not because,
but in spite, of Christianity.

Grievous as war now is, yet it is not war as in the days before the
Cross was erected on Calvary. When Ulysses asked Agamemnon for
sanction to bury the body of Ajax, the King was greatly annoyed. "What
do you mean?" he answered, "do you feel pity for a dead enemy?" That
was the spirit of war in the old heathen world--the spirit which had no
mercy on the living and no pity for the dead. Slowly but surely the
spirit of Christ fettered the spirit of hate and dethroned the spirit
of revenge. We now minister to the wounded and bury the dead enemy
with the pity and the honour we render to our own.

We can trace the evolution of peace through the centuries. Wars
between individuals have ceased. A century and a half ago warring
clans in Scotland dyed the heather red; to-day wars between tribes have
ceased. There remains only war between nations, and already there are
great nations between whom war is unthinkable. If we in these days
wage war with Germany, yet we in these days also celebrate the
hundredth anniversary of unbroken peace with the United States of
America. If we bewail the failure of Christianity in the former, let
us be grateful for the triumph of Christianity in the latter.

Formerly war was the normal condition; now to the moral consciousness
of Christendom war is an outrage. We only need to look beneath the
surface to realise that Galilee is conquering Corsica, and will conquer
at the last. Beneath the shadow of the Cross men will at last find
healing for their grievous wounds.

***

And as a symbol thereof the doors of the sanctuaries of peace will be
flung wide open, and no burdened heart will find the House of God
locked and barred against groping hands. One fruit of these grievous
days may well be that the Church will realise that it does not become
her to occupy a lower plane than that heathen temple in ancient Rome,
whose door was shut not day or night while men were dying in battle.

In the coming days when the mothers of sorrow come to their dead, over
whose graves the falling leaves flutter as a benediction, they will not
be left sitting on the iron mort-safe. The open door will invite them
into the sanctuary of peace, and they will croon the coronach of their
woe in the holy place. For they are the priesthood of this generation,
offering up the most precious sacrifice--and the door of the holy place
must be open to them. And there, in