realize that far beyond the individual triumphs for love
that may be achieved, there is a field that can be won only by the
corporate faithfulness to the ideal of the group. The individual may
lose by all the worldly standards, and his life may seem an ineffectual
protest or gesture, but it is the type of losing in which the soul is
found and which sooner or later wins out for the group over the
entrenched evil of ages.

In a decade in which, following a more imperfect, yes, even a sadly
futile ideal, millions of men have been content to give their lives, we
have no cause to feel that men will not be ready to pay the price. They
are even too ready to sell themselves for that which is worthless. If
they but knew, to adapt our Lord's words, if they but knew the things
that belong unto their peace, but now they are hid from their eyes!

But why is it, we are sometimes tempted to ask, that the way of love
stirs up strife and bitterness? Does not that outcome of some of our
endeavors argue a failure on our part to express the healing spirit? It
may be that, of course; but is it not generally because that method is
essentially an appeal to conscience, and a conscience stirred, but not
completely won, drives its possessor to an extreme of reaction? It was
no accident that some of our leading Christian ministers were the most
bitter detractors of conscientious objectors during the war. The very
existence of the latter was a continual challenge to the consciences of
those ministers. They had to maintain their different attitude the more
vehemently. As some of our friends remind us, love is not a mushy thing,
and it sometimes has to inflict pain.

The world is growing old in its sophistication. The developments in
scientific research, during the last century especially, have led many
to feel that in the ever-growing complexity of the life of the universe
and in the ever-widening reaches of our knowledge there is, each decade,
less and less place for God in the world and less and less occasion to
pay attention to the words of a half-mythical Syrian teacher. But out of
that very sophistication has come the reaction that is leading many to
question the whole interlocking system of philosophy, science, industry
and politics that sums up the universe in terms of material things. It
is time, they say, that we began to cut loose from the machine and get
down to the human heart that is the one vital thing in the world:

"Not kings