NOT CHRISTIAN WARFARE by G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 6, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 23.

NOT CHRISTIAN WARFARE.

By G.

The London Present Truth says:—

“No fewer than 110,000 copies of the New Testament have been issued from the Bible House of the British and Foreign Bible Society, to soldiers proceeding to the front. To each one of the City Imperial Volunteers a Bible was presented.”

According to the foregoing figures, at least half of the British army in South Africa were armed with the New Testament, in addition to their carnal weapons. The inharmony of such accoutrement is seen when we consider that if those soldiers would heed the teaching of their Testaments, they never would use their weapons of deadly strife. Virtually, those who put the Word of God into the hands of the soldiers were giving them that which, if heeded, might cause every soldier of them to be counted a traitor to the government; for no one can live out the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, and go out deliberately into the field to hunt and kill his fellow-man.

On the other hand, the South African Boers also carry their Bibles with them to the war. They read the Word, hold religious meetings, and pray for success in battle. It is hardly probable, tho, that they pray much for their enemies, as the Bible enjoins. The reports from the war do not indicate that either party are actuated by the counsel of the Saviour: “Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” There is nothing to show that the Bibles have in any degree softened the animosity of the contending parties, or that the bullets and shells have carried with them any of the Spirit of the sacred Word.

A combination of Bibles and rifles is a fit emblem of Church-and-State union, which is the religion of both Great Britain and the Transvaal Republic, and is fast becoming dominant even in the United States. But war conducted on that principle can not in any sense be deemed Christian warfare; for, says the apostle Paul, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal;” and again he says, “We fight not against flesh and blood.” So, whatever the Christian pretensions of both Boer and Briton, there is nothing in their death-dealing conflict that savors of Christian warfare.