Dress a man in particular garments, call him by a particular name, and he shall have authority, on divers occasions, to commit every species of offense—to pillage, to murder, to destroy human felicity; and for so doing he shall be rewarded. The period will surely arrive when better instructed generations will require all the evidence of history to credit that, in times deeming themselves enlightened, human beings should have been honored with public approval in the very proportion of the misery they caused."
Bacon's words come to mind: "I am of opinion that, except you bray Christianity in a mortar and mould it into new paste, there is no possibility of a holy war."
Apparently in no field of its work in our times does the christian church throughout the whole world, with outstanding individual exceptions of course, so conspicuously fail as in its attitude to war—judged by the standard maintained by the early christian fathers nearest in time to Christ. Its silence when outspoken speech might avert war, its silence during war's sway, its failure even during calm days of peace to proclaim the true christian doctrine regarding the killing of men made in God's image, and the prostitution of its holy offices to unholy warlike ends, give point to the recent arraignment of Prime Minister Balfour, who declared that the church to-day busies itself with questions which do not weigh even as dust in the balance compared with the vital problems with which it is called upon to deal.
Volumes could be filled with the denunciations of war by the great moderns. Only a few can be given.
Lord Clarendon, 1608-1674, says, "We can not make a more lively representation and emblem to ourselves of hell, than by the view of a kingdom in war."
Hume says, "The rage and violence of public war, what is it but a suspension of justice among the warring parties? "
Gibbon writes, "A single robber or a few associates are branded with their genuine name; but the exploits of a numerous band assume the character of lawful and honorable war."
'In every battlefield we see an inglorious arena of human degradation,' says Conway.
A strong voice from a St. Andrews principal is heard. Sir David Brewster, 1781-1868, says, "Nothing in the history of the species appears more inexplicable than that war, the child of barbarism, should exist in an age enlightened and civilized. But it is more inexplicable still that war should exist where Christianity has for nearly 2,000 years been shedding its gentle light, and should be defended by arguments drawn from the Scriptures themselves."
One of the greatest American secretaries of state, Colonel John Hay, who has just passed away, denounced war as 'the most futile and ferocious of human follies.'
