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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 9, 1868

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 31, No. 25.

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Historical Department.

Prophecy is History in Advance.

THE CRUELTIES OF CHRISTENDOM.

The present age has been esteemed an age of peace. Orators and poets, sages and philanthropists, statesmen and divines, have united to declare that civilization, education, and Christianity, have uprooted the old cruelties which have filled the heart of humanity, and to predict that days of national brotherhood, universal liberty, and millennial peace, were about to break in upon the world, as comes the daylight in the tropics, with “a sudden brightness that makes all things glad.”
And if this were so, what human heart could fail to leap with joy, at a thought so glorious! For among all the ills that afflict mankind, none are so grievous as those which come amid strifes and desolations of war, the dire calamities which nations inflict upon each other as a remedy for fancied wrongs, or a means of obtaining what they choose to call their rights. Nothing can be more terrible than

THE RECORDS OF WAR.

It is estimated that in the worship of the god of battle, the following numbers have been sacrificed in the hate and ambition of men:
In the Jewish wars, 25,000,000
Wars in the time of Sesostris, 15,000,000
Wars of Semiramis, Cyrus, and Alexander, 30,000,000
Wars of Alexander’s successors, 20,000,000
Grecian wars, 15,000,000
Wars of the Twelve Cæsars, 30,000,000
Roman wars before Julius Cæsar, 60,000,000
Wars of Imperial Rome, Turks, and Saracens, 180,000,000
Wars of the Reformation, 30,000,000
Wars of the middle ages, and nine crusades, 80,000,000
Tartar and African wars, 180,000,000
Indians destroyed by the Spaniards, 12,000,000
Wars of Napoleon I., 6,000,000
Total, 683,000,000
This is but a portion of the results of war in the world. In these wars, Christendom has done her full share. Edmund Burke placed the number who have perished, directly or indirectly, by war, at THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND MILLIONS. Dr. Dick estimated them at fourteen thousand millions,—about one-tenth of the human race, or twelve times the present population of the globe. Taking this number, which is the lowest estimate, it is said that their blood would fill a circular lake of more than seventeen miles in circumference, and ten feet deep, in which the navies of the world might float. Ranged in lines, allowing four feet to each, they would reach four hundred and forty-two times around the earth, or four times around the sun. If their average weight was one hundred and thirty pounds, they would form a globe of human flesh nearly a mile in diameter, weighing 1,820,000,000,000 pounds.
The war-debt incurred by these immense military preparations, has hung like an incubus over European industry, and ground the poor as in the dust with burdens of taxation and expense. These armies and navies of Christendom are not kept as a protection against the invasion of Pagans and Mohammedans, Hindoos and Cannibals; it is not that these “most Christian majesties” fear the power of Turks or Tartars, Chinese or Feejee Islanders; but they are kept in being by those Christian people for the purpose of biting and devouring one another, and preventing themselves being swallowed up by the greed of other nations in this most excellent Christian fraternity. They all know that these Christian nations are fifty represented by their chosen emblems, lions, bears, and eagles; that their morality is that of thieves and robbers; and hence they sleep with guns loaded, pistols cocked, and swords drawn. They know each other as a pack of cut-throats, and they know that a national life is no more safe in the presence of “most Christian majesties,” “sons of the church,” and “defenders of the faith,” without a strong army to guard it, than individual life is safe in the midst of hordes of brigands, or a purse in the presence of pickpockets. Acting upon this very reasonable persuasion, the various nations of Christendom find it for their interest to sustain immense armaments.
Aside from affording these pious nations protection against the rapacity of each other, these armaments also serve an excellent purpose in enabling them to make war upon the weaker nations who are not yet admitted into this most worshipful fraternity of Christian kingdoms and empires. Hence they have gone forth with fire and sword, to desolate the world. Heathen nations have heard of their fame, and have dreaded their Christianity. It was Franklin, I think, who relates a fable of a young angel of distinction being sent to this world for the first time on important business, and having an old courier spirit assigned him for his guide. They arrived over the sea of Martinique in the midst of the long and obstinate fight between the French and English fleets under De Grasse and Rodney. When, through the clouds of smoke, the young angel saw the fire of the guns, the decks covered with mangled limbs and bodies of the dead and dying, the ships sinking, burning or blown into the air; and the quantities of pain, misery, and destruction, which the crews yet alive were so eagerly dealing around to one another, he turned indignantly to his guide, and said, “You undertook to conduct me to earth, but you have brought me to hell.” “No,” replies the guide, “I have made no mistake at all; this is really earth, and these are men. Devils never treat one another in this cruel manner. They have more sense, and more of what men vainly call humanity.” Whatever the angels may think of men and their brutalities, there can be no doubt about what the heathen think of the Christians and their warlike characteristics. A Romish priest, soon after the Spanish conquest of South America, was one day conversing with some Indians, and solemnly urging them to embrace Christianity, the religion of their conquerors. “Are there any Spaniards in Heaven?” inquired these savages. “Spaniards? To be sure,” replied the priest; “Spaniards are all the children of the church; they all go to Heaven.” “Then,” retorted those indignant, outraged sons of the forest,—“then, sir, we will go to hell!”
