THE PEOPLE OF PEACE.

BY REV. JAMES GALE INGLIS,

*

Pastor First Presbyterian Church, Petoskey.

Text: "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." Rom. 12:18.

It

There is no sweeter word than "peace." breathes of quiet tenderness, restful confidence and hopeful trust. It sounds the harmonies of life and like a summer's breeze or setting sun, it seems to cast upon the fretted soul a benediction soft and gracious. call the maiden "Irene " because we fondly trust that the gentle ministries of her heart and hand will be as angels of "peace," a thousand gracious influences to bless all the life she touches.

However hot the fires may burn, however fierce the passion or willful the petulance of man, beneath it all, deep down in the better self, there lies the instinct for peace. Shall a man love a quarrel, or delight to be at variance with his brother? Surely not. In barbarous days when the sheer animal that is in man welled up

* Mr. Inglis was born in Hamilton, Canada, Oct. 5, 1864. An orphan at the age of 13, he so labored as to give himself five years at Olivet College, Mich., a year at Lake Forest, Ill., and a year at McCormick Seminary, Chicago. He was the first Mis

sionary of the Am. S. S. Union in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Y. M. C. A. Sec'y in East Saginaw, 1887-1889. Pastor First Presbyterian Church Petoskey, 1889-1891. Woodlawn Park Presbyterian Church, Chicago, 1891-1895. Then again at Petoskey, 1895

and overflowed, its pent-up flood oft-times burst all bounds and poured forth in tides of rage and hate and bloody cruelties. But even in those days the inevitable reaction came and an exhausted passion paid the penalty in a real, if morbid and vain, remorse. But those are the days and things that humanity now apologizes for, and shudders to look back upon, and calls inhuman, stamping it thus with the deepest negative, because the human recognizes it as foul, brutal and untrue.

Humanity, in her truest self, rises to a fine sense of peace and rejoices to believe, with one of her best-beloved interpreters, that in spite of all the selfishness that, like east winds, doth chill the world, "the whole human family is bathed with the element of love like a fine ether."

Nevertheless Paul struck with unerring accuracy a true chord of human nature in his introductory clause, "if it be possible." "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." "If it be possible!" What a world of significance in these words! The old, old story of wrong and rancor and revenge; of jarring and friction and fierce contention between man and man; of hatred and strife and sad bitterness in place of brotherhood!

As Paul looked out upon the world about him, so cruel, so brutal, so ignorant, and as he thought of all that was before that little band of Christ-born men and women, all that their tender ideals and heavenly purposes would be subjected to in the rough usages of a barbarous people, he could not help but say, "If it be possible!" It was so hard, so well-nigh impossible a task. And, beloved, as we look out into the world today a better world than Paul's, thank God!—yet still to-day as we look out upon the turmoil and the tempest of life's fierce desires, the friction and passion of hu

manity's struggle, the heart-burning and heart-breaking of personal ambitions and social selfishness-as we look out upon all of these, shall we not also say, almost with a sigh, "If it be possible." How shall it be possible? In view of such conflicting and uncertain motives, these perplexing cross-purposes of life, and counter-currents of society, the inherent weakness of humanity, how shall it be possible to live peaceably with all men?

Paul's second sentence reveals the secret: "As much as lieth in you." Now Paul would never have said this of himself-Saul, ambitious, resentful, relentless. Behold! a greater than Saul (or Paul) is here! And in this sentence is revealed the secret of the divine economy of him who was Paul's Master, Savior, King!

Christ's mission was two-fold. He came not alone that the people should be at peace with God, but also that men should live at peace with men. Nay more; he taught that the latter was the necessary corollary of the former, and that he who loved God truly would love also his fellow-man. Nay, he went further still, and declared that the latter was the chiefest test of the former, and that only as we loved our fellow-men did we truly love God, for "he who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" To this degree at least Christ's mission was a social and economical one; to found a kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy; to separate a people of peace the whole fabric of whose government, political, economic and social, should be of harmony and confidence and love.

And by a sort of irony of fate the world's noblest achievements and its saddest failures have alike been nurtured by the inspiration of this noble thought. Strangely enough this same thought has been the sad world's dream in every age. From Plato to St. Augus