Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/30

18 the men who fell under the shot! How many men of the rank and file in the late war have since become respectable citizens? To show how incompatible are War and Christianity, suppose that he who is deemed the most Christian of Christ's disciples, the well-beloved John, were made a navy-chaplain, and some morning, when a battle is daily looked for, should stand on the gun-deck, amid lockers of shot, his Bible resting on a cannon, and expound Christianity to men with cutlasses by their side! Let him read for the morning lesson the Sermon on the Mount, and for text take words from his own Epistle, so sweet, so beautiful, so true: "Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God, for God is love." Suppose he tells his strange audience that all men are brothers; that God is their common father; that Christ loved us all, showing us how to live the life of love; and then, when he had melted all those savage hearts by words so winsome and so true, let him conclude, "Blessed are the men-slayers! Seek first the glory which cometh of battle. Be fierce as tigers. Mar God's image in which your brothers are made. Be not like Christ, but Cain who slew his brother! When you meet the enemy, fire into their bosoms; kill them in the dear name of Christ; butcher them in the spirit of God. Give them no quarter, for we ought not to lay down our lives for the brethren; only the murderer hath eternal life!" Yet great as are these threefold evils, there are times when the soberest men and the best men have welcomed war, coolly and in their better moments. Sometimes a people, long oppressed, has "petitioned, remonstrated, cast itself at the feet of the throne," with only insult for answer to its prayer. Sometimes there is a contest between a falsehood and a great truth; a self-protectiag war for freedom of mind, heart, and soul; yes, a war for a man's body, his wife's and children's body, for what is dearer to men than life itself, for the unalienable rights of man, for the idea that all are born free and equal. It was so in the American Revolution; in the English, in the French Revolution. In such cases men say, "Let it come." They take down the firelock in sorrow; with a prayer they go forth to battle,