Our Master said, in concluding His Sermon on the
Mount, according to Matt. 7 : 24-27 :
"Every one, therefore, that heareth these words of
mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise
man who built his house upon the rock;
"And the rain descended, and the floods came, and
the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell
not; for it was founded upon a rock.
"And every one that heareth these words of mine,
and doeth them not, I will liken unto a foolish man,
who built his house upon the sand;
"And the rain descended, and the floods came, and
the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell;
and great was the fall thereof."
With these words for a foundation, the author feels
it necessary to issue a word of admonition which he
hopes will be taken seriously by all who find a use
for this little volume.
Under the old economy it was "an eye for an eye,
and a tooth for a tooth." But Jesus of Nazareth
changed that standard and established a new order of
things. He reversed the standards of the past and
laid the foundation for a glorious future in the history
of mankind. The angelic anthem that was wafted over
the storied hills of old Judea, some nineteen hundred
years ago, "Peace on earth; good will to men," con-
tains the nucleus of a civilization that would usher in
the most ideal condition among men, if properly
applied by peoples, nationalities and races in their
intercourse with each other. The idea of the brother-
hood of man is so big that the world has failed to
grasp its full significance. Parts of humanity, here
and there, have caught something of the spirit of
Christ, which they have demonstrated in an earnest
effort to bring about universal brotherhood, and sub-
sequently universal peace. But other portions of
humanity have challenged that ideal from time to time,
and have instituted in its stead the theory of the ''sur-
vival of the fittest," in which competition and war
have been given a prominent position, and of which
might has been made the dominating factor. By them
Jesus has been pronounced either a fanatic or a crank.
They have ruled out His teachings as visionary and
Utopian, and have refused to accord Him any degree
of consideration, much less of divinity. The conse-
quence has been the sudden eruption of the warlike
spirit at different times in the past, followed by the
rise and fall of nations according to the proportion
that said nations have founded their national civiliza-
tion upon Christian or antichristian ideals.
History is but repeating itself to-day with a lesson
more terrible, yet more fruitful, we hope, than at any
time in the past — a lesson so costly that it will result
altogether in the elimination of war. We have just
emerged from a welter of blood in which practically
all the nations have been involved. The apparent
causes were racial strife and commercial prejudice and
kingly ambition; but the real issue lying at the bottom
of things was the old issue that has confronted human-
ity time and again since the Nazarene went back
to the right hand of His majesty on high. Certain
classes of men have ruled Christ out of human affairs,
discarded and pooh-poohed His teachings, and insti-
tuted their own wisdom instead. So we must affirm,
with all the emphasis of intellect and soul, that the
real underlying issue of the great war was a religious
issue — an issue involving the supremacy of Christ over
rationalistic and atheistic philosophy, upon the outcome
of which will depend the future of civilization itself.
We desire to analyze this issue briefly, and conclude
this homiletic effort with a word of warning to be
taken from the trend of modern events.
Modern philosophy originates with the reasoning of
the German teacher and professor, Immanuel Kant.
While Kant himself was a stickler for the funda-
mentals of the Christian faith, yet he left behind him
a system of philosophical thought that was easily dis-
torted, from its original and intended meaning, into
a pure rationalism, by his successors. It was Arthur
Schopenhauer, the philosopher and pessimist, who orig-
inated modern atheism. Schopenhauer taught that
humanity is fundamentally bad. The only God which
he recognized is what he called "The Will to Live"
which might be interpreted as a blind striving to exist,
an impelling force within all humanity, that causes
reproduction and propagation in order to escape anni-
hilation. Naturally Schopenhauer was an autocrat,
and a firm believer in the "survival of the fittest."
He is the man who has shaken modern religious
thought from its very foundation, and left, in many
places, nothing but spiritual darkness in his wake. It
was another German philosopher, however, who abetted
Schopenhauer in the work of leading humanity away
from spiritual values. This man was David Friedrich
Strauss. His attack took another course. He assailed
the authenticity of the Biblical manuscripts, and pro-
nounced the narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John nothing more than Hebrew legends. He denied
the divinity of Christ and the inspiration of the
Scriptures. In so doing he laid the foundation of
modern destructive criticism. Thus we can see that
these two men, both of them prominent in the higher
educational circles of Prussia, are indirectly responsible
for the holocaust which has engulfed humanity to-day.
It remained, however, for another man, a German
philosopher also, to bring about the actual condition
that would result in the disruption of civilization.
This man, brilliant, though insane, was Friedrich
Nietzsche, who lived in the nineteenth century.
Nietzsche admits that he gave up Christianity after
reading Schopenhauer. We recognize in his "Will to
Power" but the evolution of Schopenhauer's "Will
to Live." Nietzsche idealized the victor, moral
or immoral. He deified authority and power. He
argued for the revolutionizing of society and
the development of the "superman" by means of
the laws of eugenics. He admitted that Jesus
approached the "superman" to a certain degree, but he
maintained that Jesus lacked the power of ruling
others. His philosophy may be summed up in these
words, written by himself: "Seal philosophers are
commanders and lawgivers. They say: 'Thus shall it
be' Their knowing is creating." This is the very
spirit of Prussian militarism. Nietzsche combined the
pessimism of Schopenhauer with the criticism of
Strauss, and added thereto his own insanity and lust
for power. The consequence of such philosophy was
the formation of a military autocracy that has recently
set out to conquer and Prussianize the world.
