Finally, a still higher call is upon us:  we must somehow rise to the point of placing humanity above the nation.  It is true, “Charity begins at home,” certainly justice should.  One should educate one’s own children, before worrying over the children of the neighborhood; clean up one’s own town, before troubling about the city further away.  Often the whole is helped best by serving the part; but it is with national patriotism as it is with family affection.  The latter is a lovely quality and the source of much that is best in the world; but when family affection is an instrument for gaining special privilege at the expense of the good of society, a means of attaining debauching luxury and selfish aggrandisement, it is an abomination.  The man who prays God’s blessing on himself, his wife and his children, and nobody else, is a mean man, and he never gets blessed—­not from God.  Similarly, the man who seeks the interest of his own nation, against the welfare of mankind, who prays God’s blessing only on his own people, is equally a mean man, and his prayer, also, is never answered from the Most High.  The world has advanced too far for the spirit of a narrow nationalism.  The recrudescence of such a spirit is one of the sad consequences of this world War.  Only in a spirit of international brotherhood, in dedication to the welfare of humanity, can democracy go towards its goal.

These are the obligations following upon the challenge of democracy we have proclaimed to the nations.

VIII

THE GOSPEL AND THE SUPERSTITION OF NON-RESISTANCE

The first condition of fulfilling the responsibilities imposed upon us by the challenge of our democracy is, now and hereafter, readiness and willingness for self-respecting self-defense, defense of our liberties and of the principles and ideals for which we stand.  There is much nonsense talked about non-resistance to evil.  It is a lovely thing in certain high places of the moral life.  It was well that Socrates remained in the common criminal prison in Athens and drank the hemlock poison; but nine times out of ten it would have been better to run away, as he had an opportunity to do.  It was good that Jesus healed the ear of the servant of the high priest,—­and good that St. Peter cut it off.

In other words, acts of non-resistance and self-sacrifice are fine flowers of the moral life; but you cannot have flowers unless their roots are below ground, otherwise they quickly wither.  Thus, to have sound value, these acts of non-resistance and self-sacrifice must rest on a solid foundation of self-affirmation and resistance to evil.