And the work of righteousness shall be peace:  and the effect of righteousness quietness and confidence forever.

­Isaiah 32:17.

After we have found peace in our own souls through faith in God and in His Son, Jesus Christ our Saviour, if our faith is honest, we must feel the desire and the duty of helping to make peace prevail on earth.

But here we are, in a world of confusion and conflict.  Darkness and ignorance strive against light.  Evil hates and assaults good.  Wrong takes up arms against right.  Greed and pride and passion call on violence to defeat justice and enthrone blind force.  So has it been since Cain killed Abel, since Christ was crucified on Calvary, and so it is to-day wherever men uphold the false doctrine that “might makes right.”

The Bible teaches us that there is no foundation for enduring peace on earth except in righteousness:  that it is our duty to suffer for that cause if need be:  that we are bound to fight for it if we have the power:  and that if God gives us the victory we must use it for the perpetuation of righteous peace.

In these words I sum up what seems to me the Christian doctrine of war and peace, ­the truth that in time of war we must stand for the right, and that when peace comes in sight, we must do our best to found it upon justice.  These two truths cannot be separated.  If we forget the meaning of the Christian duty to which God called us in the late war, all our sacrifice of blood and treasure will have been in vain.  If we forget the watchword which called our boys to the colours, our victory will be fruitless.  We have fought in this twentieth century against the pagan German doctrine of war as the supreme arbiter between the tribes of mankind.  They that took the sword must perish by the sword.  But in the hour of victory we must uphold the end for which we have fought and suffered, ­the advance of the world towards a peaceful life founded on reason and justice and fair-play for every man.

So there are two heads to this sermon.  First, the indelible remembrance of a righteous acceptance of war.  Second, the reasonable hope of a righteous foundation of peace.

I. First of all, then, it must never be forgotten that the Allies and America were forced to enter this war as a work of righteousness in order to make the world safe for peace.

Peace means something more than the mere absence of hostilities.  It means justice, honour, fair-play, order, security, and the well-protected right of every man and nation to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It was the German contempt for these Christian ideals, it was the German idolatry of the pagan Odin, naked, cruel, bloody, god of war, it was the German will to power and dream of world-dominion, that made the world unsafe for real peace in 1914.

Never could that safety be secured until that enemy of mankind was overcome.  Not only for democracy, but also for human peace, it was necessary, as President Wilson said, that “the German power, a thing without honour, conscience, or capacity for covenanted faith, must be crushed.”

I saw, from my post of observation in Holland, the hosts of heathen Germany massing for their attack on the world’s peace in the spring of 1914.  Long before the pretext of war was provided by the murder of the Austrian Crown-Prince in Serajevo, I saw the troops, the artillery, the mountains of ammunition, assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle and Trier, ready for the invasion of neutral Belgium and Luxembourg, and the foul stroke at France.

Every civilized nation in Europe desired peace and pleaded for it.  Little Servia offered to go before the Court of Arbitration at The Hague and be tried for the offense of which she was accused.  Russia, Italy, France and England entreated Germany not to make war, but to submit the dispute to judicial settlement, to a righteous decision by a conference of powers.  But Germany said no.  She had prepared for war, she wanted war, she got war.  And now she must abide by the result of her choice.

I have seen also with my own eyes the horrors wrought by Germany in her conduct of the war in Belgium and Northern France.  Words fail me to describe them.  Childhood has been crucified, womanhood outraged, civilization trampled in the dust.  The nations and the men who took arms against these deviltries were the servants of the righteous God and the followers of the merciful Christ.

He told us, “If any man smite thee on the right cheek, turn unto him the left also.”  But never did He tell us to abandon the bodies and the lives of our women and children to the outrage of beasts in human form.  On the contrary, He said to His disciples, in His parting discourse, “He that hath no sword let him sell his garment and buy one.”

Does any silly pacifist say that means a spiritual sword?  No.  You could get that without selling your garment.  It means a real sword, ­as real as the purse and the scrip which Christ told His followers to carry with them.  It means the power of arms dedicated to the service of righteousness without which the world can never be safe for peace.

Here, then, we may stand on the Word of God, on the work of righteousness in making the world safe for peace.  Let me tell you of my faith that every one who has given his life for that cause, has entered into eternal rest.

II.  Come we now to consider the second part of the text:  “the effect of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever.”

What shall be the nature of the peace to be concluded after our victory in this righteous war?

Here we have to oppose the demands of the bloodthirsty civilians.  They ask that German towns should endure the same sufferings which have been inflicted on the towns of Belgium and Northern France.  Let me say frankly that I do not believe you could persuade our officers to order such atrocities, or our soldiers to obey such orders.  Read the order which one of the noble warriors of France, General Petain, issued to his men: 

“To-morrow, in order to better dictate peace, you are going to carry your arms as far as the Rhine.  Into that land of Alsace-Lorraine that is so dear to us, you will march as liberators.  You will go further; all the way into Germany to occupy lands which are the necessary guarantees for just reparation.

“France has suffered in her ravaged fields and in her ruined villages.  The freed provinces have had to submit to intolerable vexations and odious outrages, but you are not to answer these crimes by the commission of violences, which, under the spur of your resentment, may seem to you legitimate.

“You are to remain under discipline and to show respect to persons and property.  You will know, after having vanquished your adversary by force of arms, how to impress him further by the dignity of your attitude, and the world will not know which to admire most, your conduct in success or your heroism in fighting.”

The destruction of the commonplace Cathedral of Cologne could never recompense the damage done to the glorious Cathedral of Rheims.  Nor could the slaughter of a million German women and children restore the innocent victims of Belgium, France, Servia, and Armenia to life.  We do not thirst for blood.  We desire justice.

No doubt the ends of justice demand that the principal brigands who are responsible for the atrocities of this war should be tried before an international court If convicted they should be duly punished.  But not by mob-law or violence.  Nothing could be less desirable than the assassination of William Hohenzollern.  It would be absurd and horrible to give a martyr’s crown to a criminal.  Vengeance belongeth unto God.  He alone is wise and great enough to deal adequately with the case.  It is for us to keep our righteous indignation free from the poison of personal hatred, and to do no more than is needed to uphold and vindicate the eternal law.

William Hohenzollern, and his fellow-conspirators who are responsible for the beginning and the conduct of the dreadful war from which all the toiling peoples of earth have suffered, must be brought to the bar of justice and sentenced; otherwise the world will have no defense against the anarchists who say that government is a vain thing; and the bloody Bolshevists who proclaim the Empire of the Ignorant, ­the Boob-Rah, ­as the future rule of the world, will have free scope.

It is evident that a league of free, democratic states, pledged by mutual covenant to uphold the settlement of international differences by reason and justice before the use of violence, offers the only hope of a durable peace among the nations.  It is also the only defense against that deadly and destructive war of classes with which Bolshevism threatens the whole world.  The spirit of Bolshevism is atheism and enmity; its method is violence and tyranny; its result would be a reign of terror under that empty-headed monster, “the dictatorship of the proletariat.”  God save us from that!  It would be the worst possible outcome of the war in which we have offered and sacrificed so much, and in which God has given us the opportunity to make “a covenant of peace.”

How vast, how immeasurable, are the responsibilities which this great victory in righteous war has laid upon the Allies and America.  God help us to live up to them.  God help us to sow the future not with dragon’s teeth, but with seeds of blessed harvest.  God paint upon the broken storm-cloud the rainbow of eternal hope.  God help us and our friends to make a peace that shall mean good to all mankind.  God send upon our victory the light of the cross of Christ our Saviour, where mercy and truth meet together, righteousness and peace kiss each other.