Bismarck carried out this philosophy in the forma-
tion of the German Empire. By means of intrigue and
wars of aggrandizement, deliberately planned and per-
petrated, he wrested territory from Denmark, Austria
and France in quick succession, and drove the sur-
rounding principalities into a coalition with Prussia,
under the reign of William I., thus forming the Ger-
man Empire out of the historic policy of " blood and
iron." Surrounded by champions of his own policy,
he set about the formation of a military system that
was intended to carry German "kultur" over the
entire world. In this he was aided by Heinrich Von
Treitschke, the principal editor and historian of the
empire. He made everything subservient to the state.
He began the plan of educating the people to such a
conception of government — a conception which exalted
the state above everything else; which even went to the
extremity of accounting anything right, whether moral
or immoral in itself, if done for the state. And he
based the power of the state upon one instrument —
the army. For the last seventy-five years the most
important thing in the German Empire has been the
army — an army consisting of every male subject of the
state, carefully equipped and rigorously disciplined,
ready for war at the sound of the bugle.
The policy originated by Bismarck has been fol-
lowed carefully by his successors. The Emperor him-
self, William II., has been the foremost in the propa-
gation of this policy of pan-Germanism. For a long
time war has been looked upon by the military leaders
of Germany as "a national industry" in which so
many millions are expended and so many more millions
made in profit by annexation and indemnity. "War has
been called a purifier of national life, and the idea of
universal peace hooted with derision. Perhaps the
most enlightening book on this subject is that of Gen-
eral Bernhardi, entitled "Germany and the Next
War", written some two years previous to the outbreak
of the recent conflict.
What does all of this elaboration mean to us? It
means that in the universities of Heidelberg, Leipsic,
Jena, Munich and Berlin has originated all the atheism,
criticism and rationalism that has turned the world
away from Christian ideals. It was in these univer-
sities that it was first discovered that Jesus was a
fanatic, the Bible a Hebrew legend, and the ethics of
Christianity too antiquated for the notice of modern
thinkers. This species of teaching spread into the uni-
versities of France and England, and, in recent years,
has crossed the Atlantic to take up its abode in the
larger American institutions of learning. There are
very few universities in the United States, to-day, that
are not surrounded by this air of atheism and rational-
ism. For a long time our noted intellectualists have
refused to accord any degree of consideration to any-
thing that has not worn the trademark, "Made in Ger-
many." Degrees obtained from German universities
have been given a higher value; and courses have
not been considered complete unless the finishing
touches have been given them in Germany. As a con-
sequence, we have developed the same sort of an intel-
lectual aristocracy that is unchristian in character and
ideals. The philosophy and rationalism of the educa-
tional system of Germany have finally robbed the
masses of their primitive faith. Much in the same
manner are the criticism and rationalism of American
higher learning, born and nurtured in Germany, rob-
bing the Christian ministry of its enthusiasm, and
indirectly turning the common people into the luke-
warmness of uncertainty and unbelief. The philosophy
of Nietzsche, interwoven with the educational and
political systems of Germany, has brought about the
desecration of Christian ideals, and the glorification of
brute force as the foremost factor of a progressive
civilization.
What was the consequence? The terrible world war.
The intellectualists of the world have ruled Christ out
of human affairs, and turned to their own wisdom for
infallibility. But God does not propose to allow such
a condition to exist very long. To-day they are paying
the price of their folly. The wisdom of the wise is
becoming consummate foolishness because of the irony
of present social and political conditions. Heidelberg,
Jena, Leipsic, Berlin, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and
Yale are all guilty to a certain degree. To-day they
are paying for their desecration of higher ideals.
To-day the European universities are empty. They
no longer resound with the virile step of young man-
hood. Where are all of the strong young men that,
just a few years ago, walked and talked within those
classic halls? Their bones are decaying in the fields
of Flanders, or in the mountain passes of the Car-
pathians. Mankind has just descended into an awful
grave — but there lies a resurrection beyond, a resur-
rection to the millennial reign of Christ in the hearts
of men, a glorious era illuminated by the splendor of
the cross. Men are being brought to a contemplation
of divinity as never before, as a consequence of suf-
fering and travail. The world is just beginning to
realize a need of the immortal, ascended, glorified
Christ.
This is the time for ministers to throw away
theories and hypotheses, creeds and cults, and get busy
preaching the Word. Let the message of the gospel
ring from ocean to ocean, from land to land! Let
the personal Christ be held up for the contemplation
of humanity! Let the twentieth-century civilization
be founded upon the principles of Christianity, so that
it may be an enduring civilization! Let the divinity
of Christ be given a special emphasis, as well as the
inspiration of the Scriptures. Let the idea of universal
brotherhood become a reality, and universal peace will
be brought about by disarmament of nations. Let the
word of God be preached in all of its original purity
and power, the way of salvation pointed out clearly to
those in the bondage of sin, and the promises of the
gospel be proclaimed to the uttermost parts of the
earth. Let the ministry of the gospel profit by the les-
son of to-day, face about, burn all the bridges behind
them — bridges of theory and speculation — and press
forward in the evangelization of the race. In so
doing, brother minister, Jesus Christ will be with you
even unto the end of the world.
