Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · September 25, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 38

REV. J. D. GILLIAN, Secretary of the Utah Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, says:—

The devotees of no faction are so heartlessly cruel as those of a false religion. Mohammed's scheme to convert the world with the sword is but the common index to the character of them who are zealously wrong. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Catholicism of the Middle Ages illustrates the fact of the same possibility existing under the guise of Christianity. Intolerance is the first sign of the fanatic.

To “convert by the sword” is simply to “convert” by force; the same is true of “converting” by civil law; and yet many who can plainly see the iniquity of the former, can see no impropriety in the latter. And why not?—simply because the law is their weapon, whereas the sword was wielded by others. Nevertheless, in condemning the sword they condemn force, and in condemning force they unwittingly condemn their own appeal to civil law.