The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1880-01-13 00:00:00

THE CHRISTIAN POLICY OF EMPIRE.

List week the Rev. Baldwin Brown, MA., the
lecturer appointed for January. gave the first of the
"Ancient Merchants Lectures," which are given every
Tuesday in the year, except in the months of August and
September, at the Weigh House Chayst, Fish-street-hi tl.
Taking for his text the first and second venom of the Und
Chapter of Isaiah—" Behold, a King shall reign in
righteousness, and Princes shall rule in judgment. And •
man shall be as • bidinipplace from the wind, and %covert
from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as
the shadow of a great rock in a weary lane—he nil—
The saddest chapter of man's hietory is probably the hi --
tory of empire, and yet empire lies. manifestly, und, r
present conditions, in the line of God's counsel for the
government and the development of mankind. A lon
leader is the highest organising force extant upon earth
in the political and in the spirtml sense of man's life,
His spirit enters into the mass of his fellow men
whom his spell gathers around him, and kindles them
as with a breath of inspiration. And as there are
men of imperial faculty, who at great crises never
fail to reveal themselves, co too there seem to be
Imperial peoples endowed and sent forth to exercise
an analogous influence on the great world's affairs. It
was by no accident that the sceptre of civilisation passed
from Aga a estwards—from the continent of monotones in
nature and society to the bright, multiform, genial conti-
nent where lay in potent possibility such natural centres
of thought, &minty, and wide-spiesding influence as
Athens, Rome, Paris. and London, each waiting to grasp
the sceptre in secoemion, and to pass it on in ever-widen- ,
tog range of rule until, settled at last on the Atlantic
seaboards of Europe, it stretched scream the ocean, mid
waded • new hemisphere to its realms. Of this energy
oue main--one may &latest say. as far as the out r form
and structure of society is concerned, them sin—agen has
b-an the principle of empire, tbe constraining, compacting,
force of the great leaders, and one larger scale the great
races of the world. And yes the very maddest chapter of
hist vy is the bietory of empire. Everywhere and in all
ages Its page is stained by tears and de-p dyed in 61..1
Caner is said to have left a million men dead in his tails
of rangiest, and that represeitt• a !treat nation's wailing,
• nation weeping for its children and refusing to be cow
forted because they are Out. While to follow the stepo of
an Attila, Genghis Kum, a Tamerlane, and mark
the unutterable hcrror that attended their paths of
c diquest, would make the very blood curdle and the
marrow frees, in the bones. And yet, •eful as have
been the desoiations through which the Imperial leaders
and the Imperial races of man have advanced to their
triumphs, the progress has been as conspicuous, nay, more
conspicuous than, the desolation, and the blessing has
overapraad the bane, so that, looked at from • great height
and on • large scale, it is the advance in power, in culture,
in all that makes life Worth the living, which attracts
and fills the sight. It would be hard to over-estimate the
misery which must righteously be laid at the dour of
empire, but there is one sum which would met its
figures utterly into the 'haste, and that is the coat of
barbarism anarchy, and savagery to the world. The
history of the barbarian realm of our nature, of savage
tribes and nations, is unwritten yet. There is no prophet
to write, or poet to sing It, hut could we read it, the horror
of hotrors of history would be there. God mapitequi the
principle of empire. He sends forth men manifestly born
to rule, and men as manifestly botu to be ruled in every
age, but, as with man the transgressor, he chastises the
abuse of • noble faculty by the most tarnish, judgments,
so be chastises natiuns. As of old, he tete Inca work their
will and have their way. But they have hardly taken a step
when the avenger is upon them. We are paying now, and
shall have to pay, • heavy retribution for one of the most
unrighteous and unholy acts of aggression which stains
the petal of recent history. Is this association of empire
with brutal force and cunning fraud never to be broken—
is the grand principle never to be redeemed I And what
is its redemption? The principle is very simple, close at
hand like all the most needful truths, " Whateoever ye
would that men should do to you do ye even so to them,
for this is the law and the prophets." No doubt under
peer/et conditions the full and thorough working out of
these Christian ideas is hopeless. We used Christians to
make Christian principles powers. But we may
recognise the obligation and begin the application
of some of its broader principles to our imperial
transactions with the people subject to our sway.
I fear that we have got into a miserable and
demoralising habit of keeping two balances, one for our-
selves and our setueLs, and one for our subjects and
dependents. We invade a country under some imagined
imperial necessity; we fight battles, we leave the ground
thick strewn with dead. No matter now thickly the
corpses of our enemies may bestrew the ground._ we mks
no shame to ourselves and express no sorrow. But if an
enemy, using such skill and commies as he possesses,
assails an ill-defended post of our army, and covers the
ground with the British dead, that is • massacre, and the
whole country is stirred to frenzy. Again, we invade a
territory at the other pole of our Empire. We heat •
resident envoy on • free and unwilling people. He is
basely murdered. We move our armies on the capital to
avenge the insult by the condign punishment of the
perpetrators of the crime. The people rise in arms
against us, and bar our progress; we scatter them like
chaff and occupy their city ; we seek out, try by summary
process, and hang the culprit*, and then we proceed to
treat those who fought against us as guilty of a crime
worthy of death' and so the wholesale hanging ante on.
Our invasion, utterly unprovoked, totally needless in the
judgmental our very ablest Indian statesmen,is legitimate
warfare. The Inhabitants who meet us In arms in
defence of their homes and their State are rebels and
traitors whom we ugly shoot or hang at will, for which
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aitngouarghteacrnderetrrhibriconhr6wtei.mapoy belicysuoret
Empire demands from us imperatively an equal judgment
—that we measure our foes by precisely the mime standards
which we claim the right to apply to ourselves. If they
fight tor home and hearth they are doing what we have
done again and again, and for which we claim the praise
of man. I have seen statements lately in military corre-
spondence, andflin loading articles of leading Journals,
which proclaim the bridal policy of Empire, which, unless
we promptly and truly reform it, will make our Empire
hateful and loathsome to the subject noes,- end will
challenge its destruction. after the fashion of Babylon of
old, root and branch from the earth. But do not mtg.
understand the matter. Christian policy is no rose-water
method of dealing with the interests of tnen or of CJIMIIII•
tittles. It may haves very stern grasp in its hand of love,
but it insists on the Christian law, Look not every man
on his own things, but also on the things of others." Claim
no Empire, wield no authority which is not as cotudderate
of the rights of others as of your own. Make empire, if
the sceptre is in the nation's hand, • strong means of
uplifting, comforting, and saving all who dwell under its
shield, Let it spread because men see the benediction
which it proffers, the glad tidings of peace, industry,
progress, and happiness which it brings.