WHILE we were getting the October issue ready for the press dark clouds were gathering over Europe and by the time the Magazine was issued the peoples of the nations were waiting with bated breath and trembling hearts for the bursting of the dreaded storm. Events followed each other with such lightning rapidity that even the organs of the daily press, which make a boast of giving up-to-the-hour information were out of date by the time they reached the reading public. Never, we believe, in the annals of the civilized nations were they confronted with such a situation charged with dread and the awfulness of what seemed inevitable. The situation in 1914, serious and arresting though it was, cannot be compared to the dark and threatening days at the end of September. Then the nations were not aware of the horrors of war as carried on with modern instruments of destruction; neither did they know the utter futility of war as a means of settling quarrels. But in 1938 the sanest among our people had come to realise that the victors in modern warfare, carried on in a gigantic scale, were nearly as badly hit and crippled as the vanquished. Added to all this there were the hidden fears and dread that war in 1938 would exceed in Satanic brutality the horrors of the Great War. No statesman with a spark of humanity in his nature and worthy of the name of a leader among his people could in cold blood give a call to armies at his command to be set in motion and thus begin a carnage, when millions of human beings would be hurled into eternity to meet the God before whom all flesh must come, without the most compelling and just reasons. And, whatever verdict men may pass on the man, who was ready to do this to satisfy, after all, his own ambition, he will have to stand before a more solemn tribunal than that of the nations of Europe and before a greater and more righteous Judge than the men, women, and children who would have been slaughtered and the multitudes who would have shed tears for them. That man has yet to face God’s tribunal and the Judge of the whole earth and, when asked for a reason for his mad intention, may find himself speechless before that Judge. There will be no shouts of a frenzied populace cheering him then. When the clouds were at their darkest and when the nations were expecting nothing but war, suddenly a ray of hope, like a tiny speck of light, shone through the dark cloud. If ever the hand of God was seen in averting a calamity that was charged with doom for the European nations it was surely then. Whatever verdict may be passed on the Munich agreement by the living and by those yet unborn, and it has its critics, there can be no doubt but the fact that it brought peace explains the joyful effect produced on all the nations concerned. As we are not politicians and as we do not profess to be prophets, we will not take upon ourselves to pass judgment here on what are considered defects in that agreement; neither will we take upon ourselves to say what effect it may have for the future. It may be that trouble may come from an entirely different quarter. There can be no doubt it was a deliverance and the Lord has given a respite to the nations and it remains to see what use they will make of it. He brought the civilized nations to the brink of the yawning chasm and made them to seriously think what it would mean when the tremendous forces at work behind such movements would push them into its depths. As Christians, it is our bounden duty, while acknowledging the instruments He used, to give praise to God and to confess our sins. There can be little doubt that the Lord’s people among the nations threatened with calamity were instant at a throne of grace and were confessing their own sins and the sins of the nations to which they belonged.
It may be as well for us to calmly consider what has been going on in the background for years among the civilized nations. We have been feverishly working at munitions of war, forging instruments of destruction; our scientists have been busy planning methods to render ineffective these instruments, while in the laboratories the chemist has been busy searching out for new gases that will do their work effectively. All this is taking place in this enlightened age. What madness is in the heart of man! We are not to be understood by anything we have said that we should not prepare ourselves for war. It was a feature of the conduct of godly kings of old that, while they looked to God for help, they were not remiss in their duty in preparing for attack and meeting it when it was delivered, but what a commentary on man’s boasted civilization is all this feverish piling up of armaments of war.
There is another matter which ought to receive attention, namely the readiness with which our nation enters into alliances and the kind of nations with which these alliances are made. God warned Israel of old not to make alliances with godless nations, but our country does not weigh whether the nation with which she enters into alliance acknowledges God or not. Expediency is the standard by which the high politics of our statesmen is guided. Much has been said recently in criticism of the Government’s foreign policy but none of the critics, as far as we are aware, touched on this aspect. Of course, it may be said that the position of Israel and Britain are quite different, as the former was distinctively under theocratic government. This is quite true, but, we profess to be a Christian nation and surely there is something seriously wrong in a policy that enters into alliances with godless nations, that is, nations who proclaim unabashed that they are so. We see how well it fared with Asa and Jehoshaphat and the little kingdom of Judah when they relied on God when faced with tremendous odds and how ill it went with them when they made alliances with Syria and Israel. These things were written aforetime for our learning and in ignoring them our statesmen are bringing us into deep waters. Men and nations may set the Christ whom God has purposed to have the pre-eminence at nought, but He has His own methods of making these nations wander in ways of their own. This was seen pre-eminently in the foolish speeches made after the Great War by our leading statesmen, and by the setting up of that expensive futility, the League of Nations, one of whose functions it would seem is to spend money.
We know not what the near or distant future has in store for us but it would be well for the nations to remember that God has set His Son in Zion to be King of kings and Lord of lords and they are warned not to ignore Him nor set Him at nought to whom the Father has delegated all power in heaven and in earth. The day will come when all the nations of the earth will call Him blessed and in whom they themselves will be blessed, but what travail and anguish through which they may have yet to pass ere that great day come is known to God alone. Let our prayer be: “Let the whole earth be filled with His glory; Amen and Amen” (Ps. lxxii. 19).
God has changed the storm into a calm and given the nations a respite for a season and if they despise the loud trumpet call addressed to them, the next time it sounds it may be as the trumpet of doom. Let us, while acknowledging the unflagging efforts of the Prime Minister and other statesmen in the interests of peace, not leave God out of account. On another page we have written a short article on Bohemia which formed a part of Czecho-slovakia, to which, in her hour of fierce trial the sympathy of all freedom loving peoples goes out.
According as our hearts are affected with the love of Christ, so will be our love to Christ, and not otherwise.—Dr. Owen.