CHRISTIANITY AND WAR. 227 



individual Christian, and to attempt to make it so 

 is not really to advance the Kingdom of God. 

 There will always be those 



" Whose best hope for the world 

 Is ever that the world is near its end, 

 Impatient of the stars that keep their course 

 And make no pathway for the coming Judge." 



But the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven are 

 to be the leaven of the world, and "they ought 

 not," says St. Augustine, "to wish before the time 

 to dwell with none but saints and righteous men." 

 It is a dangerous thing to ante-date the millennial 

 reign of Christ. 



You mean, then, that Christianity takes human 

 nature as it is? Yes ; but only that it may make 

 it what it is not. Christianity did not prohibit 

 slavery ; in a sense it accepted it. But it enunciated 

 principles ultimately inconsistent with slavery. 

 It did not prohibit war, and say that no Christian 

 might carry arms, but it attacked the war spirit 

 in every form. Cessante causa cessat et effectus. 

 But the converse is not true. You may prohibit 

 slavery, and declare that every man and woman 

 is free whose foot is set on English soil, and, 

 meanwhile, a white slave trade, as anti-christian 

 and as inhuman as anything on the coast of Africa, 

 is in our midst. And if war could be forbidden 

 we might still be as far as ever from the kingdom 

 of peace. Is the lust of glory more cruel than the 



