224 ASSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



" Oh, my friends, what is peace ? Is it war ? No, 

 it is not war." Therefore, they argue, the King- 

 dom of Peace excludes war, and either the Church 

 has absolutely forbidden war, or it has been false 

 to its trust. 



But what does the Church say about war? I 

 answer, It recognizes war as a/act, never as a right. 

 Under the Gospel, war is an anachronism and 

 a survival. The Church never condemns the life 

 of a soldier, but it never "contemplates war 

 forensically " as a legitimate international court 

 of appeal. Even Dr. Mozley, in spite of his 

 magnificent tour de force, is compelled to admit 

 that " Christianity only sanctions war upon the 

 hypothesis of a world at discord with herself. 

 In her own world war would be impossible." l It 

 never forgets that war is alien from the spirit 

 of Christianity ; yet it never forgets that Christi- 

 anity is to work like hidden leaven. No doubt 

 individual Christians from the first have been 

 found to hold the view, which finds its strongest 

 expression in Tertullian, and is, perhaps, also the 

 view of Origen, that the Sermon on the Mount 

 forbids military service altogether, and even the 

 administration of justice in matters of life and 

 death. But this was not the common teaching 

 of the ante-Nicene Church. Even while the 

 Empire was pagan, and military ^service might 



1 University Sermons, p. 119. 



