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A PLEA FOR PEACE

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 18, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 51.

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A PLEA FOR PEACE.

By Lewis E. Stout

An Open Letter from Western Yearly Meeting of the Friends Church, Composed of 15,000 Members in Western Indiana and Eastern Illinois.
To our Brethren in Christ of Other Denominations:—
God seems to have committed to us as a church a testimony against violence of every description. There are times when particular doctrines need special enforcement. We believe that now is a moment when we should appeal to you.
God said to Noah, ‘The earth is filled with violence through them [men]; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’ Gen. 6:13. Does it not look as if, between armament, conscription, lust for gold, and like selfishness, we are approaching a condition almost as bad as that in Noah’s time?
The evil of armament is fastened upon the United States, and may be closely followed by coast fortification. Steel rails at $30 a ton are of no interest to an eight-million-dollar business combination in comparison with armor plate at $400 a ton. And unless the Christian people lift up their hearts to God and their voices to men to check this greed upon the public treasury coast fortification will follow, with its attendant evils.
England is now being schooled, too, and in all human probability will shortly have to accept conscription to fill her depleted military ranks.
Listen to what the defenders of conscription admit regarding it in France. Mr Drumont, the editor of the Libre Parole, a leader of the Nationalist Party, says:—
Compulsory military service, far from being a school of morals, is a school of drunkenness, idleness, and debauchery. I deem the universal military service one of the greatest, and it is sometimes one of the saddest sacrifices that our country calls upon us to bear. I know of few spectacles more saddening than that of the young peasant taken from his field or his village and thrown for three years into the barracks. These sons of the soil, who would in time have married some honest woman and given to France a new race of strong and wholesome men, return to their homes all more or less diseased, having lost all notions of God and respect for women, having lost the taste for their former honest work by the wearisome and meaningless fatigues of the barracks.
Even the Roman Church father, Forbes, said, ‘The family in France gives to the army a young man clean in mind and body; the army gives back that same young man steeped to the very lips in debauchery, suffering from disease and degrading vices.’ And the Abbé Crestey, in a work entitled, “Without God,” calls the barracks ‘a hot-house of corruption and moral infection.’
The United States is being deluged with a foreign element; how necessary that we fulfil every rule the Lord Jesus left us and are kept perfect under His blood, our sins being remembered no more against us forever. Do we not believe that Jesus Christ’s blood was the last drop that was necessary to be spilled for the race?
Ought not all Christians to testify to this by both word and practise?
On undisputable authority we know of the refined cruel methods resorted to in the South African War “to subjugate” the “conquered Christians.” On good authority we are informed that to satisfy the lust of soldiers at Manila, the United States Government’s medical department is licensing and periodically examining those who ought to be sisters, wives, and mothers. Ought not these things almost to put both these governments beyond the pale of Christianity? and should not all followers of the Lord Jesus everywhere blush with shame if they do not enter a protest against such actions?
Our church, the Friends, when we think of the mighty power of God, should be humiliated and humbled under a sense of the little we have done to extend the knowledge of Him. But we as a people must freely admit and testify to the greatness of the testimony against violence that Christ taught, and we thank Him continually that the wars of all kinds have been waged among and around us for the past two hundred and fifty years yet He had spared the lives of our loyal members, almost without exception, and enabled us at this time to bear this testimony before you, our fellow-comrades in the work of the preparation of the bride of Christ.
Some will say we must aid in the governments of the world.
Our Lord said: ‘I pray not for the world but for them which Thou hast given Me, for they are Thine. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through Thy truth.’ John 17: 9, 16, 17.
Wars, violence, etc., may continue until “the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ.” Rev. 11:15. But we believe our Lord Jesus Christ never by word or act aided or abetted or showed Himself responsible for any violence. And He said, ‘As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word.’ John 17: 18, 20.
This links us of the present completely with Him when on earth, and calls upon us ever to continue His conquest in this earth.
We are yours in Christian fellowship and in all the intensity of the love of the Gospel.
LEWIS E. STOUT, Clerk for the Meeting.