“Why do you come here, Wolfe?” said a Jew to that missionary in Jerusalem. “To preach the gospel of peace,” replied Wolfe. “Peace!” retorted the Jew. “Look there at Calvary, where your different sects of Christians would fight for an empty sepulchre if the sword of the Mussulman did not restrain you. When the true Messiah comes, he will banish war.”
Says Wolfe: “A Jew once said to me, ‘You go to war, and you call Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace, and pray to him to help your warriors vanquish your enemies; and after battle you go to your churches and there sing a Te Deum for victory.’ When in the land of the Afghans, a minister of the prince asked me, ‘What is your religion in England? Have you any at all?’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘we have.’ ‘What, then, is it?’ he retorted. ‘You send messengers here to bribe the king, and stir up war. Is that your religion?’ Once I gave a Turk the gospel to read, and pointed him to the fifth chapter of Matthew as showing the beauty of its doctrines. ‘Oh!’ said he, ‘you Christians are the greatest hypocrites in the world.’ ‘How so?’ ‘Why, here it is said, Blessed are the peace-makers, and you, more than any others, teach us to make war, and are yourselves the greatest warriors on the earth. How can you be so shameless?’”
The natives of heathen lands reject the gospel of Christ for the villainies of these professedly Christian nations. Why were the Jesuit missionaries expelled from China, and all Christians forbidden to set foot on the shores of Japan? Those countries had a horror of men so notorious for their rapacity and their terrible success in war. What drew down the wrath of Burmah upon Judson and his co-workers, but the dread of British bayonets bristling along their borders, and carrying, or threatening to carry, fire and sword into the heart of their domains? “If this be Christianity,” they say, “we want no such bloody religion.” The emperor of China refused admittance of the Christian religion into his vast empire, “for,” said he, “wherever Christians go, they whiten the soil with human bones.” The Sandwich Islanders, when first converted to Christianity, laid aside their spears and war-clubs, until, following the example of Christendom, they learned to fight, not with spears, but with muskets, and forsook the gospel and again resorted to brute force.
The fleets and armies of these Christian nations have been employed for the last half century in this way. They have made war on China, on India, and on the islands of the sea. Read the account of that “most brilliant exploit,” the bombardment of St. Jean d’Acre, in Syria. Says an eye witness:
“At half-past four in the morning, all firing ceased, as if by one consent; when—heaven! what a sight!—the whole town seemed to be thrown into the air! We saw nothing but one dense cloud extending thousands of yards into the air on all sides; and then we felt an awful shock, which gave the line-of-battle-ships a heel of two degrees. It was the explosion caused by one of our shells bursting in their main magazine of powder, by which, to speak within bounds, two thousand souls, besides beasts of burden of every description, were blown to atoms. The entire loss of the Egyptians is computed at three thousand. At daylight, what a sight was exposed to our view! The stupendous fortification, that only twelve hours before was among the strongest in the world, was so riddled that we could not find a square foot which had not been shot. I went ashore to witness the devastation. The sight beggared all description! The bastions were strewed with the dead, the guns dismantled, and all sorts of havoc. The effects of the explosion was far worse,—a space of two acres laid quite bare, and hollowed out as if a quarry had been worked there for years! Heavens! What a sight was there before me! Mangled human bodies, of both sexes, strewed in all directions; women searching for their husbands, and other relatives, tearing their hair, beating their breasts, and bawling and crying most piteously!”
Such have been the doings of Christian nations; and for such purposes as these have they augmented their navies and increased their armies.
Notwithstanding all these facts, the philanthropic enthusiasts of the age have still been hopeful as ever of a good time that was to come. They have still preached peace and safety, and have told us that ere long, wars would cease. Meanwhile the princes and potestates of Christendom keep busy at work preparing for war. And those inquisitive persons who wished to know what so many improved weapons were for, if the millennium was at hand, were informed by the blind guides of the age, that the great improvements in the art of war were mere acts of mercy, designed to prevent bloodshed, by making weapons so formidable that no one would dare to think for a moment of using them. Hence the wild beasts of Christendom, after having ground their teeth and sharpened their claws till each was afraid of the other, were expected to lie down in the quiet of a Peace Society, and be converted from war by the moral effect of each other’s immense and terrible armaments.
