Page:The Psychology of Jingoism.djvu/59

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Christianity in Khaki
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These remarks are needed as a preface to enable us to understand the attitude of the so-called Christian Churches towards this war. Religion has been almost universally utilized by governing individuals or classes to furnish a stimulus of fanaticism in war, by representing it as a sacred duty to risk life in trying to punish other peoples who are either heathen or wicked peoples, who have deserved to die, and whose land and other property by right belong to us.

It has been often claimed for Christianity that its distinctive ethical characteristics are two: first, its reliance upon love as the power which makes for righteousness, alike in its influence as an external agent of reform, and in its purifying and ennobling reactions upon those from whom it issues; secondly, the expansion given to this play of inner forces by transcending all limits of caste, race, or nationality, and asserting the doctrine of human brotherhood in its widest sense.

The tribal God, the special race mission, the dominion of hate and forcible revenge, – these are the particular notes of the crude religions which Christianity has claimed to supersede. Yet these are the most distinctive notes of the Christianity of our leading Churches, the

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