Last summer and fall we thought that war in Europe was so nearly won that we began to make plans for the celebration of V-E Day.  The merchants set the hour for the closing of their stores on that soon expected day and ministers got together and outlined the order of service for the public celebration of the victory.  We were all set for it, but the victory did not come.  Then when the war dragged on these weary aching months through the winter’s bitter cold and word came back to us of what our soldiers were suffering, scorn and ridicule were heaped upon our premature plans to celebrate a victory which did not come.

            It’s true, that we were over optimistic about an early victory, but we were dead right and most realistic in making an effort ahead of time to channel public thought and action on how to celebrate fittingly a victory bought at so great a cost.  We were dead right to take every possible precaution that victory, whenever it came, be celebrated, not with a drunken orgy, but with reverent, humble thanksgiving to Almighty God for the defeat of the grim forces of tyranny and the opportunity once more given to frame a righteous and lasting peace.  I’m glad we made those plans then.  We need make no apology for them.  I pray God we keep them.

            So this morning it is not with untimely optimism of an early easy victory that I propose for our consideration such a subject as “In what spirit shall we treat our conquered enemies?”  But rather it is with a fervent hope and a firm faith that one day we shall triumph that I suggest we think together upon this all important subject of the spirit with which we shall triumph.  I am concerned that we be more ready in spirit for the peace than we were ready in spirit and in arms for war, when it came so suddenly upon that fateful Sunday in December of 1941.  I do not think we can begin too soon to prepare.

            The late William Temple, illustrious Archbishop of Canterbury and fearless soldier of Christ, in an address over the B.B.C. on September 3, 1944, the fifth anniversary of Britain’s entry into the war, said, “And so we look forward to victory as something within our grasp, and beyond victory to the use that should be made of it.  We are not now concerned with the political arrangements which must be made, but with the spirit in which we shall enter upon the new era.  For it must be a new era; otherwise we shall have failed.  It is imperative that we find the means of ensuring peace among the nations.  In the achievement of that aim the statesmen have their own great part to play.  But no statesmanship can ensure peace in a world where men, as individuals and as citizens are selfish in their outlook and grasping in their conduct.”  So spoke the great William Temple just a few weeks prior to his untimely death.

            How shall we treat our conquered enemies is the problem which more than all others now occupies the minds of the leaders among the United Nations.  That was the chief concern of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin when they met on the Black Sea.  They know only too well that it is possible to win the war and lose the peace.  But this is a problem not only for the statesmen; each Christian man and woman must now make up his mind as to the attitude he will adopt toward a defeated Germany and Japan.

            There are two extremes to be avoided.  There are two courses against which the Christian must set his face.  First, he must oppose the wreaking of wholesale and indiscriminate vengeance upon the people of Germany and Japan.  There is this disposition in the air.  A speaker before a local luncheon club, discussing what to do with the Germans and Japanese after the war, said he personally was in favor of extermination, but inasmuch as he believed this to be impractical – to kill all those millions of people, and inasmuch as he believed the American people would not stand for such a policy, he proposed as next best, the systematic sterilization and starvation of the peoples of both nations.

            A recent news article in the “Presbyterian Outlook” carrying a statement signed by leading missionaries warning against “punitive treatment of Japan” provoked a letter to the editor from an Arkansas reader who wrote, “you can’t make a Christian out of a snake.”

            There is in the air now this spirit of wreaking vengeance – wholesale and indiscriminate upon our conquered enemies.  Against that course the Christian must set his face.  We cannot and will not commit the atrocities and cruelties our degenerate enemies have perpetrated in order to retaliate for all their crimes.  Even the fiery Russian Archbishop of Tambov while demanding the death penalty for all the despicable Nazi leaders, rejoicing in the anticipation of such a day of just punishment, speaking of that long awaited day as a festival for the Church of Christ, even this Russian does not talk of extermination of the German people.

            As Reinhold Niebuhr rightly observes: “vengeance is an egoistic corruption of the sense of justice.  It is concerned with what the enemy has done to us.  Therefore it is inclined to forget the sin of the enemy against God and to obscure the like sin which we have committed.”  The Christian must set his face against the course of wreaking wholesale and indiscriminate vengeance upon the German and Japanese people.

