CHRISTIANITY AND WAR. 221 



heathen teachers declares that " no one chooses 

 war for the sake of war. A man would be blood- 

 thirsty indeed if he turned his friends into foes in 

 order to bring about battle and murder;" but in 

 another context he remarks that " it is mere slavery 

 if a man may not give another as good as he gave." 

 In fact, it would seem that however civilization may 

 mitigate the barbarity of war, it still leaves un- 

 touched the idea that war is a natural right. 



It is here that the teaching of the Old Testa- 

 ment about war, even at its lowest, shows a definite 

 advance. It takes man as he is, with his savage, 

 warlike instincts ; it does not ignore his nature, 

 and proclaim at once a reign of peace. It does not 

 even strike directly at the war spirit. It accepts 

 war. But the people to whom are committed " the 

 oracles of God," are to be taught to see war in a 

 new light. It is taken out of the hands of man. 

 It is God's prerogative. Man wages war lawfully 

 only as His vicegerent. He is fighting "the battle 

 of the Lord." l There is nothing personal in the 

 Israelitish campaigns, nothing even national except 

 so far as the cause of Israel is the cause of God. 

 We think it a great advance in civilization when 

 men neither take the law into their own hands, 

 nor suffer a relative to be the avenger of blood, 

 but trust to the administration of an impersonal 

 law. Revenge, which, even in the individual, is "a 



1 i Sam. xviii. 17 ; xxv. 28. 



