LOVE VERSUS FORCE by L. A. P.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 4, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 27.

LOVE VERSUS FORCE.

By L. A. P.

No one at all observing, unless his vision be obscured by the mists of error, can fail to remark the significance attending the attitude of the mass of professed Christians towards the spirit of militarism so prevalent nowadays.

While some deprecate this growing spirit, yet the vast majority of the church is fostering and encouraging it. We hear of "our army," "our navy," "our Christian arms," from Christian pulpit and press, as tho these were a part of the equipment of the heavenly kingdom. While teaching and professedly practising the gentle law of love and peace, and honoring the command, "Thou shalt not kill," the church, possessed of a perverted conception of what constitutes true patriotism and that it is her office to teach it, is inculcating the idea of carnal warfare, whose actuating principle is self-love, self-seeking and hate, by her "boys' brigades" and laudation of the nation's battle heroes, so styled.

It is zeal that prompts to this attitude, and love of country no doubt—perhaps more of the latter, with an admixture of national pride. But it is a zeal and a love of the wrong sort for the Christian and the true church of Christ. It is the same zeal that justifies the victories of "Christian arms" over the presumably heathen or intolerant forces of other lands, as tho thus the door would be more effectually opened for the entry of the Gospel of the kingdom. No question but that He who rules over all will cause

even the wrath of man to result in His praise; but is it for a moment seriously believed that the God of love is behind wars prompted by pride and insincere motives? No thoughtful man will assert that a really wider door is now opened than stood before the pioneers, men of God who went forth among savages and heathen, when as yet no earthly power had cleared a path for them with shot and shell.

A development of the same spirit, also, is the demand for the protection of Protestant missionaries in their foreign operations, of which and of indemnity claims the world is hearing much of late years. Claims are based on the ground of injustice done citizens of another and usually powerful earthly government, and the attempt to collect damages brings to the front the only means at the behest of the earthly power, which in one way or another is force,—its army, its navy. Now it is right for the Christian missionary—who is supposed to live peaceably with all men everywhere—to take advantage of whatever favorable conditions may exist for spreading the Gospel to earth's dark corners, but a sad mistake is made when any foreign civil power, whose arm is flesh, is appealed to for protection against persecution or outrage; for Christianity and its adherents are at once identified, in the minds of the heathen, with the principles of the government appealed to, which principles are those of force and not love.

Above all is the real principle of the matter. Who sends the missionary forth upon his mission? Does the civil government send him? If so, then it is his prerogative to use the weapons and equipments of earthly powers, and when these fail the single individual, to appeal to the home government. Does Christ send him? Then his weapons are spiritual,—the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and its power the power of the Spirit. Then the Majesty of heaven is the One to whom to appeal, and the power that will protect him. The ultimatum of love and the operation of the Spirit is death of the old man, and a new and living creation; the ultimatum of force is death of the physical man. Said Christ to the two self-righteous and offended disciples who would call down fire from heaven and consume the Samaritans who refused to receive them: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. The Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." To Peter, who would do valiant deeds by force of arms through zeal for the Master, He said, "Put up again thy sword into his place; for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." If more of Christ's Spirit and methods were present in missionary fields, we should hear less of outrages and nothing of indemnity claims and salutary effects of consular representations.

But there is a trouble at the root of the whole matter. A sensible lack and loss of divine power is felt in the church, and in proportion as the spirit of materialism has entered, there has been consequent seeking to visible sources,—the temporal,—for power. The true, the simple, the spiritually real doctrines and ideals of the Word are gradually transformed into doctrines of men and ideals of human conception. The church flatters the State, and more and more dictates its wishes and will to the civil power. And thus the spirit of the age, the spirit of expansion and militarism and war, takes possession of professed servants of Christ, even as it does the man of the world, with far greater field for dire results.

What is the whole attitude but a confession of lack of faith in a divine commission and loss of divine power? Jesus answered Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world; if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight." No, His servants do not fight with carnal weapons, for they are citizens of a kingdom of peace, and their Master is the Prince of Peace. Christ's kingdom is wholly spiritual in this age of sin, and citizens of that kingdom, in every function pertaining to it, are to keep free from alliances with earthly governments. Christ's language before the Roman governor at once and forever falsifies the claim that the State, with its power, is or can of right be in any sense whatever the servant of the church, which arrangement has been for ages the claim of the Catholic Church. And when it was such, witness the "persuasive" influences that operated wherever the flag and the cross were carried.

There is vast significance in the drift of the church of to-day, but in the light of prophecy and of history the end should not be difficult to see, and it is not far distant.