            But on the other hand, the Christian must set his face against this opposite extreme in the treatment of our enemies – the disposition to forgive them too lightheartedly.  Never before in history’s long and painful chronicle of man’s inhumanity to man has there been anything to equal the scope and intensity of the atrocities committed by our Japanese and German enemies.  The cruel death march on Luzon, the slow starvation of prisoners in the stockades of the Philippines, the mass murder factory at Lublin where the Germans destroyed over a million human beings, the wiping out of whole communities such as Lidice and Cradour, the burying of people alive and the throwing of children into the flames – these and a thousand other unmentionable horrors have been perpetrated by our enemies upon people whose only crime was that they resisted the invader and despoiler of their homes and freedom.   These are crimes which cannot and must not be lightly passed by.  “If as an individual I have the right and duty to forgive a crime against myself, it is different when others have been the victims.”  (Archbishop of York) As Robert Louis Stevenson said, “When another’s face is buffeted perhaps a little of the lion will become us best.”

            I cannot agree with the eminent philosopher, William Ernest Hocking, that war is too vast a crime to be punished – that it is like an earthquake, and inasmuch as one cannot punish an earthquake, it is impossible to punish a release of war – for there are those who must bear the major responsibility for bringing on this war.  The war criminals must be punished.  Those in authority responsible for this world catastrophe must be brought to the bar of justice.

            We have a responsibility to posterity to see to it that this is not permitted to happen again.  Three times in 80 years the German people have plunged the world into war.  Japan’s quest for empire has lead her for years to enslave her neighbors.  We have a responsibility to posterity that this does not happen again.

            We have also a duty to the German and Japanese people of the future that their nation be not allowed to profit from a callous and cruel disregard of the moral law.  As Spinoza said: “It is not good that a guilty man should profit by his guilt.”  We must see to it that our enemies are not allowed to sin grossly and get away with it.  Yes, as Christians, we must set our face against the course of forgiving too lightheartedly our enemies.

            These are the two extremes of spirit which the Christian must avoid in the treatment of our conquered enemies: on the one hand, the wreaking of indiscriminate and wholesale vengeance upon the people of Japan and Germany; and on the other hand, the too lighthearted forgiving of all their crimes.

            But specifically, what is the spirit which should characterize the Christian in the hour of triumph, and beyond, if God grant the victory?  We must go, of course, to the words of Jesus on the treatment of one’s enemies.  Yet the one word of Jesus which stands out more clearly than all others is the word Forgiveness.  But, forgiveness as Jesus teaches it is a three-step process.

            First, we must have a forgiving spirit toward our enemies.

“Forgiveness is not an act like signing a pardon.  Forgiveness is a disposition like love, which should always be going forth from the one who has been wronged to the wrong-doer.  Forgiving-ness is the first element in forgiveness.”  (Bishop of Rochester) Christians must not fall under Tennyson’s condemnation of the “little hearts that know not how to forgive.”

            “But is it humanly possible for us,” we ask, “in this instance to have a forgiving spirit toward our barbaric enemies.”  It hardly becomes us to talk like this, whatever sacrifices the war has exacted of us.  We have not suffered as other people have.

            Recently a friend showed me a map of the county of Kent in England, sent her by a Kent county woman.  For ever robot bomb which had fallen on Kent there was a little dot.  The map was literally freckled all over with dots.  On the margin of the map was printed the story of why so many buzz-bombs had come down on Kent – it was the county over which the bombs flew on their way to London.  In order to save London, the heroic people of Kent shot down upon themselves these flying instruments of destruction.  After receiving the full fury of this mad merciless attack upon themselves the Bishop of Rochester said, “We in Kent, have a right to speak on the subject of forgiving the Germans.”  And then the good Bishop went on to enjoin a forgiving spirit and to quote some New Testament passages about the treatment of one’s enemies: ‘If thine enemy hunger, feed him.  Pray for those that despitefully use you.’ In so doing we are reminded that it was ‘while we were yet enemies’ that ‘Christ died for us,’ and ‘we were reconciled to God.’”

