when the world becomes civilised, when
weakness combines against strength, when men do not settle differences
of feeling by combat and war, but by peaceable devices like votes and
arbitrations, the intellect comes to the front, and strength of body
falls into the background as a pleasant enough thing, a matter of
amusement or health, and intellect becomes the dominant force. But we
shall advance beyond even that, and indeed we have begun to advance.
Buddhism and the Stoic philosophy were movements dictated more by
reason than by emotion, which recognised the elements of pain and
sorrow as inseparable from human life, and suggested to man that the
only way to conquer evils such as these was by turning the back upon
them, cultivating indifference to them, and repressing the desires
which issued in disappointment. Christianity was the first attempt of
the human spirit to achieve a nobler conquest still; it taught men to
abandon the idea of conquest altogether; the Christian was meant to
abjure ambition, not to resist oppression, not to meet violence by
violence, but to yield rather than to fight.

The metaphor of the Christian soldier is wholly alien to the spirit of
the Gospel, and the attempt to establish a combative ideal of
Christian life was one of the many concessions that Christianity in
the hands of its later exponents made to the instincts of men. The
conception of the Christian in the Gospel was that of a simple,
uncomplicated, uncalculating being, who was to be so absorbed in
caring for others that the sense of his own rights and desires and
aims was to fall wholly into the background. He is not represented as
meant to have any intellectual, political, or artistic pursuits at
all. He is to accept his place in the world as he finds it; he is to
have no use for money or comforts or accumulated resources. He is not
to scheme for dignity or influence, nor even much to regard earthly
ties. Sorrow, loss, pain, evil, are simply to be as shadows through
which he passes, and if they have any meaning at all for him, they are
to be opportunities for testing the strength of his emotions. But the
whole spirit of the Christian revelation is that no terms should be
made with the world at all. The world must treat the Christian as it
will, and there are to be no reprisals; neither is there the least
touch of opportunism about it. The Christian is not to do the best he
can, but the best; he is frankly to aim at perfection.

H