p. 7 | The Language of Peace by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 1, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 31.

The Language of Peace

By Editor

The Language of Peace.—Referring to the “conviction” of Bishop Fowler that the Anglo-Saxon race “is to keep the world’s peace, and soon it will be true that not a soldier will lift his foot unless the command is given in the English language,” Ambrose Bierce remarks that “it looks as if not a soldier would grow gray waiting for the command. . . . It is a great language; it has the richest military vocabulary of any in the world. And it lends itself with a glib facility to fool prophecies of universal peace.” All of which is true. Mr. Bierce continues: “There is a tongue in which, so far as we know, no military commands were ever thundered forth—in which great State papers were never written—in which rulers of provinces and colonies never received their instructions from beyond the sea; a tongue whose words are not found inscribed in shouting characters on triumphal arches and the tombs of conquerors. That language is Aramaic—the mother tongue of Jesus Christ. It is not much spoken to-day, and does not appear to be spreading. The world is not taking very kindly to the language of the Prince of Peace.” And it is all too true.

But the language of Jesus Christ is being written into characters—characters which will live, rejoice, and grow when all the crumbling arches of military triumph and glory shall have crumbled into dust.