Peace or a Sword ?

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 133, 29 February 1936, Page 17

Peace or a Sword ?

“The first necessary assumption is the absolute right of Christian men to live Christian lives always and in all places. , Both freedom and peace are ’

good only in relation to the ends they serve, which is the hope of the world to come. And because this hope must be fulfilled by and through the world in which we live, for we are not anchorites (and, if we were, there is no desert'to which we could retire), io Western civilisation must retain its power of growth and change, and must not, in the name of peace, refuse (he responsibility for initiating change.

“This responsibility carries with It the responsibility for guiding the channels of change, for we must cooperate not with the agents of change but with God’s purpose, which is man’s freedom to know Him and to serve Him. Only when that purpose is fulfilled will there be peace, because the agents of change will then necessarily and always be the enemies of mankind.

“The whole world to-day is paralysed by doubt, and so long as the nominal leaders of Christian civilisation are also in doubt, wo shall endure the worst of both worlds. We shall lack at one and the same time the power to resist change or to direct it. In despair, we shall seek vainly to delay change, lest it should be for the worse, and in so seeking we shall bring not peace, but a sword.”--Douglas in bis book. “They That Take the Sword.”