Grand Forks daily herald and the evening times., 1914-09-01
AS CHURCHNiEN SEE TT.


How does the church regard this
war? AS demonstration Of the fail
ure Of Christianity? Not by any
means. 1t regards 1t with sadness,
and as demonstration Of the folly
and wickedness Of men. in spite of
the progress that has been made, but
not in hopeless spirit. Two very
apt and timely expressions have re-
Gently been made on the subject by
high dignitaries of the Church of Eng
land. The Archbishop of Canterbury
at Westminster Abbey on Aug. 2,
preaching on the causes of the Eu-
ropean conflict. said:
This thing which is now astir in
Europe is not the work of God, but of
the devil 1t is not the development
Of Gods purposes: it is the marring
Of them by the self-will, the sheer
Wrongness Of man. What is hap
pening must be due somewhere, some
how Il am not now attempting to
Judge where or how to the pride, the
high -handedness, and the stubborn
ness Of mems temper, undoing and
thwarting the handiwork and will of
God. We have got to set ourselves
slowly, 1t may be, but determinedly
as the generations pass, to eradicate
and make uncomfortable the temper
among men from which such things
spring, TO "shrivel the falsehood from
the souls of men" in the name of the
Prince Of Peace. who still goeth forth
conauering and to conquer. And, new
er let us forget it, we have in these
latter years done something substan-
'ial on that pathway. A hundred
years ago. no more than the barest
handful Of people could have been
found in England. or Germany. or
France, who believed in any arbitra-
ment except war And now? Why.
Notwithstanding all our shattered
hopes, our unanswered prayers, there
are, beyond all question, tens of thou
sands Of thoughtful people in Europe
and America. as we'll as England, who
are throwing themselves with eager
ness. which they rightly believe to
come from God. into the furtherance
Of the more excellent way" It may
seem to he a shallow paradox to state
such a, fact at time when literally
many millions of men are under arms
in Europe. and actual warfare is in
one region at least. going OH. None
the less the fact is undisputably true,
the fact repeat it--that the num-
Der of intelligent and thoughtful peo-
pie who have an unshakaple disbelief
in the necessity of resorting to the ar
bltrament of the sword for the settle
ment of International disputes, is far
greater than it has ever been before,
and that it is steadily increasing ev-
cry year, That its voice is still over
borne by what we must call "the 9TH
er side is only too apparent
d" Beneath the angel-strain have roll
Two thousand years Of wrong
At York Minister, the Archbishop of
York. in the course of his sermon. de-
clared that God was calling his people
10 prayer, Dut prayer cCuld not De
heard, if it came from hears full Of
the lust Of war. The appeal to God
demanded that there should be no
panic, and we were not to use wild
words. or to rush to hasty action. We
had no share in the quarrel. There
was not man or women in the coun-
try who had the faintest desire to en-
ter into this conflict. No pride Of ours
had been wounded, no honor OF ours
had been sighted. no interest of ours
had been ignored, We should insist
that our rulers should strain every
possible power to prevent even
chance OF our entering this conflict,
yet, in one sense, we could not stand
aside. We were part of the life Of
Europe. we might be called upon to
respect treaty obligations, and find it
impossible to refuse the claims of
honor"