needs.  He is not merely our God but the God of all mankind.  The children of Israel called Him the God of battle, the God of hosts, that is, the one who would give victory to them in their battles, and who would prove the leader of their hosts.  But Christ came to the world in God’s name to universalize this narrow tribal idea of God, proclaiming peace on earth and good will to men.  It was the dawn of a new era, the Christian era.  That light which shone upon the old world is darkened by the cloud hanging low over Europe at the present time.  We cannot think, however, that it is permanently extinguished.  To that light the nations of the earth must again return.

The Area of Moral Obligation.

Third—­Christ gave to the world of His day an enlarged idea of the area of moral obligation.  He insisted most stoutly upon the expansion of the scope of individual responsibility.  This freeing of the idea of duty from the limitations of race prejudice is a natural corollary to the idea of the universality of God’s relation to the world.  Corresponding to the tribal view of God there is always an accompanying idea of the restricted obligation of the individual.  To care for one’s own family or one’s own clan or tribe and present a hostile front to the rest of mankind has always been the characteristic feature of primitive morality.  It was peculiarly the teaching of Christ which brought to the world the idea that the area of moral obligation is co-extensive with the world itself.  There are no racial or national lines which can limit the extent of our responsibility.  The world today needs to learn this lesson anew, and it is evident that it must acquire this knowledge through bitter and desperate experiences.  We must interpret in this large sense the great moral dictum of the German philosopher, Kant, that every one in a particular circumstance should act as he would wish all men to act if similarly circumstanced and conditioned.  This is the complete universalizing of our moral obligations—­stripping our sense of duty of everything that is particular and local and isolated.  The natural tendency of human nature is to particularize our relations to God and bound our relations to our fellow-men; to narrow our relations to God so as to embrace only our direst needs, and to circumscribe our relations to man so as to include in the field of responsibility only those who are our kin or our own kind.  The time has certainly come for us to take larger views of the world, of man, and of God.

After the great calamity of this present war is passed there must necessarily follow a period of reconstruction.  It will not be merely the reconstruction of national resources and international relations, but it must be also a reconstruction of our fundamental conceptions of man and of the relation of man to man the world over, and of the relation also of man to God.  We must ask anew the question, Who is our neighbor?  In this great moral enterprise you will naturally play