yet it is also true that we are fighting to emancipate Germany no less than to emancipate Belgium, France and Italy. We are going to make the whole world safe for the Brotherhood of Man Germany no less than the countries which the German autocracy has attacked. And we are going to do it whatever it costs us and whatever it costs those whom we are fighting.

When Jesus drove out from the helpless boy the demon that possessed him, "the boy became as one dead; in so much that the more part said, He is dead." This war must not end until the demon of lawless self-conceit and self-will is driven out of the German nation, though the nation be left as one dead by the very act which saves its people from the madness which possesses them.

"My peace I give unto you," said Jesus Christ, in his farewell talk with his disciples: "not as the world giveth give I unto you." What is the difference?

The world sometimes offers peace to the coward who flees from the field of battle or proposes conciliation and compromise with enemies of righteousness. Christ never! No more uncompromising enemy, no more vehement repudiator of all attempts to escape conflict by peace without victory does the history of the human race afford. We remember his

saying to the woman taken in adultery, 66 Neither do I condemn thee." We forget that he adds "From henceforth sin no more.' We remember his saying to the penitent brigand, "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." We forget that to the impenitent brigand he offered no word of comfort or consolation. We remember his humility in washing his disciples' feet. We forget his saying to Peter, "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." We remember his welcome to those who came to him whatever their past offenses - Matthew, Zaccheus, the publicans and harlots. We forget his rejection of the self-confident disciple: "I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest," but Jesus said unto him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." I wonder, did he follow the Master? We forget his rejection of the procrastinating disciple: "Suffer me first to go and bury my father "; but Jesus said unto him, "Let the dead bury their dead; go thou and preach the kingdom of God." We forget his rejection of the irresolute disciple: "Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell which are at home at my house"; but Jesus said unto him, "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back,

is fit for the kingdom of God." Thousands of sermons have been preached on the father's welcome of the returning prodigal; not many on the fact that the father did not receive the prodigal till he had learned his lesson and come home with "I am no more worthy to be called thy son." Thousands of sermons have been preached on Christ's saying to Peter, "Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church "; very few on the saying which followed, when Peter desired to dissuade his Master from the cross, thee behind me, Satan."

Get

There never can be peace in this world without victory. No man can have peace in himself except as he wins a victory over his baser appetites and passions. No city can maintain peace within its limits except as its police win and retain victory over the criminal population. Doing justice is the essential condition of peace. If a thug attacks a peaceful citizen, knocks him down, robs him of his watch and purse, and so injures him that he has to go to the hospital for repairs, justice is not satisfied by a promise of the thug not to do it again. He must restore the stolen goods and pay the hospital charges, and, if necessary, be made to feel such "humiliation" and "sting" that he will not wish to repeat the crime. There can be no

peace in the world until the prophets of falsehood and the corrupters and oppressors of their fellow-men are converted to a God of truth and goodness, or are utterly destroyed with unquenchable fire.

In this message to the children of God the oldest prophet of the Old Testament and the Master in the New Testament unite. The writer of the third chapter of Genesis tells us that the head of the serpent shall bruise man's heel; but man's heel shall bruise the head of the serpent. Now the head of the serpent is erect, its forked tongue is running out, its eyes red with wrath, its very breath is poisonous. We have a difficult task to get our heel on the head but when we do we must grind it to powder. The Master in one of his farewell messages to his disciples says that he who takes up the sword shall perish by the sword not by pestilence, nor by thunderbolt, nor by the act of God- but by the sword in the hands of man. That sword has been given to us by our Master and we must not sheathe it until the Predatory Potsdam Gang has perished from the face of the earth.

Not by flight nor by compromise, but by consecration to the completion of this task whatever it may cost, to us or to others, shall we find the peace of God which passeth understanding.

EIGHTH LETTER

SHOW ME THY PATHS, O LORD

You are of the opinion that all Christians would wish to follow the guidance and do the will of God if they could know what that will is; but how are we to know? The religious teachers of Germany affirm with great positiveness that it is the will of God that Germany should impose her superior Kultur upon all Europe, and the religious teachers of America are equally positive that it is the will of God that the people of Europe should be free from any such imposition. How are we to know which of these two opinions is right?

This is an old perplexity. Montaigne, writing in the sixteenth century, maintains that the laws of conscience proceed from custom and he presents these same perplexities to his readers: "Such people as have been bred up to liberty, and subject to none but themselves, look upon all other forms of government as monstrous and contrary to nature. Those who are used to monarchy