PUT UP Tny 
 
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Cornell University Library 
 JX 1953.M16 
 
 Put up thy sword; a study of war, by James 
 
 1924 007 375 011 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92400737501 1 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 A STUDY OF WAR 
 
 By 
 James H. MacLaren 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 CHICAGO ! NEW YORK ! TORONTO 
 1900 
 
Copyright 1900 by 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
To the lovers of Peace, to the haters 
 
 of War, 
 
 To the true disciples of the Prince of Peace, 
 
 and the 
 
 Benefactors of the Human Race, 
 
 This book is dedicated by the Author. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Fbevaoe 
 
 I. Bb&in's Reply 
 
 II. Bbawn's Request 
 
 III. The Leadinq Qttestion 
 
 IV. Necessity op Disobimination 
 Y, Causes of Bbain's Obeat Ohamge 
 
 VIi Wab in the CoNaTITUTION ov Natube 
 
 VII. The Reai, Tbuih 
 
 VIII. Wab a Oonbtbuotite Aoenoy 
 
 IX. Wab a Dbbtbuotite Aoenoy 
 
 X. Expansion 
 
 XI. DeyeijOpiient or the Wab System 
 
 XII. The FbobijEM Simplified 
 
 XIII. WhEBE the BliAME Belonob 
 
 XrV. The Ultimate Tbibunal . 
 S 
 
 9 
 
 15 
 
 18 
 
 22 
 
 30 
 
 36 
 
 55 
 
 82 
 
 101 
 
 109 
 
 130 
 
 138 
 
 146 
 
 151 
 
 181 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Militarism is upon the throne. It wears the 
 crown, it sways the scepter. All of the older 
 nations-have become subservient to the army. 
 What about the new? Is America following in 
 their train? If the idolizing of military and 
 naval heroes, if the high place which militarism 
 has come to occupy in the thought and life of 
 even the American people, may be taken as signs 
 of the times, then are we patterning after the 
 military^burdened, war=cursed nations of the 
 Old World; and that we shall some time come to 
 groan under the same awful yoke is quite evi- 
 dent, if present tendencies are allowed to go 
 unchecked. 
 
 The wonderful receptions — the equals of 
 which have never before been witnessed in 
 America — which have been of late given to the 
 military and naval heroes; the wild enthusiasm 
 of the people — even the Christian people — on 
 account of the bloody victories of war; the swell- 
 ing pride with which great wardships and com- 
 manders have been described and pictured, and 
 their pictures hung in the most conspicuous 
 places in even Christian homes; the continued 
 preparations for war in time of peace, and the 
 unholy conceit which recent victories have 
 generated in American life, ought to cause every 
 
 9 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 thoughtful person to pause and enquire, Whither 
 are we tending? America began and has con- 
 tinued her splendid career as a great missionary 
 nation in the broadest and best sense of the 
 term, and so she has continued to prosper and 
 to become a blessing to all other nations, and on 
 account of her Christian beneficence, so gen- 
 erously bestowed upon those in distress, she has 
 been loved and honored by the whole world. 
 But when she also descends from this glorious 
 mission, to which she has been divinely called, 
 to assume the role of a great military power, 
 her doom is sealed. 
 
 No war^loving, war=practising nation can 
 ever continue to live. "They that take the 
 sword, shall perish by the sword." War is the 
 universal blunder of the human race; it is the 
 result of misguided energy, false education and 
 a mistaken idea of human greatness. The army 
 is a libel upon our boasted civilization. The 
 navy is a stain upon our seas — a modern plague 
 which turns the waters into blood. Instead of 
 the white wings of peaceful commerce, spread- 
 ing to bear the blessings of one nation to another, 
 we behold these engines of destruction, grim 
 and terrible, with their war=paint and darkened 
 lights, stealing along like thieves in the night, 
 bearing death and ruin to our fellow men. 
 
 The recent victories over Spain have made 
 America drunk with pride, and if present ten- 
 dencies continue unopposed, the last objects to 
 
 JO 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 be seen upon this planet will be a sword, a 
 canteen, a Krupp gun, and a skeleton. 
 
 All of the fabulous expense, the unspeakable 
 cruelty, the indescribable suffering caused by 
 war, is inhumane, unchristian, unnecessary and 
 forever wrong. 
 
 When we think of the terrible destruction 
 and the untold miseries which the human race 
 has brought upon itself by reason of this 
 Moloch of war, and when we think of the evils 
 which it is now working, how can a Christian 
 do other than condemn it with all the power of 
 his being? 
 
 When we think how the Apostles of the 
 Prince of Peace faced the darkest world with no 
 other weapon than the " sword of the Spirit," 
 and no helmet but the "helmet of salvation": 
 no shield save " the shield of faith," and no 
 power but the invisible power of Jehovah: — a 
 Livingstone in darkest Africa, a Patterson in the 
 Islands of the Pacific, a Paton in the New 
 Hebrides, a Penn in the midst of the American 
 Indians — when we think of their sure defense 
 by day and by night: the marvelous faith which 
 they displayed, through the power that sustained 
 them; how that in the gentleness and all=con- 
 quering love of Christ they triumphed; the sad 
 fact that we hide behind the walls of our forts 
 and ironclads, substituting swords, gunboats 
 and dynamite for that power which conquered 
 thewold savage world, and turned the dark night 
 IX 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 of heathenism into the bright day of Christian 
 civilization, then is the cause of our lack of faith 
 in man and God, the retrenchment of our 
 missions abroad and our increasing paganism 
 at home, not far to seek. Upon the Christian 
 Church, ministry and press, the writer has felt 
 it to be his painful duty to place the larger 
 portion of the blame for the growing popularity 
 and increase of our military system. To lay 
 the blame for recent wars on this or on any ad- 
 ministration is unfair. 
 
 Many a Christian mother, even to=day, seems 
 to be imbued with the same spirit that thrilled 
 the Spartan mother of old, and sees in militar- 
 ism the noblest calling and the highest honors 
 for her son. Many a young Achilles in our day is 
 being fed, not on honey and milk, but on bear's 
 marrow and lion's heart. Many a pulpit, instead 
 of giving forth its sweet message of " Peace on 
 earth, good=will to men," instead of holding up 
 the beauty of self^Bacrifice in the patient en- 
 durance of wrong, and the true glory of non= 
 resistance as taught and practised by the Prince 
 of Peace, thunders forth the thrilling tales of 
 savage war, until some inexperienced, ambitious 
 youth, thrilled by the fascination of a false 
 teaching, and blinded by a false glory, deter- 
 mines within himself — what? " I will be a Chris- 
 tain:" "I will follow in the footsteps of the 
 Prince of Peace, and lay down my life for my 
 fellowmen?" No! No! "I will be a soldier: I 
 
 12 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 will be clothed with honor and immortal fame: 
 I will lay down my life for the glory which 
 crowns the military hero." 
 
 The Christian press is so blackened with 
 powder and reddened with blood that it can 
 scarcely, in strict justice, be called Christian 
 any more. No good man can advocate war who 
 stops to think of its stern reality. When 
 stripped of all its false poetry, and seen in its 
 naked prose, no one cares to see it again. When 
 we think how foreign is this savage war to the 
 spirit and teaching of Jesus, of its demoralizing 
 and devilizing nature, its destructive influences 
 on the union and solidarity of the human race, we 
 cannot see how a Christian can believe, much 
 less engage, in this cruel war. 
 
 No one can be a true Christian and an ad- 
 vocate of war: no true Christian can engage in 
 military service: war has no place in the Chris- 
 tian system. Christianity and war cannot dwell 
 together under the same roof: one or the other 
 must be dropped. 
 
 It is with the .profound conviction that war is 
 the supreme mistake of mankind; that it is, in 
 its very nature, inherently and forever irrecon- 
 cilable with Christ's teachings; that it is the 
 greatest drawback to the unity, harmony, prog- 
 ress and happiness of the human race; that, 
 more than any other agency, it destroys man's 
 trust in man and faith in God, and, therefore, 
 must be a device of the devil, that the writer 
 
 13 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 has prepared this course of lectures, which he 
 is well aware are not on the popular side of the 
 question. 
 
 In presenting this work the author knows 
 quite well that the ground has all been traversed 
 before by abler and more experienced writers. 
 The form of the discussion however is new to 
 the author. So far he knows, it is original, and 
 therefore may prove of some real benefit to the 
 reader. A large number of authors have been 
 consulted, and the results freely used, due credit 
 for which has been given as far as possible. At 
 the close of the lectures, a partial list of the 
 authors and works consulted and quoted may 
 be found. 
 
 Praying that this earnest effort may aid in 
 expunging from the human mind and heart 
 those cursed war sentiments, which have been 
 printed there by centuries of misguided educa- 
 tion and false standards of human greatness, I 
 send it forth upon its mission in the name of 
 the Prince of Peace. 
 
 The Authob. 
 
 14 
 
BRAIN'S REPLY 
 
 My Dear Brawn: — Your letter relative to 
 my recent article in the Century, entitled, " Can 
 a Christian Believe in War," is at hand. You 
 ask, " Can it be possible that one whose opinion 
 on this, as on other important subjects, has been 
 for many years regarded as authority, not only 
 with the general public, but in university and 
 military circles as well, should have experienced 
 so sudden and so radical a change, assuming a 
 position entirely contrary to all you have said 
 or written or taught heretofore, utterly un- 
 scientific and untenable?" You seem also to 
 express deep anxiety in regard to my mental 
 condition, and fear lest the softening of the 
 heart has been accompanied by the softening of 
 another useful organ which is now yielding fruit 
 after its kind. You wish me to inform you 
 more definitely with regard to the circumstances 
 which have led to this "sudden and radical 
 transformation." 
 
 It affords me great pleasure, dear friend, to 
 comply with your request. I am more than 
 pleased with the opportunity of stating, as 
 clearly as I may, some of the reasons that have 
 led to this great change in my thinking — a 
 
 15 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 change which may indeed seem " radical," but 
 which has not been " sudden," nor the result of 
 " temporary emotion," nor " effeminate affection," 
 nor " mere sentimentality." Neither has it been 
 caused by " a religious revival," as your letter 
 seems to indicate. No, it has not been the re- 
 sult of any or all of these influences, at least in 
 the sense in which you seem to imply. Nor 
 have I been led to make this change through 
 any worldly ambition, nor with the hope of 
 promotion, nor any higher honor whatever as 
 you suggest. In assuming my present position 
 I have certainly nothing to gain and almost 
 everything to lose. This change has come to 
 me through a long and thorough study of the 
 whole intricate, and perplexing problem of war, 
 — of every factor involved in it, and of all the 
 circumstances connected with it. 
 
 Of course feelings which prompted such study 
 were in their nature humane, and therefore 
 might be characterized as being "sentimental," 
 "emotional" or "effeminate." But what the 
 uninitiated may say will not avail to affect the 
 conclusions that have been reached in the heat 
 of the conflict; or by one, who, having stood in 
 the front rank, can therefore speak from "bitter 
 experience. But it wiU be impossible to make 
 myself clearly understood in a single letter. 
 To do this may require several letters. If, there- 
 fore, you can spare the time and muster the 
 patience to read all that I shall be pleased to 
 
 16 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 write, I am sure that while I may not succeed 
 in convincing you of the reasonableness of my 
 position, or the impossibility of a Christian 
 taking any other ground, I do feel confident 
 that one so fair=minded and so reasonable as I 
 have always known you to be — ever since we 
 first met as fellow students and class=mates at 
 dear old Yale — will come at least to acknowledge 
 that the stand I have taken is the only right one 
 for me, and that it would be impossible for one 
 who has come to think, feel and believe as I do, 
 to assume any other position and be honest and 
 sincere. 
 
