RIGHTEOUS WRATH

Waikato Times, Volume 89, Issue 13751, 26 April 1918, Page 6

RIGHTEOUS WRATH

CHRISTIAN SENTIMENT AND GERMAN CRIMES. "The duty to which we need to be recalled as Christians is the dirty of moral indignation," says the British Weekly. "The more we seek to banish from our minds and from the minds of those whom we can influence any temner of vindictivencss. the more are we hound to avoid the danger of condoning crime in the name of Christ. "To say 'Let us forgive and forget' may be duo to the mere disinclination to be troubled; it may come from the shallows, as well as from the depths of human nature; and there is a special danger, towards the end of the war, that Christians, in all good faith, may lend themselves to a propaganda which subtly violates the principles of their religion.

"It is fai old danger, this risk of sentimental pity of criminals who are about to be punished for their misdeeds, and the Church should I>e on her guard against it. After making all possible deductions and allowances, and with every desire to acquit the Germans and the Turks of crimes comniitt.rd by a few scoundrel-! in places, a damning record remains which it would lie unkind, even to the better conscience of Germany itself, to ignore.

"People may argue, 'Leave that tr certain sections of the secular Press; there are plenty of writers and speakers to enforce the severe side, antf few enough to raise a plea for generosity. Put this is sophistry. The Christian conscience has no right to agree to a division of moral virtues; and. besides mercy without-justice is as corrupting as mere justice without mercy. We who are supremely •concerned about a Christian settlement that shall leave no rancour behind—or, at least, no ill-feeling that can possibly he avoided —ought to be reminding ourselves that we dare not expect to forgive Germany until we see that our forgiveness carrier in its heart an intense condemnation of her crimes.

"It would be the worst possible service to the world if we acted so as 1o convey the idea that outrages, provided that they were committed some time ago v and on some plausible pretext, could lie treated as if they had never been. That would be to set a premium upon crime among the stronger nations, and it would he a travesty of Christianity. It may he difficult to purge moral indignation from the smoke of hate and vindictivencss and the resentment of private wrongs, hut it. ought not to he too difficult for the instructed conscience of the Church, and one of th j most delicate and pressing duties is just to see that this flame of the spirit is not being quenched by Christian sentimentalism or coloured by national angers. Put a duty it is, upon occasion.

It is said that Adam" Smith was once in the company of a gentleman at Dalkeith -Palace, who spoke with n good-humoured, cynical tolerance abdii* some vieifius deed. Smith controlled himself until tire man had left the room, and then broke out: 'We ear. breathe more freelv now; that man has no indignation in him.' "It would be a dolorous day for the Church if she joined unthinkingly in anv outburst of national vindictivencss at the end of the war; but it would be as disastrous to her influence if she so identified herself with certain sets of opinion in this country that honest mo*i were obliged to feel that they could breathe more freely outside the range of her teaching."