THE PEACEMAKERS

THE SEVENTH BEATITUDE.

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”— St. Matt. v. 9.

There is something arbitrary in most attempts to trace a connection between the Beatitudes, and to discern in them an interrelated scheme of character. But when one deals with the blessing upon the Peacemakers it is abundantly evident that its true place is after the blessing on the pure in heart. St. James, with his practical judgment, saw this when he declared that "the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable.” In more picturesque language the same connection of thought is made manifest in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where that romantic figure of early history, Melchisedek, is described as "first king of righteousness, and after that king of peace.”

Every one who reads the Bible in the light of his own heart can find experiences which make that connection between righteousness and peace sufficiently clear. If a family is what it ought to be, there is authority and a well-ordered home life as the basis of the family happiness. Because, in too many modern homes, indulgence has come before rule, and parents have thought of what would please before they settled what was right, the old home life is in danger of decay. In a school, in a university, there will be no good work done unless discipline be steadily placed before teaching. Right relations must be established before happy results will come. It is such familiar things of life which have made the solemn doctrine of the Atonement, with all its difficulties of statement, appeal to men’s minds as consonant with things as they are. First righteousness, then peace: explain it how you will, goodness must first be vindicated before man can be reconciled with God or his neighbour or himself.

This connection of the Beatitude on the Peacemakers with that which immediately precedes it, makes it clear that if a man is to be of any use in mediating peace to the world it must be because his own heart has been brought into conformity with the highest. “First keep thyself in peace,” said St Thomas & Kempis, "and then thou shalt be able to keep peace among others.” The source of such a serenity of a calm and self-controlled spirit is in fellowship with God in Jesus Christ our Lord.

The God of Peace is the noble New Testament name of the Father. Seven times in the Epistles, St. Paul recurs to the phrase the "God of Peace,” and he sets the gift of peace in the midst of the benediction in the thrice Holy name. St. Paul’s summary of the interests of the Kingdom of God is “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”

It is indeed true that in an earlier revelation the Lord had been described as a man of war: and there was a truth also, not merely temporary, in that awful name. Mr. Disraeli once answered a deputation of the Peace Society by saying to them, "I believe in the God of Hosts"; and if we see an overruling providence in history, we also must recognise that, even as great storms clear the air of the world and make it a wholesomer place to live in, so it has been through human strife that a way has often been found to a peace with which honourable and right-minded men could be satisfied. When Benjamin Franklin said that “there never was a good war or a bad peace," he offended against a just interpretation of history; he uttered a sentiment as absurd as if he had said that it never was good to arrest a criminal, and it never was bad to let the wicked have their will. As the world is constituted, force must sometimes be used on the side of righteousness, and God can be called now, as in the times of early revelation, the God of Hosts.

Yet that is not, nor ever has been, his characteristic name. He is the God of Peace. When the fulness of glory was manifested among men it was in the person of the “Prince of Peace,” at whose birth the angels sang of “peace on earth,” and who, ere His passing hence, left as a legacy to mankind a gift of the "Peace" which had been His own.

If, then, a man’s nature be in fellowship with God as He is revealed in Jesus Christ, the trend of his character also must be toward conciliation, co-operation, brotherhood, love. He must see that the spirit of contention and strife is no worthy offering to the Lord whom he worships and would serve.

It is strange that, even in the Church of Christ, there have been men who did not see this. There have been — there are — Churchmen who are firebrands and men of war from their youth. Aggressiveness is in the very cut of their face and in the note of their voice in the most ordinary talk. Their boast is that of Alan Breck in Stevenson’s famous story, that they are "bonny fechters,” and their happiness is keenest when controversy is high. God forbid that anyone should say that these are the worst of men. They are better than the sluggards, who are only peaceable because, as they say, they "like a quiet life": they are better than the cowards who will not risk the unpopularity or the unpleasantness that the defence of truth or the overcoming of iniquity will ever involve. But they who merely revel in disputes have much to learn before they win to the spirit of Christ or gain the blessing which He offers to the Peacemakers, that they shall be called the Sons of God.

It was this feeling, doubtless, which made a great teacher like St. Augustine content to accept the translation of the Beatitude as it is given in the Vulgate, "Blessed are the Peaceable.” If a man’s own nature has not ceased from warfare, he is ill equipped for that ministry of reconciliation to which they are commanded who are in fellowship with Christ.

The correct translation, however, is, “Blessed are the Peacemakers.” And a larger call is made upon Christian men than only to find peace in their own hearts. We must be ambassadors of Christ’s peace to the world.

I. What of controversy in politics, in the Church, in social life? Controversy must exist while minds are diverse; and in many respects it is wholesome. A Peacemaker can engage in it with a clear conscience. His love of peace, however, will regulate the methods with which controversy is carried on. All irrelevant personalities will be hateful to him, and he will argue to convince and not to stab or wound. Sure of his own position, he yet will try to understand the position of his adversary. And deliberate misinterpretation or appeals to prejudice will form no part of his methods. Difference of opinion so expressed need make no breach of friendship, need injure no human relationship. It is probable that when Barnabas and Paul differed, it was a real quarrel, and they parted less good friends than they had been — though a happy reconciliation was to come. But when Peter had been tampering with principle at Antioch, Paul “withstood him to the face,” because he was to be blamed; and we do not read that their honest argument affected the terms on which the two great and magnanimous souls stood to each other. In a democratic country like ours great honour is due to those who keep the temper of controversy good, and who carry the spirit of the Peacemaker into public life with its dignifying, sweetening power.

II. The Industrial Community, so often cursed with stupid strikes and labour wars, is learning also, and will learn better, the value of the Peacemaker. There is hardly a better test of a big man than that he is naturally sought for as an arbitrator, trusted by both sides for his judgment and fairness of mind. To an increasing extent such arbitrators will win a position in modern life. There are few better names than that of the chairman of a Church court in Scotland. He is called the Moderator.

