Sometimes the Biblical teaching is crystal-clear, but we dare not understand it. The Christian Church has a vested interest in its present forms, and Christian people, like others, have their pleasant prejudices. What it did was to guarantee that the old morality was actually valid, and the old beliefs literally true. Behind the vast armies and navies which we call the great powers of the world, there is fear. Fear it is that drives us out to war.
Fear is the father of ferocity, and the forger of the sword.
From the Creative point of view, which is God's point of view, force is weakness, and only Love is power. Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit. It is its own fruit, its own enjoyment. Love is a great thing provided it recurs to its beginning, returns to its origin, and draws always from that Fountain which is perpetually in flood. Of all the feelings and affections of the soul, love is the only one by which the creature, though not on equal terms, is able to respond to the Creator and to repay what it has received from Him.