Throughout christendom there constantly arise various national questions which are thought to admit only of warlike solutions; knots which only the sword can untie. Such are “the Eastern question,” “the Italian question,” “the Indian question,” “the Mexican question,” “the Slavery question,” “the Intervention question,” and so on of all the questions which satanic malice and human stubbornness continue to make apples of discord among nations of bullies, knaves, and fools, whose appetites clamor for strife and blood.
There are also intense hatreds, animosities, and feuds, lying smouldering amid the dust, but which, fanned by the winds of discord, may at any time light up with the horrors of internecine war. There are the treasured enmities of generations, the hoarded wraths of many years, which wait to flame forth in all their fury, and desolate the earth. Such are the hatreds of the Circassians and Georgians and Polanders against Russia; of the Hungarian and Swiss against Austria; of Russia against England; of theFrench against Britain, and the British against France; of the Mohammedans and Hindoos against England; of the South American Republics against each other, and against the European powers; of the slaveholding hordes against the United States;—to say nothing of the civil wars that rage and languish among the various nationalities. There seems to be a spirit of unalterable, unforgiving, unrelenting hate existing among these various powers. To-day they coquette, smile, and compliment (but never trust) each other; to-morrow they grasp the knife and clutch each other’s throats.
There are also religious animosities, hardly less fierce than these political hates. Protestants and Catholics, Mohammedans and Buddhists, Orthodox and heretics, men of the Greek church, Lutheran church, Episcopal church, Methodist church, Baptist church, Presbyterian church, and many other churches, are, multitudes of them, ready to “prove their religion orthodox by apostolic blows and knocks;” to defend their churches with the wrath of man that worketh not the righteousness of God.
But it is especially in the direction of warlike preparations that we trace the spirit actually prevailing among the nations which bear the title of christendom. If the millennium be just about to glide in upon us, we might, of course, expect to find armies disbanded, military inventions discarded, war-vessels changed to merchantmen, muskets condemned as worthless, cannon melted into railroad iron, spears used for kindling-wood, swords turned to plough-shares, arsenals changed into Bible depositories, naval depots into trading stations, recruiting offices into prayer rooms, military schools into Christian colleges, camps of instruction into theological seminaries, powder magazines into meal-bins, while the stock of military combustibles on hand, might be used up in the peaceful arts, or in fireworks that would illustrate and celebrate the glories of the good time that is coming. But instead of this we find, after so many years of peace, all these Christian nations armed to the teeth for deadly strife, and so anxious for warlike preparations, that no expense is spared which may conduce to their efficacy.
[Having given the statistics of the various nations, the writer proceeds:]
We have thus briefly sketched the military standing of christendom; and leaving out the vast hordes of heathendom—China with its army of more than a million, Japan with its unknown forces, Persia, Afghanistan, Belochistan, Arabia, Tartary, Thibet, and all the vast regions of Asia, where nearly every man is a soldier entirely subject to the demands of his chief,—we find that the present force of christendom in Europe and America, including also Turkey, amounts to about eight million men, with unnumbered guns and artillery, and a naval force of about five thousand war vessels, with fifty thousand guns, and five hundred thousand men,—a force far greater than ever was marshaled before, since the world began.
The numerical strength of these armies is not their chief characteristic. The improvements of modern science have increased their capacities for destruction tenfold. The improved drill, and the new methods of warfare; the revolver that can fire a dozen shots per minute; the sharp-shooter’s rifle, so effective at great distances; the breech-loading muskets, which can be fired ten times in a minute; the rifled cannon, of immense range and unparalleled accuracy; the huge mortars, throwing shells weighing hundreds of pounds several miles; the massive columbiads and immense cannon carrying solid shot weighing from one to two thousand pounds; newly-invented cannon, like “Raphael’s Repeater,” which it is said can fire four shots in a second; horse batteries, by which a cavalry man can fire a dozen shots in the faces of his foes in the act of charging on their ranks; improved projectiles, conical and steel-pointed shot, piercing the strongest fortifications; percussion shells, exploding as they fall; minie bullets, and explosive