God. When we try God's way, not waiting for the other person to reform or to be generous or to speak gently or to forgive, then and only then do we deserve the name of Christians; then and only then are we walking in love; then and only then are we really praying effectually "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." We have tried the way of the world, the way of reprisals, the way of distrust, and, thank God, we are none of us satisfied with the results. Perhaps now we may be ready to try the way of God by making the great adventure of faith, each one in his own person; faith in himself and faith in the future. The way of the world has bred fear that has issue in hate, and hate that has issue in fear; but the better way, that of faith, breeds trust that has issue in fellowship, and fellowship that has issue in trust. There is no problem of labour, of politics, of society that is insoluble if once it is approached in the spirit of faith and fellowship and trust, but none of these is susceptible of solution where the controlling motives are hate, distrust and fear. The modern policy of centralization and segregation has resulted in dealing with men as groups and not as individuals. When, for example, iron-bound cults (they are no less than this) meet as "capital" and as "labour," both merge the individuality of their members in a thing which has no real or necessary existence but is an artificial creation of thought operating under the dominion of ephemeral, almost accidental conditions. As a member of an "interest" or a cult, where humanity and personality are, so to speak, "in commission," a man does not hesitate to do those things he would never think of doing for himself, knowing them to be selfish, cruel, unjust and uncharitable. A case in point—if we need one, which is hardly probable since they are of daily occurrence—is the pending contest between the mine operators and mine workers in Great Britain, where both parties, with Government thrown in, are guilty of maintaining theories and perpetrating acts for which an individual would be, even now, excoriated and outlawed. The Irish imbroglio is another instance of the same kind.