Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/75

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Christianity a Danger to the State
55

to-day, applies equally to the obligation for Germans to fight England. So while we continue to assert that a man must fight here with us for the cause of liberty, honour, righteousness—in a word, for God—we assert equally that in another country he must subject his conscience to the claims of the State, and fight for oppression, dishonour, unrighteousness—in a word, for the Devil (and that in spite of the baptismal vows which oblige him to "fight manfully under Christ's banner," not merely against sin, as he individually is concerned, but sin spiritually combined in its symbolic representative, and defended by the temporalities of the world). From which we must argue that, if Christ were here on earth to-day, born of German parents, he would be called upon to fight in the ranks of Germany; that if he were born of English parents he would be called to fight for England; while, if again, born of Jewish parents, he might be accorded the alternative privilege of fighting for England which was not his country, or of being deported to Russia to fight for the persecutors of his race.

The conscientious objector, on the other hand, feels bound to take the moral equation of all such particular instances as a guide to his diagnosis of the evils of war; and he comes thus to regard the expedient of war as altogether so bad a remedy for evil that he dares to doubt whether Christ would be seen bearing arms on either side; and he is probably