Christian theology, and has received immortal expression in the great poem of Milton.

At the time of Christ it was generally believed that Satan was the author of evil in the world, and just as Christ spoke the language of the people in referring to the insane as possessed of demons, so He used their language in speaking of Satan.

The belief in one, or in many, evil spirits, does not, however, solve the problem of evil, or relieve God of responsibility for it. Unless one believes with the Persians, and with the early Christian Gnostics, that Satan is a second God, and is independent of God, it must be recognized that he exercises his baneful activity by divine permission. No one can be a Biblical Christian and not recognize God as the one supreme, all-powerful Being. He must permit evil in the world, because He sees that somehow greater good I will in the end result from the conditions which make evil possible. He has disclosed to us His heart of love in Christ. Though we may not be able to understand His ways in this matter, we can trust Him, can believe

that He is wise, can seek to get the best out of the conditions in which He has placed us, and can thus become possessed through Christ of a positive character, godlike in its quality.

The words of the Master, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, hold before us the Savior's promise that evil will be overcome. God, not Satan, is supreme; goodness, not sin, is to prevail; truth, not falsehood, is eternal. Fight," then, "the good fight of faith." "He that overcometh, I will give

to him to sit down with Me in My throne."

CHAPTER LIV.

INTERNATIONAL PEACE.1

"Love your enemies." Matt. v, 44.

"Peace, thy olive wand extend,
And bid wild war his ravage end,
Man with his brother man to meet,
And as a brother kindly greet."

-Burns.

In the actual world warfare and struggle seem to be perfectly natural. Biologists teach us that it is by means of these that animal life has been pushed forward to its present degree of perfection. Man is from one standpoint a member of the animal kingdom. In the earlier stages of his development he has necessarily been pushed forward by the same processes which have moulded all animal life. He cannot be led forward by the lofty ideals which inspire by their brightness and purity until he can appreciate something of their beauty and sublimity. Until then, like his fellows in the animal realm, he must be pushed

Part of a paper read at the Friends' Peace Conference in Philadelphia in 1901, and afterward published in the Friends' Intelligencer and the Biblical World.

forward by the blind forces of struggle and survival. To discover the elements of a peace doctrine in the Old Testament, we must discover the power to appreciate the great religious truths on which it rests. Those truths are the Fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man. Until men have clearly understood that God is the God of all men, and that it is as wrong to injure a stranger as a brother, because both are the children of the same Father, no peace doctrine is possible to men.

Now, in the early days of Israel's national life the necessary religious foundation for this truth had not been laid. Each tribe, or, at the most, each nation, had its god. Each nation thought it must worship its own god, but it in no wise denied the reality of the gods of other nations. These gods were thought of as larger men, ready to fight with one another, or to overreach one another in all the ways which men would do. This applies to the early history of Israel as truly as to that of other ancient peoples. When David was temporarily driven from his native land and had to take refuge in

Moab, we hear him complaining: "They have driven me out this day that I should not cleave unto the inheritance of Jehovah, saying, Go serve other gods," (1 Sam. xxvi, 19). Jehovah's power was, he seemed to think, limited to Palestine, and, when on foreign soil, he naturally supposed he must worship a foreign god. This accounts for the fact that David practiced such barbarities upon conquered enemies (2 Sam. xii, 31). From his religious point of view these enemies had no rights. Obviously in such an age the peace doctrine could find no root.

In Amos, the first of the literary prophets, we find a broader outlook, both as regards the extent of God's rule over the nations, and as regards the barbarities of war. He perceived that Jehovah controlled all nations; Jehovah brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the Aramaeans from Kir, as well as Israel from Egypt, (Amos ix, 7). It is Amos, too, the possessor of this breadth of religious vision, who condemned that violation of treaties, that barbarity to women, and that disregard of the sacredness of death,