the great word of my text. There is much that
we are all bound to do to carry the tranquillising and soothing
influences of Gospel principles and of Christ's example into the
littlenesses of daily life. Any fool can stick a lucifer match into a
haystack and make a blaze. It is easy to promote strife. There is a
malicious love of it in us all; and ill-natured gossip has a great deal
to do in bringing it about. But it takes something more to put the fire
out than it did to light it, and there is no nobler office for
Christians than to seek to damp down all these devil's flames of envy
and jealousy and mutual animosity. We have to do it, first, by making
very sure that we do not answer scorn with scorn, gibes with gibes, hate
with hate, but 'seek to overcome evil with good.' It takes two to make a
quarrel, and your most hostile antagonist cannot break the peace unless
you help him. If you are resolved to keep it, kept it will be.

May I say another word? I think that our text, though it goes a good
deal deeper, does also very plainly tell us Christian folk what is our
duty in relation to literal warfare. There is no need for me to discuss
here the question as to whether actual fighting with armies and swords
is ever legitimate or not. It is a curious kind of Christian duty
certainly, if it ever gets to be one. And when one thinks of the
militarism that is crushing Europe and driving her ignorant classes to
wild schemes of revolution; and when one thinks of the hell of
battlefields, of the miseries of the wounded, of mourning widows, of
ruined peaceful peasants, of the devil's passions that war sets loose,
some of us find it extremely hard to believe that all that is ever in
accordance with the mind of Christ. But whether you agree with me in
that or no, surely my text points to the duty of the Christian Church to
take up a very much more decisive position in reference to the military
spirit than, alas! it ever has done. Certainly it does seem to be not
very obviously in accordance with Christ's teachings that men-of-war
should be launched with a religious service, or that _Te Deums_ should
be sung because thousands have been killed. It certainly does seem to be
something like a satire on European Christianity that one of the chief
lessons we have taught the East is that we have instructed the Japanese
how to use Western weapons to fight their enemies. Surely, surely, if
Christian churches laid to heart as they ought these