ual giants failed to impress upon mankind the folly
of war? They have had freedom of speech and action, they have wielded
incisive criticism and strength of invective. They have had many decades
in which to put into practice the theory of the greatest happiness of
the greatest number. But the problem of the persistence of war has
somehow escaped atheists and rationalists, just as it has eluded
theologians and revivalists.

We may admit that the clergy are more blameworthy than the orators of
rationalism. If the teachings of Jesus Christ are to be applied to the
art of war, then the art of war is doomed to extinction. If the Church
be an international society, based on mutual love and peace, then the
perpetration of war on members of the Church is clearly wrong. If the
ideals of the Christian life be charity, gentleness, forgiveness,
non-resistance to evil, then all war is a violation of the faith. The
question is not unimportant. It is not a subject which you can toy with,
or put aside as having no immediate bearing on life and duty. If the
literal application of the teaching of Christ to social and political
life be impossible, then the rationalists are right when they urge us to
drop a religion which we profess on Sunday and repudiate on Monday. If
the fault lies not in the teaching itself but in the feebleness of the
Church, then the Church must clearly be counted a failure. If the cause
of the discrepancy is to be found merely in the slowness and obstinacy
of the human soul in following the path of righteousness, the practical
realization of the Christian ideal will be but a question of time and
effort.

The attitude of Christianity towards war may at best be described as a
chapter of inconsistencies. "Can it be lawful to handle the sword,"
asked Tertullian, "when the Lord Himself has declared that he who uses
the sword shall perish by it?" By disarming Peter, he stated, the Lord
"disarmed every soldier from that time forward." To Origen, Christians
were children of peace who, for the sake of Jesus, shunned the
temptations of war, and whose only weapon was prayer. The difficulty of
reconciling the profession of Christianity with the practice of war
constantly exercised the minds of the early Christians. St. Basil
advocated a compromise in the form of temporary exclusion from the
sacrament after military service. St. Augustine came to the conclusion
that the qualities of a good Christian and a good warrior were not