Newspaper Page Text
TO HAVE PEACE-CONQUER YOUR ENEMIES]
p=- - -
' x i J -a 1
i \ j \ A I 'T _Z
> " x 7 r ' I - ■ ’ X / 7
' )•’ --—. Z J YzS»vi .- «>»*♦.- JsSk
.BHRMHIm,.
iJMIHMIffiMiX^T'S’W- WlftO A wjjar
I »)
a Woi< wwa
••-•.wlSOiwßffiWF * n i i 'vCw* '■•'7^-ibiw^ii/W^K^ 7
K tWW f)' / ,; x
WSlw>. c-^. z r v> *t /£ I' . dX -
GR
1-JF rTji / B-Vww y *
V<K wM V--S / W WWrt
%£h ® ■■■■'“*" & cS- i z / b
>37 J< v
1 — —.— i™&!K ; ir ~
< opyn«bt. lUI2, b> the sui UtMupjnj Great Bntaic lti<<»t* Re->e; ,<.;!. —" ■ - - '" ’_ .
w— ~„„■ , —> ■ - Copyright, 1912, by the Star Company. Great Britain lUgats Reserved.
1 he- Are Two Kinds of Peace. Peace Between
Is One Kind Common Sense Will
Irmg It Peace Within the Individual Means
Long Battle, and One That Does Not End.
E present to you, with satisfac
tion, an earnest and timely
article by Dr. Parkhurst.
“Peace on earth and good will
to men” is the thought for this
time of the year.
I$ f 1
is peace? If there are more kinds
of peace than one —and there are—what peace
is most important?
Peace between nations will come. It is
coming rapidly, as Dr. Parkhurst points out.
The people CAN READ, and, being able to
read, they will soon refuse to be put to cutting
each other's throats over the quarrels of old
fashioned kings or modern money kings. The
few wholesale murders of human beings will
probably still disgrace the history of this
planet. And then thinking, intelligent and
READING men and women will decide that
war between nations must end. And war will
end.
But that will be on this earth only THE
BEGINNING OF PEACE.
There is a peace higher and more difficult
to achieve than peace between the nations.
That is the peace that passeth all understand
ing, within the mind and heart of the indi
vidual * e e
How can man be at peace with himself?
How can he stop the war that goes on between
the passions, between the savage, conflicting
interests and desires handed down to him by
millions of ancestors reaching back beyond
the stone age, and by billions of animal an
cestors still farther back.
Each individual has his own civil war; it
never ends and never can end.
Each individual has inside of himself a
•ght that is constant.
♦ * ♦
in a broad, rough way the artist who makes
this picture presents the probldm so simply
that children will understand it, and be inter
’.sted in it
How is the little individual striving for
peace of spirit and for righteousness to over
come these giant enemies that constantly at
tack him?
Lariness., intemperance, self - indulgence,
timidity, procrastination, are some of the ene
uubb portrayed in this cartoon.
All of these, and many others, fight against
pwace in th® individual.
How can that war be ended?
■"He that is slow to anger is better than
the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than
he that taketh a city.”
Proverbs--XVI., 32.
The old wise man who penned the thirty
second verse of the sixteenth chapter of Prov
erbs knew that the greatest men are not the
great fighters; that the greatest peace is not
the peace between cities, but the peace within
the soul of man.
♦
How can we have THAT PEACE WITHIN, WHICH
IS THE ONLY PEACE? . ' _ |
Each man must make the fight for himself, INSiDE
OF HIMSELF.
Each must realize that the big enemies ARE INSIDE
OF MAN’S OWN SKULL, LEFT THERE BY ANCES
TORS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO, AND
WORKING AGAINST THE PEACE OF THE SPIRIT
NOW.
The peace that passeth all understanding will come,;
but slowly, as peace between nations and individuals has
come slowly.
If we look back, we see that the enemies of man’s
peace have been destroyed and left behind, many of
them, one by one.
All men were once cannibals, and actually ate the
flesh of their brothers—unless they were too timid for
battle. Cannibalism has been left behind on our upward j
journey.
