Page:The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks).djvu/233

Rh is constantly being fed by every labor-exploiting concern in the country, and quite naturally he tries to avoid getting an extra dose of the same kind of buncombe on Sunday….

"In Churches, men have listened for nearly two thousand years to lessons and sermons about 'the brotherhood of man,' 'the forging of swords of war into plowsnares of peace,' 'man is his brother's helper,' 'peace on earth, good will toward men,' 'thou shalt not kill’ We are taught to say the Lord's Prayer, and ask for heaven on earth, and yet, at every war opportunity, with a very few noble exceptions, the Church, at the command of the war lords, has scrapped its peace sentiments and turned its back to the Prince of Peace and Heaven on Earth and has shouted itself hoarse for hell on earth. And then the spokesmen of the churches of each nation at war have had the impudence to pray to a just God and ask Him to play favorites, to use His infinite power on their side and join in the mad slaughter of His own beloved children. And those slaughtered are the workers, and their folks at home naturally wonder why the one big international peace organization on earth, the Church, at the crack of the war demon's whip, deserts its principles of 'Thou shalt not kill,' and 'Peace on earth,' and helps to stampede its followers in the very opposite direction."

Mr. Maurer points out that labor's struggle to have a Federal Child Labor amendment to the Constitution ratified by the various state legislatures, and to have such legislation enacted as the Workmen's Compensation Laws, Mothers' Pensions, and Old Age Pensions, received no support from the clergy. He concludes by citing this occurrence:

"For a good illustration of what the Church is sometimes guilty of let us take a glimpse at what happened in Detroit, during the month of October, 1926, when the