PREFACE

When I received and accepted the invitationto deliver the Paddock Lectures forthe season 1914-1915, no one imagined thatthese years were destined to have the historicalsignificance which they must now possess forall time. I was myself one of those who hadallowed concern for social reform, and internalproblems generally, to occupy my mind almostto the exclusion of foreign questions. I wasprepared to stake a good deal upon whatseemed to me the improbability of anyoutbreak of European war. For all who tookthis view the events of recent months haveinvolved perhaps a greater re-shaping offundamental notions than was required bypeople who had thought probable such acatastrophe as that in which we are nowinvolved. I found it impossible to concentratemy mind upon any subject wholly unconnectedwith the war, while at the same time it wouldhave been in the last degree unsuitable thatin my lectures to American TheologicalStudents I should deliver myself of such viewsas I had formed concerning the rights andwrongs of the war itself, or the questions atstake in it.

These lectures, therefore, represent anattempt to think out afresh the underlyingproblems which for a Christian are fundamentalin regard not only to this war but towar in general—the place of Nationality in thescheme of Divine Providence and the duty ofthe Church in regard to the growth of nations.

But in a preface it may be permissible tosay what would be inappropriate in theLectures themselves, and first I would takethis opportunity of reiterating certainconvictions which have formed the basis of aseries of pamphlets issued under the auspicesof a Committee drawn from various Christianbodies and political parties, of which I havehad the honour to be Editor:

1. That Great Britain was in August morallybound to declare war and is no less bound tocarry the war to a decisive issue;

2. That the war is none the less an outcomeand a revelation of the un-Christian principleswhich have dominated the life of WesternChristendom and of which both the Church andthe natio

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