One paper comes to us with a note on “Chicago’s Fighting Parsons,” wrought up over Cuba’s wrongs, and it is declared that they are counseling American interference “even though it should involve the United States in a war with Spain.” It is Dr. Barrows who is thus reported. This paper declares of these ministers that “they are doing their utmost to stir up the spirit of pugnacity, and they are doing it openly and officially as servants of the Prince of Peace;” and the same editor truly remarks:— “They have a right, with every person of humane instincts, to show sympathy for the oppressed, but their method of doing it may well be called in question. A war with Spain might be the firebrand of a universal conflagration. And surely the teachers of the Gospel of ‘peace on earth, good-will to men,’ should not be the first to counsel war between two great powers, with all its attendant horrors.” Another Chicago minister, Rev. Geo. H. Grannis, in some verses in the Advance, takes for his subject of laudation “The Driving of Jehu,” and closes thus:— “Drive, Christian; thou too art anointed and sealed.
The kingdom of darkness before thee shall yield.
Invisible hands guide the reins as we wheel
Toward the goal set before us by Immanuel.” If this means anything, it means that the “Christian” is to burn, lay waste, and mercilessly slaughter his opposers, as did Jehu. But the Christianity which will do this will, like Jehu after his victory, turn to the worship of the calves. It is an interesting model for nineteenth-century Christianity. Read it in 2 Kings, chapters 9 and 10. “But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart.” Another crusade poet, Rev. J. S. Perry, thus breaks out in the Independent, and is given first place in that paper, with this “gospel”:— “O, for an hour of Cromwell,
For a leader brave and grand,
To guide the wrath, and point the path,
Of a mighty Christian land;
To heed the cry of innocent blood,
To blush for the world’s disgrace,
With hand to deal a blow of steel
In the murderous Moslem’s face!” These, with boys’ brigades in our Sunday schools, and many other things, show the drift of Christianity back toward the Dark Ages, and he has read history in vain who can not see it. We sympathize with the distressed, downtrodden, persecuted of every land and clime and race. Our heart becomes horror-stricken at the cruelties perpetrated in various parts of earth, but it is not the Gospel of Christ to preach revenge. When Peter would begin a crusade for his Master, the Perfect One, Jesus, said: “Put up again thy sword into his place; for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I can not now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?” Matt. 26: 52, 53. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” Rom. 12: 19. “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal.” 2 Cor. 10: 4.