Such moderators in civil affairs, calming loud-voiced or angry altercation, bringing order out of confused dispute, themselves unruffled, impartial, are most useful members of any community. The machinery of life is apt to get heated while it works so swiftly. Blessed are they who oil the wheels: Blessed are such Peacemakers.

III. When it comes to interference with private or domestic quarrels, a wise man will show the prudence which tells him that the way to peace is often the policy of Non-Intervention. A meddler is often a muddler. He who intervenes between relatives, and especially between husband and wife, has often to discover that he has helped no one, and has only added to the discomfort of all, not excluding himself. The author of the Book of Proverbs does not always rise to the highest level of inspiration, but he had a shrewd knowledge of human life when he said: "He that passeth by and meddleth with strife not belonging to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears.” Vanity has made some people fancy that they were called to the office of Peacemaker in cases when their wisdom would have been to abstain.

It must not, however, be supposed that Christian folk have no duty at all in these particulars. In our social life there are two courses especially which every good man or woman should resolutely follow.

(a) The first is to hate all tale-bearing and malicious gossip. No worse disturber of the peace of homes exists than the idle retailer of unpleasant criticisms. There are three levels of conversation. The highest is talk about ideas; the second highest is talk about things; the lowest is talk about persons. Beyond this lowest level many people hardly care to rise. It is not that they are malicious only, though some evil spirits delight in any gossip which will cause pain. It is chiefly that they are empty-minded and thoughtless, and do not realise the harm that their reckless chatter works. Against all such evil gossip a Peacemaker sets his face like a flint. Among the seven things which the Book of Proverbs says God hates, one is "He that soweth discord among brethren.” If a bad story comes to a Peacemaker he will retuse to believe it while he can, and he will abstain from repeating it to the last. If, however, some story of kindness and heroism and self-denial comes to him, he will blaze that abroad. For the world is a better place for its good tales of human brotherhood and love.

(b) In quiet ways also a man of a peaceable spirit can do much to compose troubles and to disseminate the spirit of consideration. A man comes to us ruffled and out of temper on account of some slight he has suffered: we can ask him — as Dr. Johnson asked Boswell in such circumstances, to “bethink himself how the matter will appear twelve months hence.” Or he shows us an angry letter he has written, full of clever jibes and thrusts and bitternesses: we can urge him not to send the letter for a day or a week; we can divert his mind to other matters till the annoyance which prompted it has passed away.

The Peacemaker’s influence in such respects is moral rather than intellectual. One can rarely argue a man out of a temper. One can often compose him out of it in the presence of better and kinder thoughts. Such thoughts melt the frozen heart as the sunshine of spring is the solvent of the snow. Blessed indeed are such Peacemakers. By their very presence they are continually, though unconsciously, making people think better of themselves, of humanity, even of God. They live in the presence of ideals which make angry disputes seem mean. And the peace which keeps their own hearts and minds radiates a benediction upon all they know.

"Blessed,” said our Lord, "are the Peacemakers: for they shall be called the sons of God.” Sons of God indeed they are: but also they will be recognised and owned and called by their right name. It may not be at the first. Then the keen fighter for his side arouses the cheers of his fellow combatants, and the protagonist is the hero of the crowd. It may not be at the first. Then the Peacemaker is called other names than a son of God; he is called "Trimmer,” or even “Traitor.” But when the dust of batde sinks, and the noise and tumult of war die into silence, and men ask (after a century) who were the figures which stand out from the time as most venerable, the best servants of their generation? it will not always be the redoubtable champions of a party — though to them also honour is due — it will be the holy and humble men of heart who were thinking of larger interests than those of a sect or a political cause, who where looking to the welfare of the State or the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, who were striving for that unity for which the Saviour prayed, and who loved peace and laboured after it with all the power of their generous hearts.

Such are the men — it would be easy to name some of them — in the Church and in the State whom, as we look back over the years, we venerate the most. Jesus the Son of God was also the Prince of Peace, and we call those men * sons of God ’ because they were like Him. Now that all branches of the Christian Church in Scotland, as in Canada and Australia, are awake to the scandal of our unhappy divisions, and the evils wrought by the long war which Christian folk have waged with one another, we have no use for fighters, and quarrellers, and bitter speakers, and cruel hinters any more. We are looking with an affectionate longing for the man who will repair the broken walls of the city of God, and earn for himself the blessing which is the Peacemaker’s due.

When a small company, of whom the writer was one, buried Archibald Forbes, the distinguished war correspondent, whose life had been one long adventure, and who had seen as much fighting as any man of his time, we chose as the hymn to sing over him, ere his worn-out frame was laid to its long rest, the verses —

"No longer hosts encountering hosts

     Shall crowds of slain deplore;

They hang the trumpet in the hall.

     And study war no more.”

It was not only the thought of the war-worn veteran’s rest that came to one’s mind as thus we sang; it was the vision of the strifes which have desolated society, the controversies which have been the scandal of the Church, the disputes which have alienated the tenderest ties of home — all stilled, composed, for ever at an end. Must it be only Death that shall work such a consummation? Is it not possible even here in our pleasant land to see Jerusalem, the city of peace, reared once again fair as ever, ere her battlements were hurled down in internecine struggles and her streets defiled with the blood of brethren? We live in times when the Peacemaker is coming to his own. If not in our time, or our children’s, yet for the Church and for society the sons of God will make strange and happy things to be.

“Down the dark future through long generations

     The sounds of war grow fainter and then cease,

And like a bell with solemn sweet vibrations,

     I hear the voice of Jesus Christ say, 'Peace'."