220 SSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



of Him Who spoke with authority, " It was said 

 to them of old time, but I say unto you," I see 

 in the Old Testament, as St. Paul did in the Law, 

 a TrcuSaywyo'c its Xptvrdv leading men on little by 

 little till they could sit at the feet of Jesus. Its 

 teaching is provisional only because propcedeutic. 

 It is destroyed only by being fulfilled. 



But if this principle is to help us we must be 

 able to show how the Old Testament teaching 

 about war prepared for, and led up to, the Gospel 

 of peace. It is no use to say the Old Testament 

 wars were commanded by God and that is enough. 

 Undoubtedly the immediate justification for them 

 was the direct command of God, but conscience 

 demands an ulterior justification. If immoral acts 

 become moral when done by God, as Zwingli taught, 

 either there is no morality, or God is not God. 



Now the revelation of the Old Testament stands 

 midway between the natural instincts of man and 

 the supernatural life of the kingdom of God. 

 Without committing ourselves to the sophistic 

 fiction of a bellum omnium inter omnes^ we are 

 bound to admit that, when the struggle for exist- 

 ence among families or peoples comes, the law of 

 force prevails. Man tacitly assumes " that he may 

 take who has the power, and he may keep who 

 can." No doubt the social instincts on the one 

 hand, and experience of the evils of war on the 

 other, tend to modify this view. The greatest of 