 Again thanking you for your letter, and 
 especially for your kind references to me per- 
 sonally (before I become degenerate), I have 
 the honor, dear and good friend, to remain, as 
 ever, Brain. 
 
 U 
 
II 
 
 BRAWN'S REQUEST 
 
 Dear Brain: — Your generous offer to explain 
 at greater length the process by which you have 
 reached this strange position which you now 
 occupy, and your consent to the publication of 
 the same, is most gratifying to me, and will, I 
 am sure, be welcome news to all of your readers. 
 
 Need I inform you that, so far as I am con- 
 cerned personally, no effort on your part is 
 necessary to convince me of your sincerity in 
 this matter, or to prove that not without the 
 strongest and most convincing reasons to your- 
 self have you undergone such a revolution in 
 your thinking? But others will not be*o easily 
 satisfied, and already there is arising a clamor, 
 from those who have heretofore been your 
 friends and admirers, for an explanation. Nor 
 do I need to inform you of what in this age it 
 means for one in your position to take so de- 
 cided a stand against the whole great military 
 world. Whether you realize it or not, this 
 means not only social ostracism both in mili- 
 tary circles and out — ^loss of social standing, in- 
 fluence, and all that the world holds most pre- 
 cious — ^but even martyrdom itself. 
 
 My most earnest desire for your personal wel- 
 ls 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 fare and also for the general good is, that you 
 may be led at once, before we engage further in 
 this discussion, to review the ground over which 
 you have oome in order that you may retract, so 
 far as possible, some of those radical statements 
 which you have made, and modify others, so 
 that you may stand in a different light before 
 the people who have been your firm friends and 
 supporters, and to whom you, as well as myself, 
 are so deeply indebted. 
 
 How are you going to maintain the position 
 which you have taken, what arguments can you 
 adduce to prove to a practical world that war is 
 in every age and form "the supreme blunder of 
 the human race"? That "it is not and never 
 was a necessity"; that it is at this time "the 
 major crime of all nations that indulge in it"; 
 that it is "contrary alike to nature, reason, 
 Scripture and common sense"; that "war is, 
 murd er, s ancti oned bj^ government, " and no 
 Christian can possibly be an aHvocate of war or 
 a participant in it? Such statements seem to 
 me to be so entirely foreign to the facts in the 
 case, so contrary to the operations of nature, 
 and so out of accord with the principles of 
 human nature and the laws of progress, that the 
 anxiety expressed as to your mental condition 
 was not spoken in jest, and seems yet to be well 
 founded. 
 
 To my mind, a wholesale condemnation of 
 war is as Uflelees as it is irrational. I might 
 
 19 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 seek to prove this assertion from nature and 
 from all of life, for it is being illustrated all 
 around us. But I forbear. I wish first to hear 
 more from you. Your arguments will be appre- 
 ciated, if they cannot be accepted or approved. 
 Your old friend claims not to be infallible in 
 this or any other subject. What I most desire 
 is the truth; and my interest in your welfare, 
 and my zeal for the best interests of mankind, 
 as expressed in this letter, will surely convince 
 you that I am more anxious to find the truth 
 than I am to outdo my old friend in a contro- 
 versy, which, from the nature of the case, must 
 prove to be one=sided. 
 
 It is not because I am a lover of war, as such, 
 that I feel disposed to defend it. I deplore war 
 in all of its hideous forms. I recognize it only 
 as an indispensable necessity and a part of the 
 constitution of nature. If only war could be 
 banished from the world, nothing would give 
 me greater cause for rejoicing. But as well 
 attempt to banish the law of gravitation or 
 destroy the positive and negative poles. War 
 is here to stay. We had better recognize the 
 fact, and then proceed, as best we can, to reform 
 the system so far as it is possible to do so. 
 Human nature is cruel and conflicting; but our 
 mission is to reform and not to destroy it. 
 
 The great good which has been accomplished 
 by means of war, the inestimable blessings 
 which have come to the human race in this way, 
 20 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 is conclusive evidence that it has always been a 
 Grod'ordained means of accomplishing needed 
 reforms, of staying oppression and accomplish- 
 ing good results which could not have been real- 
 ized in any other way. And the wonderful change 
 in the art of warfare, which has kept pace with 
 the advancement of the human race, shows quite 
 plainly that war must continue to change, and 
 conflict at arms to decrease, and finally pass out 
 of existence, with advancing civilization, and in 
 no other way. Beawn. 
 
 31 
 
Ill 
 
 THE LEADING QUESTION 
 
 Dear Brawn: — Your letter reveals still more 
 of the generous heart that I have known in the 
 past, and your earnest wishes in my behalf are 
 highly appreciated, I assure you. I only wish 
 for your sake that it were possible for me to 
 modify, or even retract, much of what I have 
 written, but this is impossible. I am willing to 
 stand alone, if need be, for the defense of what 
 I believe to be the truth, and for the abolition of 
 that system, which, I have become convinced 
 beyond the shadow of a doubt, is the greatest 
 curse the world has known, and the burden most 
 grievous to be borne at the present time. 
 
 Your letter shows, however, that we have some 
 things in common. We seem to agree that war 
 is a terrible evil. But you say that it is a 
 " necessary evil." I say that it is not. Here 
 then is an issue. 
 
 You admit that war is offensive to your finer 
 feelings, and you deplore the dreadful system, 
 and heartily wish that it might be banished 
 from the world. Here again we agree. But 
 now you say that it is "in the very consti- 
 tution of nature, animate and inanimate, and 
 must therefore be accepted as a great work- 
 ing force in the world, a force that can 
 22 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 never be dispensed with, a power ordained 
 of God." Here also I must take issue with you. 
 If this is true, we are slaves of a cruel system, 
 which sooner or later will grind us to powder. 
 But it is not true. War, like drunkenness, is a 
 creation of the evil genius of mankind. The 
 present war system is the fruit of an evil spirit 
 which might have been subdued, and eradicated, 
 had it not been stimulated by unworthy ambi- 
 tion and human greed. It is the sad result of 
 false education, false ideas of human greatness, 
 and misdirected energy. 
 
 I start, therefore, with a clear, unqualified 
 condemaation of war in every form. I do not 
 admit that it was ever an " indispensable neces- 
 sity." On the contrary I claim, as I hope to 
 prove, that war is entirely wrong in its nature, 
 wrong in principle, wrong from every point of 
 view, that no straw of argument in its favor 
 can stand unbroken. It never has been and it 
 never will be a necessity. If I were not a 
 Christian, and a disciple of the Prince of Peace, 
 I could still assume my position with good grace 
 upon the broad general basis of humanity. But, 
 as already indicated, I am to discuss this sub- 
 ject from a Christian standpoint. 
 
 Can a Christian believe in war? That is the 
 question, and the answer to it must depend 
 upon what is Christ's attitude toward war. 
 Did Christ acknowledge war even as a necessity; 
 did He in any sense lend His approval to war 
 
 23 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 when He was here on earth? What is the truth 
 of His teaching so far as His recorded words 
 are accessible on this subject? Does He 
 approve of or condemn war? If He were here 
 to'day just what attitude would He take towards 
 our armies and navies, and what would He say 
 about our great system of organized war- 
 fare? 
 
 If it can be shown that Jesus Christ approved 
 of war while on earth, that His teachings are not 
 opposed to it now, and that if He were here to= 
 day He would still acknowledge it as a necessity 
 for the settlement of differences between men and 
 nations, then my argument falls to the ground; 
 I have no more to say in this matter. For 
 while I might still discuss the subject from 
 other points of view, yet it is on this proposition 
 that my argument must stand or fall. If Jesus 
 1:ielieved in war His people may. If He opposed 
 it His. people must. We cannot believe in that 
 which He condemns and be His disciples. 
 There must be some source of supreme authority; 
 there must be some standard of absolute right and 
 justice which men are not disposed to question; 
 some " Court of Final Appeal," whose authority 
 will be acknowledged as supreme and final. 
 
 Such an authority cannot be created by poor, 
 weak human nature. Even the best representa- 
 tives of the most advanced nations could not 
 form such a tribunal as I have in mind. Their 
 best efforts would fall short of the high ideal. 
 
 24 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 Their most impartial conclusions naight not 
 meet with entire approval. 
 
 We see, therefore, the indispensable necessity 
 of some source of final appeal — an authority 
 which most people are willing to acknowledge 
 as more than human, absolutely just and im- 
 partial. Such an. authority we find in Christ 
 alone. He meets this universal demand of our 
 human need. Without Him our whole system 
 would be sadly incomplete. The prophecies 
 concerning Him are being literally fulfilled. 
 The government is indeed upon the shoulders 
 of the King, and His name is being called 
 "Wonderful, Councilor, Prince of Peace." In 
 most great departments of thought and genius 
 His authority has already become supreme. 
 
 Why should it not be so in the question under 
 discussion, by which all our interests are so 
 naturally affected? 
 
 In the realm of art He is supreme — the 
 Madonnas are the fruit of His beautiful words 
 concerning little children, and most all of the 
 master paintings have some phase of Christ's 
 life and teaching for their subject. His mind is 
 supreme in the world of architecture. The 
 most beautiful temples in the world have grown 
 out of His teachings in regard to the Father's 
 house and the Father's abiding presence. Then 
 He is the leading spirit in the world of music. 
 The great oratorios are His words in song. He 
 is the real founder of all colleges, of all benevo- 
 
 25 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 lent institutions, of all missionary enterprises, 
 and the inspirer and prompter of all reforms. 
 He is head master in the world of literature- 
 John Kuskin, the greatest master of English 
 prose, dedicated his highest talents ta an "inter- 
 pretation of the truth and beauty of Jesus Christ." 
 According to Coleridge, whose many-sided genius 
 in the world of literature has not been equalled, 
 the richest passage in literature is the Beati- 
 tudes. According to Dickens, the most effective 
 story ever told is the story of the Prodigal Son. 
 In the judgment of Burke, the most influential 
 political document, on the true relations between 
 man and man, is the Sermon on the Mount; 
 according to one of the world's greatest actors, 
 the most affecting passage in literature is Jesus' 
 invitation " Come unto me all ye that labor and 
 are heavy laden and I will give you rest." This 
 being the case, then surely, every professed 
 disciple of His is under the strongest moral ob- 
 ligation to acknowledge Christ's supremacy in 
 every department of life, and Christ's word as 
 final in every important question. However 
 much men may differ in regard to Christ's teach- 
 ing on certain other subjects, on this, it seems 
 to me, opinion must be one. Whatever else He 
 was when on earth. He was preeminently the 
 Prince of Peace. I am quite well aware that 
 His teaching on this, as on several other sub- 
 jects, is in spirit rather than in letter. He said 
 nothing directly for or against a war system. 
 
