Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 75:300 (Oct 1918)
Article: Bishop Gore’s Mission To The United States
Author: Anonymous

BSac 75:300 (Oct 1918) p. 598

Bishop Gore’s Mission To The United States

As we go to press, the leading centers of thought in America are being thrilled by the impassioned appeals of the Bishop of Oxford for an increased interest of the churches in the establishment of a league of nations to protect the world from future wars. The plan for such a league and the difficulties attending it were clearly presented in the January number of the Bibliotheca Sacra by Mr. Raymond L. Bridgman. in an article, entitled “A World-Unity Conference,” for which he had prepared the way by two previous articles.1 The object of the Bishop’s visit to America is to interest the general public in the questions, and to get them to see the supreme importance of continuing the present “war upon war “until the power of Germany is humbled, and of following it with a league of nations such as that advocated by Mr. Bridgman, and later by President Wilson, and by the League to Enforce Peace, of which Ex-President Taft is the foremost exponent. We are glad to give prominence to the Bishop’s statement of the grounds of hope that may encourage and inspire us. These he considers under three heads: —

“1. The first is the despair of the future which fills the minds of the people of all kinds when they contemplate the tendencies of national rivalry as they existed before the war and led to its outbreak, unless they can be profoundly modified or effectively restrained. We simply cannot bear to think of making a peace, however just a peace, and then leaving the nations, after a period

BSac 75:300 (Oct 1918) p. 599

of exhaustion, to watch one another with the old jealousy, and build up armaments, the one against the other, with more than the old lavishness of expense, and a scientific ingenuity sharpened tenfold by experience, and form alliances as of old, one against another, until another world-war breaks out. If this be all that can be looked for, I say, despair possesses us. Nothing less confronts us as the inevitable issue than the ruin of a civilisation which it has taken so many centuries to build up: both its economic ruin and the ruin of its culture and its freedom. I suppose that it is this dread that has made the greatest practical statesmen in many countries propound and support a project which seems to vulgar eyes so idealistic as the League of Nations. It does demand a vast change of mind in the sentiment of nations towards one another. But our practical statesmen recognise that nothing else than such a world-wide repentance can save the situation from ruin.

“2. Our second ground of hope is the progress and the international sympathies of democracy. In his splendid ‘Complaint of Peace’ Erasmus, in 1517, asc...