WAR AND CHRISTIANITY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 10, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 32.

WAR AND CHRISTIANITY.

In one of his stories Sir Arthur Conan Doyle puts the following truthful words in the mouth of an old soldier, who, after a battle, looked upon a fresh scene of horror, a sorely-wounded man praying:—

We could do little to help him, and, indeed, might by our halt attract his pursuers to his hiding-place; so, throwing him down my flask half-filled with water, we hastened on upon our way.

O war, my children, what a terrible thing it is! How are men cozened and cheated by the rare trappings and prancing steeds, by the empty terms of honor and of glory, until they forget, in the outward tinsel and show, the real, ghastly horror of the accursed thing! Think not of dazzling squadrons, nor of the spirit-stirring blare of the trumpets, but think of that lonely man under the shadow of the alders, and of what he was doing in a Christian age and a Christian land.

Surely I, who have grown gray in harness, and who have seen as many fields as I have years of my life, should be the last to preach upon this subject, and yet I can clearly see that, in honesty, men must either give up war, or else they must confess that the words of the Redeemer are too lofty for them, and that there is no longer any use in pretending that

his teaching can be reduced to practise. I have seen a Christian minister blessing a cannon which had just been founded, and another blessing a warship as it glided from the slips. They, the so-called representatives of Christ, blessed these engines of destruction which cruel man has devised to destroy and tear his fellow-worms. What would we say if we read in Holy Writ of our Lord's having blessed the battering-rams and the catapults of the legions? Would we think that it was in agreement with His teaching?