 26 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 Such was not His method of teaching. He 
 dealt with principles rather than with details, 
 and aimed His heaviest blows at causes rather 
 than results. Sometimes His attitude toward 
 those who came to Him for redress of grievances, 
 or for quick decision on some difficult question, 
 was a surprise to them. As in the case, for ex- 
 ample, of the man who said " Master, speak to 
 my brother, that he divide the inheritance with 
 me " : or the woman who was discovered in one 
 of the worst acts of sin. In the first instance 
 His answer was a flat refusal. " Man, who made 
 me to be a judge and a divider over you? " But 
 He adds, " Beware of covetousness," thus strik- 
 ing at the root principle of this and all similar 
 disputes, namely, covetousness. In the other 
 case His answer was in the form of a searching 
 test. He decided nothing, but left His wise 
 saying to work out its own decision in the 
 mind and consciences of the woman's accusers. 
 So likewise on the subject of war He left no 
 positive teaching; He organized no anti=war 
 movement; He made no speeches on the evils 
 of war; He said nothing about the disarma, 
 ment of nations; He spent no time or strength 
 discussing the war system as it then existed. 
 His teaching was of a higher order, it was posi- 
 tive and constructive. He exalted those virtues 
 which ever make for righteousness and peace. He 
 condemned with all His might the spirit of envy, 
 selfishness, retaliation, out of which war springs. 
 27 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 He taught the divinity of forbearance, forgive- 
 ness and love. He commanded men to love, 
 not only their friends, but their enemies. 
 
 It is true that men sometimes quote Jesus' 
 sayings in defense of war. His words, taken 
 in their bare literalness, may be so misused. 
 But such teachings find no support in a true 
 interpretation of Scripture. We cannot think 
 of so noble a character resorting to force, or 
 lifting the hand to smite His fellow man. The 
 right cheek was to be turned to him who would 
 smite the left. The hungry enemy was not to 
 be thrown to raving beasts, but made an object 
 of hospitality, for only in this way could the 
 evil disposition of men be destroyed and their 
 hearts changed and humanized. And now, 
 after nineteen centuries have passed, He has 
 proven, to the better portion of mankind, that 
 the true hero is not the hero of war, but of peace. 
 Although Jesus never unsheathed a sword, for 
 He had none to unsheath, although He 
 never led an army or spent a single moment in 
 military drill, nevertheless, the bravest generals 
 have laid their laurels down at the feet of the 
 Nazarene. Men like Generals Havelock, 
 Wellington, and Napoleon, seem to have ex- 
 hausted language in their efiforts to declare 
 Jesus Christ the bravest general that ever lived. 
 And the system that bears His name reveals 
 the spirit of the Founder. 
 
 Christianity means one great, universal 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 brotherhood, independent of nationality, class 
 or color. The bond of union is not fleshly, but 
 spiritual and sympathetic. ' ' Whosoever doeth the 
 will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is 
 My brother, and My sister and My mother." 
 The true neighbor is independent of locality, 
 or nationality — meaning the first one whom we 
 meet in trouble. The whole Christian system 
 finds its expression in the fatherhood of God 
 and the brotherhood of mankind. And this 
 necessitates the union and cooperation of the 
 whole human race. 
 
 Under such a system war must be ruled out. 
 There is no place for it. The war system is as 
 foreign to the spirit and teachings of Christ as 
 anything can well be imagined. These two 
 forces, war and Christianity, are inherently and 
 eternally irreconcilable. For the true disciple 
 of Christ, therefore, to believe in such a system 
 is impossible. To break from that which is so 
 entirely opposed to His spirit and teaching is the 
 Christian's plain duty. I go still further and de- 
 clare that every true Christian must either refuse 
 to do military service, or announce himself no lon- 
 ger a disciple of Christ, but afoUower of Moses. 
 
 The scourge and curse of war, the indescrib- 
 able evils which it has wrought (part of which 
 I shall hereafter unfold) ought to convince 
 every thoughtful being that war and Christian- 
 ity can have no more agreement with one another 
 than light and darkness, or Christ with Belial. 
 
 Beain. 
 
 29 
 
IV 
 
 NECESSITY OF DISCRIMINATION 
 
 My Dear Brain: — In all that you have said 
 and quoted with reference to the character of 
 Jesus I heartily concur. In our best efforts to 
 delineate that matchless character, we diminish 
 rather than embellish it. Christ is infinitely 
 grander than all that has been said concerning 
 Him. That the spirit of His teaching is 
 opposed to war I likewise cheerfully admit. 
 But this in itself is not sufficient evidence to 
 sustain the sweeping assertions which you have 
 made. Even if it could be shown beyond 
 doubt, that Christ condemned war as a last 
 resort, and forbade His disciples to do military 
 service, that fact would not be sufficient proof 
 that He intended to have such teachings applied 
 as an unalterable rule to every age place and 
 condition, without exception or discrimination. 
 
 But we have your own statement for it that the 
 Master said nothing directly on the subject, 
 and left no positive teaching in regard to it. 
 To my mind, that fact is evidence enough that 
 He intended that men should be guided accord- 
 ing to circumstances in this as in many other 
 matters on which He refused to give positive 
 opinions. 
 
 80 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 Now the fact that war is antagonistic to the 
 spirit of Christ and His teachings is not suffi- 
 cient reason for our dispensing immediately 
 with the war system. Such an act on the part 
 of any single government would, it seems to 
 nie, be an unpardonable crime. Think of a 
 nation stripped of all defense! Think of Eng- 
 land, for instance, disposing at once of her 
 great navy and laying down her arms! How 
 those envious nations which surround her would 
 immediately leap from ambush to divide the 
 spoils! 
 
 Thus we see how utterly worthless are some 
 of our beautiful theories when we attempt to. 
 apply them to practical life. 
 
 You declare that Christ's teachings on this 
 subject are not positive, and yet, upon the 
 basis of that teaching, you positively declare 
 that it is the solemn duty of every professed 
 follower of His to refuse to do military service. 
 Now my friend, if He was not positive on this 
 subject, one, at least, of His disciples surely is. 
 If he left no definite teaching concerning it, 
 one, at least, who claims to be His interpreter, 
 seems amply able to supply all that is lacking. 
 I too profess to be one of His disciples. I am 
 glad to be numbered, even as one of the weak- 
 est and one of the most unworthy of His fol- 
 lowers, and yet I believe in the army and the 
 navy, and also in military service as a binding 
 obligation and therefore a sacred duty. The 
 
 31 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 chief difference between us on this point seems 
 to be this, that while you are thinking of an 
 ideal world and of an ideal humanity, I am 
 dealing with a real world and with humanity as 
 it exists. 
 
 But now, the fact that the spirit of Jesus' 
 teaching is opposed to war is, to me, blessed 
 assurance that war must sometime cease to be. 
 Swords must be beaten into plowshares, and 
 spears into pruning=hooks. -Indeed, everything 
 that is contrary to His spirit, everything that 
 makes in any way for the injury of mankind, 
 must cease to exist, for " He must reign until 
 He hath put all enemies under His feet." But 
 that blessed time is in the far future. Between 
 the condition of humanity which Jesus pictured 
 so charmingly, and which He represented so 
 perfectly in His beautiful life and character, 
 and the existing condition, lay many a field of 
 bloody conflict. Such a condition could not 
 come in a single generation. It required many 
 generations, each working out its own hard 
 problems and fighting its own fierce battles. 
 
 Of course we must apply Christ's teaching, so 
 far as it is possible to do so, in all of our life. 
 Peace is always best, except when a principle 
 must be sacrificed in order to obtain it. Are 
 not even Christ's rules proven by exceptions? 
 Is it always best to turn the right cheek to the 
 rascal who has smitten the left? Is it always 
 right and best for the thief who has stolen my 
 
 32 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 coat, that I should hand him over my cloak 
 also? How would the Master answer these 
 questions were He here to-day? How would 
 He answer these questions were He in Chicago? 
 I think He would not give any direct answer to 
 them. He would quite likely unfold some 
 beautiful illustration, and tell some touching 
 story, the purpose of which would be to con- 
 vince His hearers that gentleness, when pos- 
 sible, is always best; that it will win when re- 
 taliation or brute force must utterly fail, but 
 beyond that the Master would not go. He 
 would allow men some latitude for the exercise 
 of their own better judgment. 
 
 Under what conditions ought one to show 
 kindness to a burglar — one who would not 
 hesitate to commit murder in order to accom- 
 plish his end? Kindness might be in order if 
 he were disarmed and bound in irons; other- 
 wise, cold lead might come under the head of 
 Christian duty. At any rate, this would seem 
 to be the highest act of kindness towards one's 
 wife and children. I am sure that Jesus Him- 
 self would admit the validity of this claim. 
 The same principles may be applied to nations. 
 Think of treating the inhuman Spaniard or the 
 unspeakable Turk with anything like Christian 
 kindness ! What would our national Christian- 
 ity count for to=day had we refused to use our 
 force in the relief of the downtrodden Cuban, 
 and to banish Spanish tyranny from the West- 
 33 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 ern Hemisphere? And would it not have spoken 
 volumes for our Christianity, as well as for our 
 humanity, had some Dewey steamed the White 
 Squadron up the Dardanelles, and, at the mouth 
 of our mighty guns, forced that human devil at 
 Constantinople to cease from his wholesale 
 butchery of the poor, defenceless Armenians? 
 Every war=ship that goes on such a mission is a 
 gospel=ship, and every sword drawn in defense 
 of the helpless and oppressed is a sword bathed 
 in heaven. 
 
 Talk of doing away with our armies and 
 navies! As well tear down the houses which 
 shelter our heads! 
 
 War is not the worst experience known to 
 mankind. War, with all its terrors and all 
 its demoralizing influences, is far more to be 
 desired than peace at the sacrifice of principle. 
 War is a blessing as compared with peace at 
 the expense of suffering and misery of the 
 oppressed. War, at any sacrifice, is a blessing 
 as compared with the demoralizing theory and 
 practise of " peace at any price." 
 
 It cannot be denied that war has, in several 
 cases, yielded blessings to mankind which could 
 not have been obtained in any other \^ay. For 
 instance, several of the early Greek and Latin 
 wars, as well as some of our modern conflicts, 
 have resulted in untold blessings to mankind. 
 
 Bkawn. 
 
 84 
 
CAUSES OF BRAIN'S GREAT CHANGE 
 
 Dear Brawn: — Your argument is not without 
 strength, and from your point of view it looks 
 quite reasonable, but it cannot endure the 
 practical test to which it must be subjected. 
 
 You say that I am dealing with ideal condi- 
 tions, etc., while you are concerned with a real 
 world and humanity as we find it. I was cer- 
 tainly not aware of this, and must disclaim all 
 such intention, for it is the stern reality of the 
 thing that has forced me to the position which 
 I now occupy. 
 
 But now, your own ideas of Christ and Chris- 
 tianity are somewhat ideal. Christianity, you 
 declare, is a beautiful principle, but capable of 
 being applied only in particular cases. You 
 indicate that where it can be applied, without 
 much difficulty, of course it ought to be, but 
 where it cannot be so applied there must be a 
 resort to force. In other words, the Christian 
 system, according to your theory, is good so far 
 as it goes, but quite often it must be substituted 
 by the Mosaic system. 
 
 Suppose, for example, that our missionaries 
 had proceeded upon that basis — of Gospel and 
 sword — war and peace — what progress could 
 
 35 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 they have made in those heathen kingdoms? 
 Now Christianity is a real power to be applied 
 in a real world and to real conditions. It is not 
 intended as a panacea for moderate ills, but as 
 an actual cure for the worst maladies. It has 
 always proven to be mightier than the sword, 
 and more effective than all the engines of war. 
 There is no case on record where this power has 
 ever been properly applied in either individual 
 or national cases and has failed to accomplish 
 its mission. If this were not so — if it had ever 
 failed at any point, then it could no longer hold 
 its place as the universal system for the guid- 
 ance and practise of all mankind, or as the real 
 remedy for every human ill, and the true means 
 for the settlement of all differences which exist 
 between men and nations. 
 
 But such is its divinely appointed mission — 
 "To destroy the works of the devil" — and short 
 of this it cannot and will not stop. War is a 
 work of the devil, and therefore the destruction 
 of war is one great purpose of Christianity. 
 The power that could conquer the Roman 
 Empire in the days of brute force and bloodshed 
 is not to be limited to special cases in our time, 
 and if only this all=conquering power were given 
 universal application to=day, disarmament of 
 nations might take place at once, and with per- 
 fect safety. 
 
 I shall not now take the time to examine and 
 reply to the remainder of your arguments in 
 
 36 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 this part of the subject, as they are likely to be 
 brought up in other connections. I shall en- 
 deavor, though briefly, to answer your question 
 as to this cause for the change in my thinking, 
 which you term "radical." 
 
 As already stated, it is no sudden change, it 
 is not the result of some passing emotion. 
 There were several steps in the process, and 
 these steps were difficult to take. The path has 
 been thorny and blood=stained. It is not neces- 
 sary, nor is it possible, that I should trace all 
 of the steps in this hard journey. The final 
 influence, however, which turned me in this 
 direction, came near the close of our Civil War, 
 the burden and heat of which I helped to bear, 
 as you know. Many powerful influences and 
 touching examples had been brought to bear 
 upon me from time to time, but I was too deeply 
 rooted and grounded in my convictions to yield 
 to any or all of these influences. But at least 
 one example came which proved too strong for 
 even a warrior to withstand. To this I yielded 
 because I felt forced to do so. It bent and 
 bowed me to the ground; it broke my heart as 
 well as my stubborn will; it changed the tenor 
 of my whole life and led to this transformation 
 in my thinking. It landed me upon the Rock of 
 Ages, where I now stand, firm and immovable, 
 forever. 
 
 I plunged my sword into the heart of a sup- 
 posed enemy, but lo! he was my friend — the 
 
 37 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 dearest friend and companion of my boyhood 
 days. Never was there a larger heart or a 
 sweeter disposition! He had performed more 
 acts of kindness toward me and mine than I 
 can now recall. It was to him that I owed my 
 life, for he had, at great risk, rescued me from 
 drowning. He was my stay and support in 
 sickness, and my joy in health, the Hallam of 
 my life and love. We drifted apart in the days 
 of our young manhood, and at the opening of 
 our Civil War I had lost all trace of his where- 
 abouts. But he wandered South and became a 
 Confederate, while I in the North enlisted as a 
 Union soldier, to meet him again in the sad way 
 that I have mentioned. 
 
 Alas that I should have become the murderer 
 of my dearest friend! O! that the depths had 
 opened to swallow me ere it became my hard 
 lot to commit this cruel deed, no less dastardly 
 because the Government had placed the stamp 
 of its approval upon it! 
 
 When one has slain his dearest friend, it is 
 small comfort to know that he has done so by 
 order of his government, and command of his 
 country. My noble friend knew me; he clasped 
 the hand that had stricken him in death; he 
 looked into my face lovingly, as in the days of 
 yore; he smiled sweetly, as he said: "It is all 
 right, dear old boy; it is the fortune and the 
 curse of war. You have done your sad duty. 
 You have obeyed your ountry's command. 
 
 38 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 Bear the news to dear old mother. Take her 
 my wages, and the Bible she gave me as I said 
 good=bye at the road gate in front of the -apple 
 orchard. Tell her I have come to believe firmly 
 in the teachings of her Book as she taught it to 
 me in childhood; and therefore I will see her in 
 that heaven of which it speaks, where the throb 
 of the war=drum, the burst of shell, the clash of 
 steel and the groans of dying brothers, are 
 heard no more. Take this sword, which has too 
 often been stained with the blood of noble men, 
 whose life it has ended by my hand, and bury 
 it in the depths of the sea. Let it never come 
 again to the light. Oh that I might recall what 
 I have done! How can a Christian obey the 
 Government, that bids him commit murder in 
 its name, and against his will? How can the 
 Christian world sanction this shedding of blood 
 which turns the heart sick to behold? How 
 can a Christian believe in war? How . . ?" 
 his voice grew faint because the life=stream 
 was fast ebbing out. I stooped low to catch 
 his last words, among which were these: "Dear 
 John, promise me that you will do all in your 
 power to rid the world of this curse of war, 
 whose enchanting glitter and false glory have 
 blinded the people to its horrors; promise this 
 and I will die happy. God bless you, dear old 
 friend, and help you in this noble mission to 
 deliver the world from this cur . . ." The 
 last word was never finished. The sweet and 
 
 39 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 generous spirit had flown to the world of peace, 
 and — O God! How can I bear to say it? By 
 my hand! 
 
 Many other cases equally sad come to mind 
 — cases that cannot be reported, things that can- 
 not be told. But this one has had the most to 
 do with the change that has wrought such a 
 revolution in my life and thought. 
 
 But I am well aware that even tales of grief 
 will not avail to convince those whose delight 
 is in military service, and whose glory is in war. 
 Therefore, I turn to another phase of the sub- 
 ject, one with which I know you are quite famil- 
 iar. But I refer to it in order to show you some- 
 thing of its influence upon myself and others who 
 have come to think as I do. Let me recall some 
 of the most appalling wars in history, and let us 
 endeavor to ascertain, so far as possible, whether 
 the causes out of which they come, and the 
 difficulties which they have settled, are at all 
 adequate to their terrible cost in blood, treasure 
 and grief. Here I am quite willing for the 
 time being to waive the leading question, " Can 
 a Christian believe in war?" and to consider 
 this part of the subject simply upon the broad 
 general basis of humanity .and common sense. 
 According to the most authentic records since 
 the Christian era began, over five hundred 
 million human beings have perished in war. 
 Since the Trojan conflict,'one billion two hun- 
 dred million human, beings have been sacrificed 
 
 10 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 to the god of war. This ghastly army would 
 form a column twenty=seveii abreast long enough 
 to clasp the earth, with a residue of ten similar 
 columns stretching from London all the way to 
 Naples. If this vast army should pass a re- 
 cruiting point at the rate of one every second, 
 day and night, the last victim would have passed 
 that point in the year 1937. 
 
 Let me review briefly some of the leading 
 wars since 1688, and let us endeavor to ascertain 
 whether the causes out of which they have come 
 and the questions which they may have settled 
 have been at all adequate to their awful cost in 
 money, life and sorrow. I will begin with the 
 war of the revolution of France, which was of 
 nine years duration. The cause of this war was 
 the determination of King William to humble 
 the pride of Louis XIV. William of Orange did 
 not have the welfare of the people of England 
 at heart. He desired the throne, but only for 
 his own selfish ends. He longed for the crown, 
 not so much for its own sake as for the power it 
 would give him to carry out his selfish and evil 
 designs. And the degree to which the country 
 indulged him in this is astonishing. For nine 
 long years he went on squandering the resources 
 of his own and other nations as well. He en- 
 riched himself to the amount of over one million 
 pounds taken from the soldiers' pay. This 
 cruel war cost in taxes levied at the time, six- 
 teen million pounds, which posterity has had to 
 41 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 pay. It cost the nation, in all, four hundred and 
 eighty million pounds sterling, and eight hun- 
 dred thousand of its best lives. What was its 
 result? It did not settle anything, but, as is 
 true of most all wars, it led to other and even 
 greater complications which necessitated still 
 other wars. 
 
 The War of the Spanish Succession. Queen 
 Anne, seeing how this war of the revolution 
 had crowned King William with glory and 
 humbled his enemy, sought in like manner to 
 crown with glory the Duke of Marlborough. 
 And so followed this awful war which lasted 
 thirteen years (1701 to 1714). It cost the nation 
 thirty million pounds in taxes and thirty=two 
 and one=half millions in loans, and, worst of all, 
 thousands of their bravest lives. Then came 
 the Spanish War and the War of the Austrian 
 Succession, by which the first three Georges im- 
 posed upon the country a debt of over twenty 
 five million pounds. 
 
 The Seven Years War was caused by a quibble 
 between England and Prance over a strip of 
 land on the banks of the Ohio Kiver, which 
 neither of them had any more right to occupy 
 than the Fiji Islanders. Strange as it may 
 seem to us, this war, the result of a mere quar- 
 rel over a disputed possession, extended into 
 Europe and developed into a religious war. 
 During this war England is said to have paid 
 to Frederick of Prussia, who was really an infi- 
 
 12 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 del, six hundred thousand pounds, in order that 
 he might become defender of the Protestant 
 faith. The cost of this war was seventy million 
 pounds in taxes. 
 
 The battle of Quebec, which I will only men- 
 tion, was the result of gross selfishness. It was 
 a contest between England and France for the 
 supremacy of the New Continent. 
 
 The French Revolution was even too sad to 
 recall. Its history is too black to unfold. Hun- 
 dreds of people lay dead and dying in the streets 
 of Paris. According to the testimony of the 
 Countess Von Suttner, who was an eye=witness 
 of the awful tragedy, horse flesh was at a pre- 
 mium, and the flesh of an elephant was distrib- 
 uted in the most meagre allowances. 
 
 The good which may have come out of it can 
 never suffice to justify a national crime so ter- 
 rible. 
 
 The American Revolution was a struggle for 
 independence. This awful conflict reached 
 from Lexington, where the first blood of the 
 revolution was shed, to Valley Forge, whose 
 horrors made even the brave Washington weep 
 like a child and pray like an angel. During 
 the five years that the American Revolutionary 
 War continued, two hundred eighty=eight thou- 
 sand and two hundred Americans enlisted. 
 
 The national debt of Great Britain after the 
 revolution of 1688 was only six hundred and 
 sixtyfour thousand pounds, but on account of 
 43 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 the American Revolution it increased to the 
 enormous total of six hundred and eighty=five 
 million pounds. 
 
 Then followed the French wars, the first last- 
 ing from 1793 to 1802, during which time the 
 enormous sum of two hundred and sixty=three 
 and one=half millions was raised in taxes, and 
 two hundred and one^half millions added to the 
 national debt. 
 
 During the second French war against Napo- 
 leon (1803 to 1815), taxes were levied to the 
 amount of seven hundred seventy and one=^half 
 millions, and the national debt increased to 
 three hundred eighty=eight and one=half mil- 
 lions. 
 
 Thus it appears that from 1688 to 1815 the 
 Old World experienced sixty=five years of solid 
 warfare, for which the people paid one thousand 
 one hundred and eighty^nine millions of pounds 
 sterling, leaving them with a debt of eight hun- 
 dred millions, enough, it is said, to build a mar- 
 ble palace for every resident, and support him, 
 and a schoolhouse at the end of every lane. 
 
 The loss in human life alone, since authentic 
 history began, by war, is estimated at one 
 thousand four hundred millions of souls, or the 
 entire population of the globe for the past three 
 hundred and thirty years, and we must remem- 
 ber that these were its best men. 
 
 The Thirty Years' War was religious. It be- 
 gan as a contest between'the Protestant and 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 Catholic princes of Germany, but it quickly 
 overspread Europe with the swiftness of fire. 
 
 The Opium War is one of the darkest blots 
 on England's history. Opium is the curse of 
 China; it is a worse bondage than even drunk- 
 enness. Millions of people are held in its aw- 
 ful grasp. Years ago Hudson Taylor said: 
 " I have labored in China over thirty years, and 
 am profoundly convinced that the opium habit 
 does more harm in China in a week than the 
 missionaries do good in a year." Another 
 writer remarks: "It has doomed to death, di- 
 rectly and indirectly, as many men, women and 
 children, as would repopulate London were the 
 whole of its four millions to vacate their homes. 
 Its history is a roll written within and without, 
 a record of lamentation, mourning and woe." 
 This curse was thrust upon China at the mouth 
 of the British cannon, at the point of the Brit- 
 ish sword. The Emperor of China was urged 
 to legalize the traffic on the ground that he 
 should be permitted to derive a revenue from it. 
 His answer to this evil suggestion was such as 
 ought to make a Christian nation bow its head 
 in shame. " It is true," he said, " I cannot pre- 
 vent the flowing poison from gaining a foot- 
 hold in my kingdom. Evil and gainsaying men 
 will for selfish purposes defeat my wishes. But 
 no power on earth will induce me to obtain a 
 revenue by the sins and vices of my people." 
 
 Of the second Opium War Mr. Gladstone has 
 
 IS 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 said: " A war more unjust in its nature, a war 
 more calculated to sink this nation in perma- 
 nent disgrace, I do not know, I have not read of." 
 
 The Crimean War: Different causes have 
 been ascribed to this most cruel war. The real 
 cause, however, seems to have been the deter- 
 mination of Russia to rule Turkey, and the de- 
 cision of France and England to protect Tur- 
 key, and so prohibit Russia from controlling the 
 Hellespont. It was indeed a terrible war. 
 Austria and Southern Russia were literally 
 bathed in blood. Harvests and homes, herds 
 and flocks were destroyed, villages were plun- 
 dered and cities laid in ruins. 309,400 men 
 went to the front; 9,490 were killed in battle, 
 39,870 wounded, of whom 11,715 died in hos- 
 pitals; 7,870 died of disease. The total number 
 of deaths was 91,615. The cost of this war was 
 said to have been 350,000,000 pounds. In 1881 
 English ships brought to the bone factories of 
 England 30,000 skeletons of Turkish and Rus- 
 sian soldiers who had fallen in this cruel war. 
 These were to be used as fertilizing material 
 after being ground to powder in the mills. 
 This unspeakably sad war, with its fabulous 
 cost in treasure and life, is said to have settled 
 no principle and righted no wrong, only led to 
 other and still greater complications. 
 
 The Mexican war was caused by a dispute 
 over boundary lines. General Taylor was sent 
 by the president of the United States to seize 
 16 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 the strip of land in dispute, or, to use the words 
 of Grant, "Our troops were sent there to provoke 
 a fight." This was thought by many to have 
 been cowardly on the part of America. In a 
 single day (August 20, 1847), a succession 
 of battles was fought, with heavy losses on 
 both sides, but which resulted in victory each 
 time for the Americans. This war cost 
 $66,000,000! 
 
 Then followed our Civil War, the causes and 
 history of which are too well known to need 
 discussion. This war seems to have been for a 
 double purpose, namely, to maintain the Union 
 and free the slaves. The line of battle reached 
 a thousand miles; it lasted some four years, 
 during which time 2,260 fierce battles were 
 fought. It made the South bankrupt and their 
 graveyards as populous as their cities. It left 
 50,000 widows and 2,000,000 orphan children, 
 and a large army of broken=down men. 
 
 In 1866 the United States Provost Marshal 
 reported that 61,362 men on the Union side had 
 been killed in battle, 34,720 died of wounds, 
 183,287 died of disease; total deaths on one side 
 alone, 298,376. Viewing this sad four years, war, 
 even from the short distance which we have 
 come since then, the question arises in many 
 minds. Might it not have been avoided? Sup- 
 posing this war had been delayed until the 
 moral force and influence of the North, and of 
 Northern institutions, had been brought to bear 
 
 47 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 upon the South; or, supposing we should have 
 freed the slaves by purchasing them as England 
 purchased her slaves, at a cost of 20,000,000 
 pounds paid to slave=holders, even this bloody 
 war, with its tale of horror, in our own dear 
 country, might have been avoided. 
 
 The Civil War was followed by the Franco= 
 Prussian War. In 1870 all Europe groaned 
 under the awful scourge. Who has not heard 
 of the siege of Paris, where starvation compelled 
 a great city to surrender, after the world's finest 
 treasures in art and beauty had been destroyed, 
 the Tuileries laid in ruins, and thousands of 
 victims lay dead and dying in the streets. It 
 was then thought, as it has since been shown, 
 that the dispute concerning the possession of 
 Alsace and Lorraine, which was the cause of 
 that dreadful war, was not settled, but was trans- 
 mitted with all the animosity and hate which it 
 has engendered, to generations unborn. 
 
 During this war, from 1870 to 1871, 170,000 
 French and 1,003,000 Germans took the field. 
 Of the former 41,000 were killed in battle, 
 36,000 died of wounds, 45,000 died of sickness, 
 116,000 were in various ways disabled, and 
 446,000 were taken prisoners. Of the Germans, 
 19,782 were killed in action, 10,710 died of their 
 wounds, 14,259 of sickness, and 89,000 were 
 disabled! Prisoners taken by the French were 
 very few in number; in all, 684,000 French 
 and 183,750 Germans were killed and disabled. 
 
 18 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 A loss to the world of 817,751 of its best men! 
 
 The cost of maintaining our armies and 
 navies seems to be almost incredible. Sumner 
 estimates that the cost of maintaining a single 
 warship, the Ohio, was sufficient to carry on 
 four institutions like Harvard University. The 
 annual cost of the British army is said to be 
 17,000,000 pounds, and of the navy, 14,000,000 
 pounds. The world, even in its peaceful years, 
 sustains 3,700,000 soldiers, at a cost to the tax= 
 payers of $8,000,000 a day. In time of war the 
 armies of European nations can be raised to 
 9,336,000 men, which means a daily expense of 
 $20,000,000. During the last five months of the 
 Civil War the expense of the government ex- 
 ceeded $3,000,000 a day. The destruction of 
 stores and clothing by both armies during the 
 Civil War is said to have amounted to $100,000, 
 000. The cost of the army and navy during the 
 Civil War was, for 1862, $42,000,000; 1863, 
 $63,000,000; 1864, $88,000,000; in 1885, $120,000, 
 000. 
 
 Russia expends 225,000,000 ruples a year 
 on the army, 40,000,000 a year on the navy. 
 The cost of supporting a man in the British 
 navy is 211 pounds a year, in the American navy 
 $1,500 a year. The British navjir has 65,000 
 men, French 54,000, German 16,000, Russian 
 29,000, Italian 13,000, Spanish 14,000, Turkish 
 39,000, and the United States 10,000. 
 
 The annual cost of the British army is 
 
 19 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 17,000,000 pounds; of the navy, 14,000,000. The 
 little nation of Belgium spends over 46,000,000 
 francs a year on the army. A large gun costs 
 $100,000 and will endure only 100 explosions; 
 each explosion costs $1,000. 
 
 Up to the year 1876 !B[rupp had delivered to 
 Europe 15,000 cannon. 
 
 The cost of artillery and the value of the 
 guns ruined at the siege of Sebastopol was 
 $12,000,000. The wars of the last seventy years 
 have cost Russia $335,000,000 and 664,000 men. 
 The army of France costs 675,000,000 francs 
 annually, and the navy 29,000,000.* 
 
 Can any man, whether he is a Christian or not, 
 believe in this wicked and unjust waste of 
 money, property, time, talent and life? Accord- 
 ing to the New York Evening Post we are now 
 paying each year about $188,000,000 on war 
 which was fought before a majority of our tax= 
 payers were born. The recent war with Spain 
 was waged in the name of suffering humanity. 
 If any war did seem to be justified, surely it was 
 this, and yet, I have no doubt but future history 
 will justify the opinion of those who will dare to 
 believe, and affirm, that even this war might have 
 been avoided. The same purpose could have been 
 accomplished without war and with far bet- 
 
 *These estimates have been accumulated from war 
 and other authentic records and authorities as enumerated, 
 so that the author has thought it unnecessary to give all of 
 them in separate references and therefore they are giyen 
 in this general way. 
 
 60 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 ter results. We are even now reaping the evil 
 consequences of this war in the Phillipines, 
 where the lives of many of our noblest sons have 
 been sacrificed. The acquisition of this new 
 territory has not only placed a burden upon our 
 shoulders that future generations will have to 
 bear, but it has weakened us as a nation by mak- 
 ing us liable to complications with other powers. 
 We may from this war have gained the reputa- 
 tion of being a fighting nation, we have also 
 acquired the unenviable reputation of being a 
 nation of imperialists. 
 
 Our nation through boasting has made her- 
 self ridiculous in the eyes of the world. We 
 have heard so much about the wonderful extent 
 of our territory, and the inexhaustible nature of 
 our own resources, that it is beginning to ap- 
 pear as though we considered these material 
 things the most precious of all our possessions. 
 The true greatness of an institution consists 
 not in the fine buildings and large endowments, 
 but in the character of her men; and the same 
 is true of a nation. Little Attica, whose capi 
 tal was Athens, has filled the world with her 
 fame for all time. Egypt and Babylon repre- 
 sented the world's wealth and treasure in their 
 day. They had their grand palaces, their beau- 
 tiful temples, their wonderful walls, pyramids 
 hanging gardens, artificial mountains, and their 
 wealth and resources almost without end. Tyre 
 had her mammoth store^houBes, her famous 
 
 51 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 purple, her coral, balm, jewels, ships, and won- 
 derful merchandise. But none of these flesh= 
 loving, nature=worshiping peoples produced any 
 great poets, philosophers, historians, dramatists, 
 or preachers to give preservation or enduring 
 shape to the inner life of the people. There- 
 fore, what they thought or felt, during the 
 times of their deeper experiences of life, has 
 perished and never can be known. 
 
 Greece, on the other hand, was very small as 
 compared with those other nations, and with 
 Rome; but the influence of that little nation, as 
 preserved in the genius of her great sons, can 
 never die. She still has her Apaminondas and 
 her Pericles, her Plato and Aristotle, her Soph- 
 ocles and Pindar to guard her fame, to interpret 
 her problems of human destiny, and to sing the 
 songs of her glory. She has still her Herodotus 
 and Thucydides, her Demosthenes, her ^schy- 
 lus, her Apelles and Phidias to record her victo- 
 ries, to proclaim her marvelous achievements, 
 and to give imperishable shape to her highest 
 conception of form and beauty. 
 
 How infinitely insignificant seemed little Pal- 
 estine as compared to those great nations sur- 
 rounding her — ancient and powerful Egypt, 
 great Babylon, classic Greece and mighty 
 Rome — a poor little province without any army 
 or navy. What hope was there for her? Over 
 against the glare and dazzling splendor of 
 mighty Rome, little Palestine seemed humble 
 
 62 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 and insignificant indeed. She was shut out 
 from the privileges of the eternal city, it is true, 
 but also from the rottenness and contagion 
 which that city bred and disseminated far and 
 wide. At last, without the aid of army or navy, 
 Kome became the servant of the little despised 
 province whose influence extended through all 
 the staid sober and learned West, and North to 
 the regions of eternal snow. Through all the 
 imaginary and visionary East her armies of 
 righteousness swept on, past the Pillars of Her- 
 cules, the sleeping Sphinx on the sand waste 
 of ancient Egypt, along the shores of Hispania, 
 away to the barbarous islands that slumber on 
 the bosom of Southern seas, and with only the 
 sword of the Spirit and the love of God to man, 
 she has conquered the world which she has 
 blessed. Her power is unquestioned, her king- 
 dom is supreme — the kingdom of truth and love 
 and righteousness, which can never, never die. 
 And we also can say: "Thou hast conquered, O 
 Galilean!" 
 
 And this is the only kind of greatness that 
 can endure for any nation. Our nation will do 
 well to pattern after it. Unless we learn to 
 realize that greatness which is more than mate- 
 rial our doom is sealed. Our nation, with her 
 firecrackers and Fourth of July boasting, has 
 well=nigh brought herself to the verge of ridi- 
 cule in the eyes of the world, and now the sen- 
 sational and war=loving elements are declaring 
 
 53 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 that a great navy and a large standing army will 
 make us a great nation for all time to come. 
 But it is only that patriotism which has stamped 
 itself upon a righteous manhood, and only that 
 love of country which finds its highest and tru- 
 est expression in the love of all mankind, that 
 shall not perish from the records of the world. 
 
 54 
 
VI 
 WAR IN THE CONSTITUTION OF NATURE 
 
 SANCTIONED BY SCRIPTURH AND HISTORY 
 
 My Dear Brain: — For your very interesting 
 production of facts and figures I thank you 
 with profoundest gratitude. Many of the facts 
 are new to me, and will, I am sure, prove to be 
 a revelation to the majority of your readers. I 
 am especially impressed with the amount of 
 labor and self=sacrifice which a true soul is will- 
 ing to contribute to the cause that lies nearest 
 his heart. I can only wish, for your own and 
 humanity's sake, that you might be able to 
 maintain your position and hold the ground 
 which you have taken. But this you cannot 
 do. It is impossible, as I shall proceed to show 
 you. 
 
 The great array of facts and figures which 
 you have produced are not to be ignored nor 
 laughed out of court. I have no disposition 
 either to dispute or call them into question. 
 But I will call attention to the facts that are 
 still deeper, and which figures do not touch at 
 all. It will then be seen quite clearly, I am 
 sure, that the facts cited and the points dis- 
 cussed in your long and faithful, and in many 
 respects able letter, are almost entirely on the 
 
 55 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 Burface of the subject. Therefore I shall en- 
 deavor in this reply to take you to the core of 
 the whole matter. 
 
 You contend that war is in every form and 
 under every condition wrong, because, as you 
 believe, it is contrary to the spirit and teaching 
 of Jesus Christ; that it would be utterly impos- 
 sible for Him to admit that such a destructive, 
 inhuman agency ought ever to have been re- 
 sorted to, and that, therefore, it is equally im- 
 possible for a disciple of His to have any sym- 
 pathy with it. 
 
 Although I do not for a moment admit that 
 the teachings of Jesus can be so construed, yet 
 I willingly concede that His teaching seems to 
 furnish good and sufficient ground for such 
 statements. But when you endeavor to compel 
 nature, progress and history to furnish addi- 
 tional evidence for the validity of such asser- 
 tions, your argument becomes too weak to stand, 
 and so absurd as to become entirely unworthy 
 of the mind that produced it. 
 
 We read that "The powers that be are 
 ordained of God. " War is certainly one of the 
 powers that be, and has been for centuries. 
 But, according to your theory, it is not a power 
 ordained of God, for you have distinctly 
 declared it to be a device of the devil. Your 
 statement that war is opposed to nature is 
 clearly untrue. I cannot think that you really 
 intended to make such an assertion. It must 
 
 56 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 have been a mistake on your part. You sim- 
 ply made the assertion and offered not a particle 
 of proof to sustain it. Of course not — for there 
 is none to offer. 
 
 In regard to war being opposed to nature — 
 the very opposite is the truth. It is in exact 
 keeping with all the operations of nature, which, 
 "red in tooth and claw," is restless and con- 
 flictive to its very heart. In the inanimate 
 realm the struggle for existence is ever in oper- 
 ation. The finest species of plants and flowers 
 and trees are born out of bitter struggle for 
 existence. A thousand have fallen for the one 
 that has stood. And, because they have sur- 
 vived such a struggle, scientists speak of them 
 as being the " fittest " to survive. 
 
 In the animal kingdom the struggle is still 
 more apparent, and of still greater interest, be- 
 cause there we are lifted to the realm of intelli- 
 gence, and here, as if patterning after nature, 
 or even in obedience to its operations, certain 
 animals, as for instance the ants, fight regu- 
 larly organized battles, and we can discover the 
 existence of conflict still deeper. Inanimate 
 nature has its positive and its negative poles. 
 Everywhere in the universe it is particle against 
 particle and world against world. A chemical 
 solution must have its opposing forces, its posi- 
 tive and negative poles, for only in this way can 
 the desired substance be precipitated. We see 
 this illustrated in the political world also. 
 
 57 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 What a hard,. bitter fight is waged between the 
 two great political parties. The parties and the 
 conflict are alike necessary for the preservation 
 of anything like political honesty, not to men- 
 tion purity. 
 
 Since 1836 eight changes have occurred in the 
 national administration, as follows: in 1840, 
 when General Harrison, the Whig, defeated 
 Martin Van Buren for reelection; in 1844, when 
 Polk defeated Henry Clay; in 1848, when the 
 Whigs came into power under Taylor; in 1852, 
 when the Whig candidate was beaten by Gen- 
 eral Scott; in 1860, when Lincoln became the 
 first Republican president; in 1884, when Blaine 
 was defeated by Cleveland; in 1888, when Har- 
 rison triumphed; and in 1892, when Cleveland 
 was reelected for a second term. Every Con- 
 gressional election held two years after the new 
 administration came into power, has resulted in 
 a reaction against the successful party, and 
 through this conflict the political life of the 
 nation is preserved. 
 
 Another indispensable war is the war of com- 
 petition which is ever in progress. Radical 
 Socialists and visionary reformers are ever clam- 
 oring against it, yet it is the parent of perfec- 
 tion and the greatest incentive to enterprise in 
 the world. It lifts all manufactures upon 
 higher planes because it compels the manufac- 
 turer to do his best, or yield the scepter to those 
 who are more competent. 
 58 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 For clearer light on this part of the subject, 
 let me refer you to the able writings of Kidd 
 and Drummond, which, I presume, are in your 
 possession. Mr. Kidd has shown very clearly 
 that all life is a ceaseless conflict; that the bit- 
 ter struggle for existence cannot be ignored. 
 All life bears evidence of ceaseless progress 
 and development. This development, known 
 as evolution, is the parent of conflict out of 
 which all forms of life are born and only the 
 fittest survive. But, with the advent of man 
 two new forces appear, namely, reason, and the 
 capacity of acting in concert with his fellows in 
 organized society; and therefore progress is a 
 necessity from which there is no escape. The 
 conflict is lifted to higher planes but is no less 
 strenuous than before. In other words, Kidd 
 shows us, as it seems to me beyond question, 
 that conflict and warfare is the method of all 
 nature, and must in some form continue while 
 nature lasts. I do not wonder that the Chris- 
 tian world should have been so impressed with 
 this able work, and that its discovery should 
 have been compared to the discovery of the law 
 of gravitation, and the author to its discoverer. 
 
 Mr. Drummond sees the same struggle, al- 
 though he sees love at the heart of it. Thus he 
 shows in an original and convincing manner 
 that conflict or warfare is not the devilish thing 
 you seem to make it appear. Out of every con- 
 flict comes something so beautiful as to sanctify 
 59 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 that conflict, and render it indispensable. The 
 struggle is small as compared with the resultant 
 blessings. So Q-od justifies the means by the 
 end. 
 
 Thus the conflict which began with atoms, 
 and is repeated in the vegetable kingdom, dawns 
 to intelligence in the animal world, and reaches 
 its climax in the organized warfare of mankind. 
 Nothing can be plainer, therefore, than the, fact 
 that war is in the very constitution of nature, 
 and that in order to destroy it you must destroy 
 nature herself. Man as a part of nature must 
 therefore fight, not from choice, but of neces- 
 sity. He is born into the conflict and is a part 
 of it. He simply must struggle for existence or 
 go out of it. In higher, as in lower life, the 
 survival of the fittest is the law of nature and 
 the plan of God. 
 
 It is interesting to observe how nature has 
 equipped every one of her creatures, including 
 mankind, with weapons of offense and defense. 
 The humblest insect is armed for the fight. The 
 spider has its secret chamber, the inkfish a dark 
 fluid, which envelops it in obscurity, thus en- 
 abling it to escape; the little humming bee can 
 move its wings so rapidly as to become invisi- 
 ble, the seal also has its sensitive fin which 
 quickly detects the approaching enemy. Man 
 is also armed for the battle of life. 
 
 God's purpose is the development of the 
 higher from the lower, and the method of that 
 
 60 
 
But Up Thy Sword 
 
 development and perfection is unending strug- 
 gle and warfare. 
 
 When the selfish and inhuman in our nature 
 predominates it gives us cotton kings with their 
 Haleys and Legrees. When, on the other hand, 
 the sweet little Eva, Uncle Tom, or St. Claire's 
 disposition tips the scale, we obtain noble men 
 and women like Phillips, Garrison, Harriet 
 Beecher Stowe. When cotton outweighs char- 
 acter, the clanging slave=chains make music in 
 the ears of greed, but when national character 
 tips the balance the gun is fired on Sumter 
 and the heart of slavery in this country is bro- 
 ken forever. 
 
 If, therefore, Christ is opposed to war in 
 every form. He must be opposed to the whole 
 process of the natural world, for, as we have seen, 
 the world is sustained and operated by means of 
 opposing forces. Human war is the result of 
 these forces carried to their highest degree. It 
 is a part of the great working force of the world. 
 
 God is the author of nature, and therefore He is 
 the author of conflict in nature and also in human 
 life. But if the Son of God is opposed to this 
 conflict, opposed to this warfare, how can He be 
 one with the Father? Here seems to arise a 
 strange inconsistency. But you say this does 
 not include organized, human warfare. God 
 does not sanction that, and yet He permits it, 
 and has permitted it through all the centuries 
 until the present time. 
 
 61 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 If Grod and Christ are so strongly opposed to 
 war as you claim they are, isn't it strange that it 
 should go on increasing from year to year, and 
 from generation to generation? If war is the 
 business of the devil he must at least be credited 
 with triumphant success. 
 
 If the Father and Son are opposed to the war 
 system, their opposition has evidently not 
 availed to check its wonderful growth and the 
 great degree of perfection unto which it has 
 attained. Here is one great enterprise at 
 least for which Satan must be given the credit. 
 
 You must see, therefore, that your statement 
 in regard to war being contrary to nature is 
 absurd on the face of it. 
 
 And now as to your principal claim, namely, 
 that Jesus is in spirit and teaching opposed to 
 war in every form, and under every condition. 
 Does it not occur to you that Jesus and His 
 teachings are therefore opposed to the opera- 
 tions of nature as described? That G-od is the 
 author of conflict in nature is a fact which any 
 attempt to deny is worse than useless, and so 
 far as a similar conflict exists in human nature, 
 that conflict must be ascribed to the same 
 author, and must issue from the same source. 
 
 But now Christ is opposed to human warfare 
 in every form, and this human warfare is, as we 
 have demonstrated, a part of the same great 
 struggle of which God is the author, therefore, 
 it must follow as a logical conclusion that Christ 
 
 62 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 is opposed to nature and to the will of nature's 
 God. Here arises a strange inconsistency — a 
 contradiction that would seem incapable of rec- 
 onciliation. How can He be one with the 
 Father and how could He have been with the 
 Father before the world was? Furthermore, 
 if Christ and the New Testament are opposed 
 to war at all times, then are Christ and the New 
 Testament opposed to the Old Testament teach- 
 ing and to its author. For, if anything is be- 
 yond successful contradiction, surely it is the 
 fact that the Old Testament approves of war, 
 and its God is " the God of battles." For in- 
 stance: "He teacheth man's hands to war." In 
 Chronicles we read: "There fell down many 
 slain because the war was of God." Such 
 passages in the Old Testament are even too 
 numerous to mention and too plain to be over- 
 looked. God is the God of war; He conquers 
 His enemies with the sword; He brings them 
 into subjection to His will by means of armed 
 forces; He answers the prayers of those whose 
 cause is just, enabling them to triumph over 
 their enemies in the battle, and to rejoice in the 
 victory; He is the Lord of Hosts, who not only 
 sanctions war, but commands and guides it for 
 the accomplishment of His own glorious pur- 
 poses. He is to rule the nations with a rod of 
 iron. The Kevelator says " I saw the heavens 
 opened and behold a white horse; He that sat 
 upon him is called faithful and true, and in His 
 
 63 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 righteousness doth He judge and make war. 
 And He is clothed in a vesture dipped in blood, 
 and His name is called the Word of God. And 
 out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with 
 it He should smite the nations, and He should 
 rule them with a rod of iron. And He treadeth 
 the wine=press of the fierceness, and wrath of 
 Almighty God. And He hath on His vesture 
 and on His thigh a name written. King of Kings 
 and Lord of Lords." 
 
 And the New Testament contains a multitude 
 of passages equally strong and convincing. 
 Paul makes numerous well-known references to 
 the visible, material warfare, as an illustration 
 of spiritual warfare which is no less real. 
 
 It would not seem, therefore, that he con- 
 demned war, or considered it contrary to the 
 mind of Christ, or why should he have so placed 
 his stamp of approval upon it? Also in the 
 words of Jesus Himself we find sanction for 
 war. Did not He declare that there should be 
 " wars and rumors of wars " before the end of 
 time? Again He said: "What king, going to 
 make war against another king, sitteth not down 
 first and consulteth whether he be able with ten 
 thousand to meet him which cometh against 
 him with twenty thousand, or else while the 
 other is yet a great way off he sendeth an em- 
 bassage and desireth conditions of peace." And 
 did He not declare that He had not come " to 
 bring peace but a sword " ? 
 
 6i 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 So far then as the authority of the Scripture 
 is concerned, in both Old and New Testaments, 
 your cause is surely a helpless one. And your 
 sweeping assertion to the effect that all wars in 
 every age, and under every circumstance, have 
 been contrary to the will to God, and an unspeak- 
 able curse to mankind, is a direct denial of the 
 Inspired Record, from lid to lid. 
 
 How then can I be expected to agree with 
 one who disagrees with God? 
 
 In regard to your thorough and interesting 
 resum6 of the leading wars of history, especially 
 those that have occured since 1686, 1 am pleased 
 to say that I have been enabled to survey the 
 matter from another point of view. I now see, 
 as in clearer light, the unspeakable sadness of 
 the fact that so many of the world's wars which 
 you have mentioned should have grown out of 
 the petty jealousies and party strifes of a few 
 corrupt, gainsaying people, whose lot it was to 
 have been born with a crown on their, too often, 
 empty heads. I was not indeed aware of the 
 fact that certain of these wars, arising only out 
 of personal jealousies, had led to intricate com- 
 plications and to such disastrous results. It 
 certainly reveals the great mistake which any 
 nation makes in placing the power to declare 
 war, even for selfish purposes, in the hands of a 
 few corrupt persons who regard human life 
 simply as "food for gunpowder." 
 
 I am as much opposed to such wars, occurring 
 
 65 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 in such unhallowed ways, as you can possibly be, 
 but not all of the wars which you have cited 
 can be so characterized; there is another side 
 to all of what you have said. Your indignation 
 for those wars which have no foundation in 
 justice or righteousness seems to have prejudiced 
 you against those which have had a righteous 
 cause and have been waged only in the interests 
 of the right and for the defense of downtrodden, 
 suffering humanity. 
 
 I will ask you, therefore, to view the subject 
 once more from my point of vision. You have 
 given the dark side of the French Revolution, 
 and on that side you have spoken truly. I can 
 willingly endorse all that you have said and 
 more. But before condemning that revolution, 
 we must study its cause. Eevolution is delayed 
 evolution. The French Revolution was, under 
 the circumstances, an inevitable necessity. It 
 was the cloudburst of an overheated, impure 
 atmosphere, which had been gathering for cen- 
 turies over the peoples' heads and, like a mighty 
 cyclone, it swept along, leaving destruction and 
 death in its pathway. But it also swept away 
 certain terrible evils which could not have been 
 disposed of in any other way. It cleared for all 
 time the atmosphere so heated, so vile, so im- 
 pure and so unbearable, as only a cyclone of 
 destruction could clear it. It swept away, 
 though in blood and flame, the throne of ancient 
 kings and gave to a long=suffering, persecuted 
 
 66 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 people "a government of the people, by the 
 people, and for the people." What else but 
 revolution could have come from a nation whose 
 government was so base, and whose rule so 
 cruel and so unbearable, a people who were not 
 allowed to grind their corn except in the 
 seignior's mill, nor to weed their crops, nor 
 manure their lands, lest the game of the nobility 
 should be injured? A nation whose nobility 
 could amuse themselves by shooting carpenters 
 and plumbers for the pleasure of seeing them 
 roll from the roof into the street, or whose 
 bloody hunters could warm their feet in the 
 bowels of their servants, which were actually 
 opened for that purpose. 
 
 The French Kevolution was not only an 
 inevitable necessity, it was an unspeakable 
 blessing. Of course it did not right all wrongs 
 immediately, and even under Louis XIV., one 
 of the basest of human beings, the people were 
 so cruelly treated that we are led to wonder how 
 such awful cruelties could ever have been 
 inflicted in a nation so near the borderline of 
 civilization. But even the French Revolution 
 was having its desired effect. The writings of 
 Voltaire and Rousseau were wielding such an 
 influence in France as were the works of 
 Edmund Burke in England and Thomas Jeffer- 
 son in America. And although the French 
 people have not yet made such advancement as 
 to become stable and trustworthy as are the 
 
 67 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 Anglo-Saxons, the fact is due largely to centuries 
 of bitter persecution and ill=treatment to which 
 they have been subjected. Other wars may be 
 necessary in order to mould them into the tem- 
 per and character of the more peaceful nations; 
 yet it is quite evident that without the Revolu- 
 tion they never could have attained unto their 
 present condition of liberty, prosperity, equality 
 and happiness. 
 
 Neither was the battle of Quebec an unmixed 
 evil. I admit that its motives were selfish and 
 that it was waged for conquest and supremacy, 
 yet it resulted in much good. It overthrew 
 much of the tyrannical rule and despotism 
 which France had set up in the North Ameri- 
 can Continent, for Quebec was fast becoming 
 a new France where tyranny and despotism of 
 the old France were being repeated. But right 
 across the line there was a New England, whose 
 contrast was a standing rebuke to the tyranni - 
 cal rule of France and a continual inspiration 
 to its misguided and oppressed neighbors, 
 influencing them to cast off the yoke of bondage 
 which neither they nor their fathers had been 
 able to bear. When we compare Quebec with 
 Boston,' the contrast is striking indeed. In 
 Boston a man's home was his own and he was his 
 own master. In Boston they had the town 
 meeting where every citizen could express his 
 opinion and cast his vote upon all public 
 questions. In Quebec this was forbidden, the 
 
 68 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 citizens could neither vote nor express an 
 opinion contrary to the wishes of his ruler. 
 Thirty years later, however, the parent of 
 all this tyranny and despotism, crime and 
 cruelty was overthrown by the revolution which 
 we have just cited; and although the atrocities 
 and unspeakable crimes may not seem to be 
 justified in the light of subsequent events, yet 
 the blessings which it has yielded, the good 
 which has arisen out of these awful wrongs, 
 will have to be acknowledged with profoundest 
 gratitude. 
 
 Nor can I understand the ground of your 
 unqualified opposition to the American Revo- 
 lution. That conflict was also inevitable from 
 the very nature of the case. America was as 
 unwilling to be domineered by England as by 
 France. She could not tolerate " taxation with- 
 out representation." Thus it fell to the lot of 
 our country, composed of her thirteen little 
 isolated colonies, to separate herself from the 
 mother country, and so our brave sons of the 
 revolution marched to meet the mighty mistress 
 of the seas. Although this awful conflict 
 reached from Lexington, where the first blood 
 of the revolution was shed, to Valley Forge, 
 whose horrors made the brave Washington 
 weep like a child, pray like an angel and fight 
 like a hero, it resulted in the G'od of battles 
 turning the tide of conflict against every 
 foreign foe, and the independence and supremacy 
 
 69 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 of great America was no longer a dream but 
 a glorious reality. "America for Americans" 
 has become the watchword from that day to 
 this, and will be while time and the spirit of 
 freedom shall endure. 
 
 Nor did the Mexican War result in evil only. 
 Through this war was gained the territory of 
 California and New Mexico, with undisputed 
 possession of Texas; in all, nearly 100,000,000 
 square miles. 
 
 It also trained great men like Lee, Grant, 
 Sherman and Stonewall Jackson to become 
 leaders in the Civil War which soon followed. 
 
