III WAKE UP, AMERICA! "And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed."-Romans xiii: II. "Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil."-Ephesians vi: II. THE HE constant repetition of truths, facts and phrases tends to blunt their significance and to make them commonplace. As, for instance, President Wilson's famous phrase to "Make the world safe for democracy." This phrase within the past six months has become hackneyed; yet it is a powerful setting forth of a great aspiration. Lincoln's characterisation of our government as one "for the people, of the people and by the people," will never die. The most familiar passage of Scripture, known and loved by us all, is John iii: 16. Just because it is familiar and so often quoted by preachers and people it has lòst, except to the very thoughtful, something of its tremendous import. Nevertheless we shall go on repeating and setting forth these great truths and aphorisms in all our private speech and public utterance. In like manner so often it has been declared in press, in public and private speech that just now "we are face to face with the most tremendous crisis in human history," it has lost something of its impor tance. And yet this is the fact, and though the statement has become hackneyed it is one that needs daily reiteration and emphasis, and the import of it drilled into the thought and if possible into the moral consciousness of the people. The present war is not any ordinary one. It is a maelstrom into which almost the entire world has been sucked. Practically fifteen nations are formally engaged in the war and nearly thirty million soldiers are under arms. The killed and wounded and the dead from disease and exposure run up into many millions, of the very flower of the manhood of the nations. The cost in money is so enormous that the figures representing it are almost inconceivable. The nations at war, save only ours, are on the verge of bankruptcy. The whole economic world has undergone revolution; and the social world is being turned and overturned. Kings have been dethroned and revolutions have turned autocratic Russia into a raging socialistic republic. In the warring countries there are hundreds of thousands of non-combatants dying or on the verge of death from starvation. Several millions of people, such as the Armenians, have been massacred in cold blood by the unspeakable Turk, the faithful ally of the German Emperor. The frightful and horrible facts in connection with the world war ought to put new meaning into the hackneyed phrase of “a world crisis." I. LOOKERS-ON AND PACIFISTS It is true that we have made some very great preparations for our share in the conflict. We have declared war and called 2,000,000 men into training camps and sent a few hundred thousand men across the sea. There are spectacular marches of soldiers to and from camp through our streets. We have rallied to the support of the Government to the extent of some six billions of dollars at four per cent. interest-thereby changing some of our questionable investments into the best security in the world. Of course this is patriotic, but it is not war. Besides this, we have marshalled some 3,000,000 noble women into the ranks of the Red Cross, and our big-hearted people have given (not loaned at four per cent. interest) several hundred millions of dollars for the relief of the innocent sufferers in Belgium, France, Poland and other distressed people; and this week we are raiding for several millions of money for the Armenian sufferers, and for the splendid work of the Y. M. C. A. in camp and on battle lines. Nevertheless, as a nation, we are not much more than half awake to the fact that we are at war and are a principal factor in the great conflict. We are even yet but little more than curious spectators of this world conflagration taking place three or four thousands of miles away from our shores. Our cities have not been bombed by flying Zeppelins; our public buildings have not been shattered by the bursting shells of the enemy. The walls of our hospitals and school buildings have not been spattered with the blood and brains of wounded and innocent children. Our farms and villages have not been destroyed and turned into wild desolation by the shells of the contending armies. Our wives have not been outraged and our young women raped by brutal soldiers; our non-combatant men and thousands of our young women have not been carried away into slavery and worse than slavery. On the other hand, we are mak ing countless millions of dollars' worth of munitions for our fighting allies, at fifty and one hundred per cent. profit. Our food speculators and commercial robbers are reaping rich fortunes at the expense of the people who are struggling against the unwarrantable inflation of the cost of living. In the meantime, our theatres and moving-picture shows are crowded with amusement seekers and life goes on almost without interruption. The great mass of our people are little more than idle and curious lookers-on, from a safe distance, at the spectacle of a burning world. As a nation and people there is among us only a slight stirring as of men and women disturbed in their sleep. Is it not high time that we should awake out of sleep and come to some sort of realisation of what is going on in the world beyond the Atlantic Ocean, and examine with some more serious anxiety the import of the black clouds of war, pestilence and famine, drifting toward our own land? It is time that the tocsins of war be sounded from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, crying out, "Wake up, America!" Certainly, there is a more or less academic interest in the question of "Why should there be such a war?" or "If there be a just and merciful God ruling over and among the nations, why should such things be permitted?" I am free to admit that there is more than considerable room for such inquiries. If God is just and good and has power over men and nations, why does He allow war and such a war as the present one? Our Saviour has warned us of "wars and rumours of war; that nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in divers places." At the same time He tells us "not to be troubled," as though such things, terrible as they are, were out of or beyond the controlling hand of God. In this connection it seems only right that we should try and interpret the cataclysmic happenings within the human race and those with which we are all familiar in nature. In the words quoted above we should not fail to notice that there is some close connection between nature or the earth and man; between earthquakes and war. We must not forget that the earth and man are more or less linked together. "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together with us until now." We may look for some interpretation of Providential happenings among men by observing the processes of the Creator in the evolution of the earth-the dwelling place of man. The geological history of our earth is one of frightful conflict between the forces of nature warring with matter. For millions of years the history of this earth of ours has been a series of ascending cataclysms. Heat and cold and fire and ice and fog and rain and fierce storms have conspired and striven together to bring order out of chaotic confusion, till at last the earth has been made a fit dwelling place for man. Even yet there is war in the physical world. Now and again the earth is shaken by frightful earthquakes and overwhelmed in places by tidal waves from the oceans which sweep thousands of innocent human beings into eternity. Not long ago in one of our southeastern islands a volcanic outburst of gas from Mt. Pele asphyxiated the whole population. It is within our young memory that San Francisco and a whole island in the Mediterranean were overthrown by mighty earth upheavals. The eruptions in nature are the effect of subnormal con |