balls, mangling and tearing as they strike; improved machines, by which 80,000 bullets can be pressed out of cold lead in a day; iron-clad and impregnable vessels; Monitors, of new and strange capabilities; steam-vessels which defy the winds, nor tarry for the tides; naval rams, which carry devastation in their course; military railroads, by means of which, instead of long and tedious marches, armies with their entire materiel are hurled like an avalanche upon their foes; military telegraphs, by which a commander-in-chief can hold instantaneous communication with every portion of his forces, and personally control and conduct a conflict extending along a distance of many miles; military aeronauts, who, soaring in mid air, high above the contending forces, by telescope and telegraphs discern and report every movement of the adversary; facilities for communication, travel, rapid evolution, and terrible destruction,—such as Napoleon I. would have given half his kingdom to possess in some time of emergency,—are now ready at the control of the military commanders of christendom. And all these things increase immensely the capabilities of the nations for deadly strife, accelerate the rush of events, and press on the tide of conflict to its final issue.
And taking this glance over the earth, with its myriad hosts marshaled for strife, having every implement and appliance which the wisdom from beneath—so earthly, sensual, devilish—could invent to facilitate their work, what are the prospects of the world for peace? Navies are not built to rot idly at the wharves, soldiers are not disciplined to remain inactive in camp, arms and equipments are not prepared that they may rust and decay, swords are not yet beaten into ploughshares, nor spears into pruning-hooks,—nations are now learning war on a scale entirely unparalleled, and all things betoken the swift approach of a most terrible struggle.
What shall be the result of these terrible preparations? what the issue to which all these things tend? What are the forces that have thus roused the nations to strife? The Scripture tells us that in the hand of the Lord there is a cup of fury, and that this wine-cup of God’s wrath is to be pressed to the lips of all the sinful nations of the world upon the face of the earth. The Lord hath a controversy with the nations; he will give them that are wicked to the sword. By fire and sword shall the Lord plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many. Evil is to go forth from nation to nation, and the whirlwind of God’s fury shall rise up from the coasts of the earth; and the slain of the Lord shall be in that day from one end of the earth even to the other. They shall not be gathered, neither buried, nor lamented; they shall be as dung upon the ground. The voice of God seems sounding in the air, ‘Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles. Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up. Beat your plough-shares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about. Thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe; come get you down, for the press is full, the fats overflow; for the wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision, for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.’ All these things tend to that grand convulsion described in the Scriptures as the ‘war (polemos) of that great day of God Almighty.’ Rev. xvi, 14. And while now every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood, this shall be with burning and fuel of fire; for he that cometh to reign on David’s throne, shall destroy his enemies and establish his throne, and of the increase of his glorious government, and of peace, there shall be no end. The pomp and tinselry of war, the gaudy trappings and gay adornments, are but garlands which bedeck the victim who goes forth as a sheep to the slaughter. And over the gathering host the angel of God shall proclaim the invitation of the Almighty to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, ‘Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.’
Such is the terrible consummation of earth’s godless strife. Thus shall the Lord close his controversy with the nations, in a war that shall exterminate evil-doers, crush forever the power of apostate and guilty christendom, and bow the world in subjection to the feet of Christ. We stand amid the presages of those grand events. We stand amid the preparations for final conflict. We stand upon the verge of the great tribulation, the time of trouble such as never was, and out of which shall come forth the children of God, having washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Rev. vii.
What the precise course of events may be, none but a prophet can determine. All eyes, however, seem looking toward the East; and it is probable that events may occur which shall roll the tide of battle upon the mountains of Israel, and precipitate the final conflict.
But as we survey these terrible preparations for strife and blood, can we fail to discern the fulfillment of the apostle’s language, ‘In the LAST DAYS perilous times shall come . . . for men shall be FIERCE’? Is not this scripture fulfilled before our eyes? And should not we, whose weapons “are not carnal,” but “mighty through God to the pulling down of strong-holds,” take unto ourselves “the whole armor of God,” having our feet shod “with the preparation of the gospel of peace,” that we may stand in the evil day, and, having done all, stand?