All men, with perhaps one exception in a million, were
once cruel and bloodthirsty. They tortured each other in )
the name of God Almighty, and His Son. They burned)
each other alive, tore the living flesh with hot pincers, i
The rack and the thumbscrew, the booty the iron virgin,
the bonfires of living human beings—all tell us in history I
of horrible brutality that survived among men, inherited:
from animals, only yesterday.
That is left behind PARTLY. We still burn up chil
dren. at hard labor, as we used to burn heretics. We still
kill women slowly in mills, as we used to kill them quicklyl
in the old days of witchcraft. But, we HAVE very
hugely conquered the demon of cruelty.
Individual selfishness was the rule only a little while
ago. “Salvation for me, and the devil,take the others’’ j
was the old motto. But that has changed slowly.
Men spend their money now. when they die, to build
universities, hospitals, libraries, if they don’t use it try
ing to buy eternal salvation for themselves. That is
progress, and we find that we are getting nearer to real
peace. * * e
We must be reconciled to slow development, we must I
work for peace between individuals and nations in our
external life, and work steadily and persistently FOR
PEACE WITHIN, the peace most difficult to achieve.
None now living will ever know peace that is abso
lute. But the passing years, for those that try, do bring
improvement.
' * * *
Eventually, men as individuals and as a human race
wall achieve the absolute peace, which is mental peace.
Viciousness, selfishness, cruelty, will some day have gone
to join cannibalism and legalized infanticide. One day, j
many centuries from now, it will be possible for human
beings to say with the Psalmist, “Righteousness and j
peace have kissed each other.” j
In His Days Shall the Righteous
Flourish Amid A hundance of Peace
So Long as the Moon Endureth--
Psalms 72:7
anniversary of our Lord’s birth,
I which has just been observed, gives
occasion rather for indulging our
spirits in the tender sentiment of the
event than for taxing our minds by the
discussioikof its difficult problems.
The world is made one this week rather
by its sympathies than by the activity of
its intellect. Indeed, not only to-day. but
always, people tend to be brought nearer
to one another by the power of heart, but
repelled from each other by exercise of
the mind. Feeling operates as a unifying
influence; thought as a divisive influence.
Hence people think themselves apart, but
pray themselves together. Therefore,
the world needs warming more than it
needs brightening, and all occasions like
the present require to be thankfully econ
omized as means of softening the frost
into which, in an atmosphere of cold
thoughtfulness, we so naturally stiffen.
The dominant note of the Christian
world at Christmas is, "Peace on earth,"
as inaugurated by the "Prince of Peace.”
And if it seems strange that the bounds
of his principality have been so long and
so slow in extending themselves we must
remember that the world at large can im
prove only so fast as improvement pro
gresses in the separate Smiths and Joneses
that make up the world, and that the
battlegrounds which compose go con
spicuous a figure in the world's history
are simply the exhibition on an enlarged
scale of the fields of conflict that lie con
cealed in individual hearts.
The world at large is what it is made
to be by the individuals composing it It
is not any kind of diffusive greenness that
makes the forest green, but the combined
greenness of its separate leaves. It is no
diffused whiteness that composes the
pearly sheen of a midwinter landscape,
but the meeting together of the untinted
complexion of each one of the multitude
of snow-crystals. So the tide of the gen
eral purity, peace and love of the world at
large can rise no higher than the altitude
to which it mounts in the souls of the
separate men and women of the world.
This is only to remind us that the sal
vation of the world In respect of any one
or all of its virtues and graces Is not a
wholesale, but a retail process, and that
public feuds and civil and international
conflicts will disappear from the face of
the earth only so fast as they vanish from
the map of the hearts of individual men
and women. A man who is thoroughly at
peace with himseif inwardly, who has all
the impulses and energies of his soul
tuned to the one note, the Christ-note. of
purity and lo' ing kindness, cannot quuf-
“Eel Us Rave Peace” I
A Sermon---By Rev. Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst
rel with his neighbor however quarrel
some that neighbor may be.