            The Christian can and must have a forgiving spirit toward his enemies.

            The second step in Jesus’ process of forgiveness is repentance on the part of the wrong-doer.  The forgiving spirit – the willingness to forgive – on the part of the wronged, must be met by repentance on the part of the wrong-doer, before “forgiveness” can take place.  “Nowhere in the Bible – whether in the case of God and man, or in the case of man and man – is forgiveness enjoined, promised or possible, unless there be in the wrong-doer, this change of heart, this repentance and confession of wrong and a willingness to make restitution.”  (Bishop of Rochester) Forgiveness is always conditional.  Only the forgivable (the repentant) can be forgiven.

            The third step in Jesus’ process of forgiveness is restoration to fellowship.  That is what God does when He forgives a repentant sinner.  He restores him to fellowship.  This is the purpose and end of forgiveness.

            What does this mean for us in relation to our conquered enemies?  It means that we must adopt a positive, constructive, and redemptive policy of working with our defeated enemies.  To say, “All right, we’ll forget all you’ve done, horrible as it is, since you say you are sorry, but from this day forward we want to have nothing more to do with you.  Enough is enough”- To say that and pursue such a course, is not forgiveness.  We must seek to work together constructively with those who were our conquered, penitent enemies, for the rebuilding of our world.

            George A. Hudson was a missionary to China.  When the war began he was seized by the Japanese and put into a concentration camp.  His only son, 18 years of age, a Marine Raider, was killed in action on Bougainville.  Recently repatriated to this country, Mr. Hudson has gone all over the south advocating a “Five Point Program for the Far East.”  (1) Utter destruction of Japanese militarism, (2) Help civilian Japan industrially, (3) Help civilian Japan politically, (4) Help the Japanese people spiritually, and (5) Forgive the common people of Japan and receive them as equals.  This is the “Five Point Program” of a Christian missionary to China, who has seen with his own eyes atrocities of Japanese soldiers upon his beloved Chinese friends, who has himself endured the abuse and inhuman treatment of a Japanese concentration camp, who has lost his only son in the battle to stop and destroy Japanese militarism.

            Dr. Chamberlain in his book, “The Manner of Prayer”, tells a true story, oft quoted in recent years, which for personal reason has held a peculiar interest for me:  “In one of the massacres of the Armenians (during the time of the last World War) a Turkish soldier killed the brother of an Armenian girl.  She escaped by leaping over a wall.  Later she became a nurse.  One day in her hospital rounds she found a wounded Turkish soldier very near death.  She recognized him.  A little neglect would have ended his life, but she applied her skill assiduously.  After days of careful nursing the soldier regained consciousness.  At once he recognized his nurse as the sister of the man he had killed.  He asked her why she had nursed him so carefully when she knew that he had killed her brother.  The nurse replied, ‘I have a religion that teaches me to do good to those that persecute me.’  The soldier was silent for a while and then he said, ‘I never knew there was a religion like that.’”

            This is just the kind of a religion we shall need for the rebuilding of our world, and this is just the kind of religion you and I must pray God that He, through His grace, will give us – so we may play our worthy Christian part in the years that lie ahead, and in that spirit treat our conquered enemy.

INVOCATION – “O God of Peace, who hast taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be our strength; by the might of thy spirit lift us, we pray thee, to thy presence, where we may be still and know that thou are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Prayer of Intercession:

Merciful Father whose faithfulness abides all our fickleness, whose forgiveness outlasts all our sins, engender in us a forgiving spirit, even toward our bitter enemies, our implacable foes.  Help us to remember that while we were yet sinners, enemies of thine, Christ died for us and reconciled us to thee.  Teach us to pray unto thee with a whole heart for our enemies that they may repent of their evil deeds and be converted in their sinful hearts.  Convert also our sinful hearts that we may repent of the evil we do in thy sight.

Hear us as we pray for our loved ones in danger, lost or missing or wounded or in prison camps.  Comfort the prisoner and heal the wounded and help us to rest content in the assurance that no one of thine is ever missing from thy sight or lost from thy loving care.

Help us never to give way to panic, but may we cast all our cares on Thee, who ever careth for us, and for all whom we love, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen