V WHY WE FIGHT "Watch ye; stand fast in the faith; quit ye like men.”—I Corinthians xvi: 13. "This intolerable THING of which the masters of Germany have shown us the ugly face; this menace of combined intrigue and force which now we so clearly see as the German power; a THING without conscience or honour or capacity for covenanted peace, must be crushed.”—PRESIDENT WILSON. THE HESE exhortations were in the first instance addressed to Christians, and had reference both to the faith of the gospel which they were exhorted earnestly to contend for, and to their fight for their own soul's life against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Christianity is essentially a fighting religion. Not always with carnal weapons, but always with the spirit of the good soldier of Jesus Christ. Paul likens his life to a protracted conflict; and when his time to be offered up had come, declared that he had "fought a good fight." In the course of his long and turbulent life he had fought "with the beasts at Ephesus;" he fought against his own carnal nature, as a boxer fights against an opposing pugilist, to keep his body under. The kingdom of God is "righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost;" but all these elements of the Christian life are won by fighting. "The peaceable fruits of righteousness" are not negative fruits. They are the after results of struggle and conflict. All real peace any peace worth having-must be founded upon those things which make for peace. If other things stand in the way of peace they must be destroyed. Before we can have God's peace in the world we must destroy the works of the devil. Just now the devil's work is found in this German made war. Before the world can have a righteous and lasting peace we must fight Germany to a finish and forever destroy her power again to break the peace of the world. The peace of the Christian conscience is founded on the victorious fight which the Great Captain of our salvation made when on the cross He made an end of sin and brought in an everlasting righteousness. All the powers of darkness were arrayed against Him; and there on Calvary was a head-on collision between sin and death on the one hand, and righteousness and life on the other. And so it is that, all along the line of the Christian life, there is continual fighting. But it may be urged that this is a spiritual warfare and not a carnal one, and that there can be no analogy between the Christian's warfare against the world, the flesh and the devil, and the struggles and warfare which go on among the nations of the earth. As between nation and nation struggling for mere pre-eminence, power and glory, I am free to say that I would not lift a finger, even though my own beloved country were one of the belligerents. I would say: "This is none of my Lord's business, and it can be none of mine." Loyal patriotism does not bind me to support even my own country "right or wrong;" but it does bind me to support my country when my country is contending for those things for which our Lord stood and for which He laid down His life and took it again that, in the last great struggle of righteousness against the devil and sin and death, He might lead forth His "called and chosen and faithful" ones to the final victory of the right against might, of godliness against devilishness. "These shall war against the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is the Lord of lords, and King of kings; and they also shall overcome that are with Him, called and chosen and faithful" (Rev. xvii: 14). The weapons in this last great battle will not be "notes" and proclamations and sermons and treaties of peace to be turned into "scraps of paper," but will be weapons that will kill and destroy. Like Gideon of old, who went into the battle with the cry of "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon," so will the "called and chosen and faithful" saints in that day go into the last battle with the devil and his hosts with the cry of "the sword of the Lamb and of his saints." To-day we are fighting the preliminary battle to that last great struggle. The principles and stakes involved are the same. If ever the devil and his hosts of demoniacal spirits were incarnate in men they are today incarnate in the Kaiser and his armies of brutal and savage Huns. If ever God's people were justified in fighting with "carnal" weapons made spiritual in the cause in which they are drawn and used, they are justified to-day in this frightful war. Therefore I feel more than justified in using these exhortations to Christian men and women, whether out on the firing line or in the munition shops, or in the field with hoe in hand, or with the shipbuilder in the navy yards, or women in the Red Cross workrooms, or the woman who runs a trolley car so that a man may be released for the army, and saying to them: "Fight the good fight of faith. Quit you like men." Our victory in the late war with Spain was said to have been won not by the guns on our battleships, but by the men behind the guns. Guns are no good without men to handle and fire them; and then they are no good unless the men behind them are "men of faith" intelligently fighting for God and righteousness as well as for country and home. The Christian cannot win out in his good fight of faith unless he bé intelligent, unless he have conviction, unless he have a steadfast purpose like Paul, who declared that he had "fought the good fight, finished his course, and kept the faith." So we must fight this fight against the incarnate devil in the Kaiser with a steadfast faith in God and the right, with an unswerving purpose, and to a finish, that is, if need be, till the last man has fallen and the last shot has been fired and the last dollar given up. The Germans are a great people. Perhaps the best educated and the best disciplined and trained of any people on the earth. These are great factors; but they are not the final factors. We are a well-educated people, but we have that which by a last analysis is better even than education. I mean intelligence. If I had to choose for my son a technical education, such as is found in school and college, and an alert and trained intelligence, I would choose intelligence. And with all thoughtfulness I say the Germans have not intelligence. It has been for the lack of intelligence that with all the victories they have won by sheer brute force they have utterly failed in their final purpose of subjecting the world to the iron rule of Prussia. When they launched the war they only saw "the insignificant little army" of England. They failed to perceive the dogged historic courage of the great Anglo-Saxon spirit, and their devotion to righteousness and human freedom. When they overran and raped Belgium, they failed to take into account her profound patriotism and heroic courage. When they made their mad rush upon Paris, they only saw in the French a light, pleasure-loving and frivolous people, but utterly failed to see the mighty soul of France which has arisen and standing before them declared: “They shall not pass." It was the lack of intelligence, in spite of their boasted kultur, which led them on their mad rush upon Verdun. In the American people they can only see "idiotic Yankees," utterly failing intelligently to see a people who have won the first place among the nations of the earth because of their devotion to human liberty and political freedom, and their utter conviction that in the long run right is greater than might. They have not intelligence to perceive that the spirit of Washington, and Jefferson, and Hamilton, and Sam Adams, and John Hancock, and Daniel Webster, and Andrew Jackson, and the immortal Lincoln, and Admiral Farragut, and U. S. Grant of "unconditional surrender" fame; and Admiral Dewey, who said to Captain Gridley, in Manila Bay on that fateful May morning: "When you ́are ready, Gridley, you may fire." These men and a thousand more embody and show forth the spirit of America which throbs in an hundred million loyal hearts, both of men and women. This spirit the Germans have not had the intelligence to perceive. To them and to their kultur we may seem to be but "idiotic Yankees," but before we get through with them they will have such a jolt as will, if such a thing be possible, awaken them out of their delusive madness. They have failed to understand that their ruthless and lawless brutality and utter disregard of all law, human and divine, instead of breaking down the morale of the Allies have aroused the detestation and hate of the whole civilised world, in which they are not included, |