That so great a length of time, how
ever, should have elapsed since our Lord’s
command to Peter to put up his sword
was issued, is no reproach against Chris
tianity. The thoughts of people who are
precipitate in their expectations are not
moving tn pace with the methods and in
tentions of God. "with whom a thousand
years is as one day." If the process for
fitting the world for human occupation
has occupied so many centuries that
arithmetic is strained in its efforts to com
pute them, it is occasion neither for sur
prise nor discouragement that the shaping
and maturing of His moral kingdom ad
vances by a movement that to our limit
edness and impatience seems so dilatory. A
spirit of hurry is one of the infirmities of
small minds. The true attitude of Chris
tian philosophy does not assert itself by
its haste to see the will of God accom
plished, but consists rather in that patient
observation and discernment that enables
it gratefully to discover that things are
moving, however inconspicuously, toward
the accomplishment of His will.
And it certainly does seem that no one
who is searching with a sincere desire to
discover, can fail to be assured that the
movement toward the world’s pacification
is distinct, and as rapid as a considerate
Christian philosophy has grounds to anti
cipate. In order to know whether a thing
moves, whether on the ground or among
the stars, in the material or in the spirit
ual world, one needs to place his eye not
only on the place where it is now but on
the place where it was a hundred days or
a thousand years before, and if the former
of the two places is in advance of the lat
ter even though by never so little, there
is movement and there is progress.
Although we are even now hearing a
great deal about armies and navies, and
large appropriations for military equip
ment, yet the tvntimrnt which prevails to
day in regard to war—its reasonableness
and its righteousness—is so distinct from
what it was a couple of centuries ago, that
even a superficial acquaintance with the
movings of thought during that time will
not fail to appreciate the change. And
it is the sentiment of people that is symp
tom of condition. The question is not
how many soldiers we have, not how many
dreadnoughts there are afloat or in course
of construction, but what are the people
thinking. That is the instrument that we
have to use in measuring civilization, its
flow or its ebb.
It signifies nothing that a Secretary of
War conies out with a "war-scare,” for
the purpose of exciting sufficient ner
vousness throughout the country to
justify an immense appropriation for the
War Department. Nervousness docs not
ensue and the Secretary's official sensa
tionalism is pigeon-holed. The document,
singularly enough, operates rather as a
sedative than as a stimulant. The peopty
are not in a warm mood.
Whatever ambition an American expert
in military affairs may have for the milk
tary prestige of his country, if he has aS
the same time familiarized himself with
the exhausting and impoverishing course
upon whicli European nations are
ning, it is difficult to understand how re
can have the heart, by word or
to prod the American people to compete
in a race conducing to the same fatality#
The European war debt amounts tfl
twenty-six billion dollars, a debt which
never will be discharged, the payment of
the interest upon which comes very
largely out of the pockets of the poor.
There is great strength, as well as good
judgment, in quietness of mind, and thal
quietness is every little while disturbed by
some journalistic announcement or othes
to the effect that friction is developing
between some other country and cur»
selves and no one can forecast what the
issue will be; that Japan er some other
nation, particularly Japan, is simply bid
ing its time, and Is smilingly cherishing
a very sour grudge w’hich may eventu
ate In a cataclysm of war that will carry
off the Sandwich Islands and the western
quarter of our country and make them u
part of the Orient. Such prophecies tend
to provoke the very thing which the?
prophesy, for such insinuations and innu
endoes go across to the other side and ctor
ate malevolence where no malevolence
existed.
In the course of an address recently
given in this city by Chief Justice Wate
nobi, who represents Japan in the admin
istration of Korea, he said: "Japan is not
going to war with the United State*.
There is no thought of it. It is never
suggested in our newspapers. It is fre
quently flung as a fire. brand by th«
American press, but the Japanese press
is absolutely innocent of anything of that
kind.”
All of the foregoing carries no taint cf
pusillanimity, but will be the fit distino
tion of a nation that knows how to dis
criminate between dignity and assump
tion; of a nation that in a Christian way
appreciates its own interests not a #
something distinct from the interests of
the world, but rather as entering into,
and forming a part of, the interests ot
the world; of a nation in tine that feels
itself called to a great service, invited
to a policy of life and action that shall
not be merely the rehearsing of what
has been, a barren reduplication of the
old ages that have had placed upon them
the stamp of the Lord’s disapproval,
but a policy that shall give to our na
tional life an original tone in such way
differentiating us from the rest of the
world as shall draw the rest of the world
after us and carry the who 1 - I.
hood of the nations a little nearer '*
the finality as it lies registered w
mind of God.