 But even the Civil War was not, in your 
 judgment, justified. If ever any war was right- 
 eous, surely it was this. The poor negroes were 
 bought and sold and treated more cruelly than 
 were tbe animals. " In New Orleans " says one, 
 "in 1855, I saw a family almost white, a father, 
 mother and four children, as beautiful a group 
 as I ever beheld, sold to the highest bidder for 
 $2,900. I also saw a woman sold upon the auc- 
 tion=block and commented upon by the auc- 
 tioneer, amid the laughter of tlie brutal crowd, 
 as being more valuable because she was a mem- 
 ber of the Church of Christ." Such an incident 
 called forth the war poem by Whittier, entitled 
 "The Christian Slave." 
 
 "A Christian — going — gone I 
 
 Who bide for God's own image; for His grace 
 Whioh that poor yiotim of the market^'plaoe 
 Hath in her suffering won f 
 70 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 "My Godl Can suoh things be! 
 
 Hast thoa not said that whateoe'ei is done 
 Unto Thy weakest and Thy humblest one 
 Is even done to Thee? 
 
 " Bnt our poor slave in vain 
 
 Turns to the Christian shrine his aching eyes; 
 Its ritesL will only swell his market price, 
 And rivet on his chain. 
 
 " God of all right 1 how long 
 
 Shall priestly robbers at Thine altar stand, 
 Lifting in prayer to Thee the bloody hand 
 And haughty brow of wrong? 
 
 "O! from the fields of cane; 
 
 Prom the low rice=swamp; from the trader's cell; 
 
 From the black slave»ship's foul and loathsome 
 
 And coffle's weary chain — [hell, 
 
 "Hoarse, horrible and strong, 
 
 Bises to heaven that agonizing cry. 
 Filling the arches of the hollow sky; 
 How long, O God, how long!" 
 
 It is impossible to see how this war could 
 have been avoided in a country that was one= 
 half slave, and one=half free. It decided that 
 for all time, under the Stars and Stripes, no man 
 can hold property in his brother man. For this 
 reason the Civil War has found justification in 
 the thought of man and God. 
 
 Still stranger does it seem that you should 
 declare the Spanish^ American War to have been 
 premature, and you claim that future records 
 will show how this war might have been avoided. 
 Yes, had the strong permitted the extermination of 
 the weak; but how can future records ever justify 
 the non-interference of a great, strong nation, 
 
 71 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 when the weak and helpless were being so out- 
 raged at its very door? What respect could we 
 ever hope, as a nation, to receive from others, 
 had we refused to lift the strong arm of power 
 against Spain, and bid her, in the name of our 
 common humanity, to abstain from the cruelties 
 which might have caused even devils to shud- 
 der? 
 
 Think of the history of Spain in Holland, 
 Mexico and Peru! Think of those terrible out- 
 rages described by Motley, which were sanc- 
 tioned by the fiendish Philip, conducted by the 
 bloodthirsty Alva, and the wolfish Weyler! 
 When certain of our leading peace=loving rep- 
 resentatives were sent there to investigate those 
 conditions which were so disturbing our peace, 
 they went with the hope, if possible, of avoid- 
 ing war, but ere they returned, they thanked 
 heaven for the privilege of resorting even to 
 war. With whitened lips, and aching hearts, 
 and voices trembling with deep emotion, they 
 stood upon the fioor of the United States Con- 
 gress and declared amid breathless silence, 
 broken only by sounds of suppressed grief, that 
 the half had not been told, that war was not 
 only a duty; but, in the interests of suffering 
 humanity, the blessed privilege of our nation. 
 Their speeches were heard with marked atten- 
 tion; tears of sympathy flowed in the galleries 
 amid expressions of righteous indignation. 
 The feeling thus stirred at Washington widened 
 
 72 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 and deepened until it swept like a tidal wave 
 from sea to sea, and all American citizens rose 
 and stood together as one. There was neither 
 North, South, East nor West, as such. The 
 American standard was lifted and over it was 
 written this motto: 
 
 "Saxon, Dane and Norman are we, 
 But we all are one in our love to thee." 
 
 The reins were taken completely out of the 
 hands of the President. It was impossible for 
 him longer to delay the declaration of war; he 
 simply became the servant of the people, and 
 was compelled to execute their will. The peo- 
 ple said: "We are the power; you are our serv- 
 ant, placed here to execute our will; you must 
 do it"; and he did. And, as there was justice 
 in the cause, so likewise was there glory in the 
 war. It was a most righteous war. Jesus Him- 
 self might well have been chaplain on board the 
 Olympia. 
 
 Let me give you a description of the Battle of 
 Manila, and in the light of the cause for which 
 it was fought, surely its glory must flash upon 
 your vision. 
 
 It is the memorable night of April 23, 1898, 
 Our grand American fleet, composed of the 
 Boston, Baltimore, Concord, Olympia, Petrel 
 and Raleigh, under command of Commodore 
 George Dewey, are lying quietly at anchor in 
 the harbor of Hong Kong. The evening is 
 calm, the night is still, the mighty wardships 
 73 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 sway gently at anchor upon the bosom of the 
 pkcid water, and all is well. 
 
 All is well, but not for long. The dark war= 
 cloud — grim and foreboding — looms upon the 
 near horizon. The gleam of its destructive 
 lightning is already visible, amd the rumble of 
 its awful thunder can be heard in the distance. 
 Alas! Two great nations^ — Spain and America 
 — have declared themselves to be in a state of 
 war, and our ships must depart from the waters 
 of a neutral power. 
 
 But whither can they go? Between them and 
 any friendly port lie leagues of ocean wide. 
 Only one course is open to them. The path is 
 plain — the path of duty — though it leads to 
 death. Our fearless commander will find a 
 friendly port or make one. " Capture or destroy 
 the Spanish fleet" is his order. Why this 
 strange command in the closing years of the 
 nineteenth century under the reign of the 
 Prince of Peace? Not for conquest, certainly, 
 nor yet for worldly glory, nor for the acquisition 
 of dominion, gold, acres, or earthly aggrandize- 
 ments are the prows of those engines of destruc- 
 tion, grim and terrible, turned toward the 
 barbarous islands of the sea. Theirs is indeed 
 a mission of destruction, but more truly is it a 
 mission of fulfilment and of life. 
 
 He who walks the bridge of the stately 
 Olympia, as, like a war=horse she flees bounding 
 over the waves of the sea, is no warrior of the 
 
 74 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 war4oving type. Child of the Green MomntainB 
 of that great and peaceful state, officer in one of 
 her temples of Grod, and disciple of the Prince 
 of Peace; disciplined, refined and ennobled by 
 the culture which makes her people great, yet 
 strong and brave in the heroism which has 
 made her sons renowned; tender and sympa- 
 thetic, ever touched and moved with compassion 
 by the pains and griefs of suffering humanity, 
 yet firm and immovable in the right, as those 
 giant hills of his nativity, though clouds may 
 sometimes overshadow, thunders shake, and 
 lightning scorch their summits, still firmly 
 there they stand, erect and immovable, reflect- 
 ing the beauty of the sunshine, when the clouds 
 have passed away. So rises our hero into world* 
 wide prominence. 
 
 " Like 6ome tall cliff; which lifts its awful form, 
 
 Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm; 
 Though round its base the rolling clouds are spread, 
 Sternal sunshine settles on its head." 
 
 And why? Because the spirit of Jehovah is 
 upon him, and all who accompany him upon 
 this ever memorable missionary tour. They too 
 are anointed to preach the Gospel to the poor. 
 Not with lips of flesh, or tongues of human 
 speech, but with the clear-cut lips of mighty 
 guns and tongues of searching fire. To open 
 the eyes long blinded by pagan superstition and 
 heathen night, to unstop the ears long deaf to 
 the chimes of modern civilization and progress, 
 
 76 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 to lead those poor victims from the crime and 
 bondage of Spanish tyranny out into the liberty 
 of children of American freedom and God. 
 Such is the purpose of their awful mission 
 and the motive which prompts it — for no other 
 motive can ever move the American nation to 
 arms. 
 
 For this cause our mighty ships of war, with 
 darkened lights, steal along as thieves in the 
 night. They are nearing the island of Corrige- 
 dor. It is the hour before the battle, the most 
 trying time in human experience. Over Span- 
 ish mines and torpedoes of destruction they 
 glide, for our brave commander fears naught 
 but God. 
 
 A quick flash from the top of the island and our 
 heroes know that they are detected by the keen eye 
 of the Spaniard. Still on they glide, brave and 
 dauntless, though now clearly visible in the flame 
 of the McOuUoch's blazing smoke=stack. Another 
 clear flash, and the thunder of a mighty gun is 
 heard from the rock El Frailie. It is the 
 enemy's greeting. 
 
 A hissing, crashing shell of death passes 
 overhead, when the guns of the Boston, Concord 
 and McCuUoch respond to the greeting which 
 is not repeated. On and on towards Oavite our 
 stately ships are gliding, until lo! by the first 
 faint rays of the morning they behold the top= 
 masts of the Spanish fleet! 
 
 O Spain, Spain! Thy days of cruelty are 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 numbered! Thou hast sown the wind and thou 
 shalt reap the whirlwind; the fields of thy 
 bloody sowing are ripe unto the harvest and the 
 sickle of eternal justice is lifted to lay them low! 
 Our hero remembers the story of thy cruelty. 
 He remembers the unspeakable suffering of 
 those perishing ones in Mexico and Peru under 
 the fiendish Philip; he remembers the sad story 
 of brave little Holland under the bloodthirsty 
 Alva; of William the Silent and his noble fol- 
 lowers, murdered, tortured and exterminated by 
 the thousands! He remembers the Inquisition, 
 with its tale of horrors; he remembers poor, 
 persecuted Cuba, cursed by Spanish rule under 
 the wolfish Weyler, and, being a " little lower 
 than the angels " he cannot but " remember the 
 Maine." 
 
 The visiting ships draw near; the Germans as 
 enemies, the English as friends. The British 
 cruiser, Immortalite, passes close astern of the 
 Olympia; all officers and men are in their 
 places, and the discipline is beautiful to see. 
 Her band is stationed on the quarter-deck, the 
 signal to play is given, and lo! music, sweet 
 and soul=thrilling, floats out upon the waves. 
 Listen! O ye sons of the free! Listen! O 
 great and grateful nation! Listen too, ye 
 narrow, morbid critics; you, who in your de- 
 praved natures and benighted intellects will 
 even stoop to despise the mother that nurtured 
 you! Listen now to the music of Britain's 
 
 77 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 glorious band! Its thrilling strains float over 
 the waves to cheer our heroes in the hour of 
 conflict. Its blessed strains are not unknown; 
 they touch and move each loyal heart. This 
 is the tune they play: "The star-spangled 
 banner in triumph shall wave, O'er the land of 
 the free and the home of the brave," and our 
 heroes are inspired. Again they play: "See 
 the conquering hero comes." Then the com- 
 mand: " Bring out the battle=flagfe !" is heard, 
 and from every mast and gafE the stars and 
 stripes are waving while British tars cheer and 
 sing. 
 
 The screws turn, and our mighty ships of 
 battle bear their heroes to the scene of conflict, 
 with decks all " cleared for action." Fort 
 Luenta speaks out its challenge, which is si- 
 lenced by the Concord. Th« morning sun- 
 beams stream over the hills, tingeing the bay 
 with redness and clearly and distinctly reveal- 
 ing the Spanish fleet. 
 
 Suddenly the Olympia swings into line of 
 battle, opening fire with her powerful eight=inch 
 guns, and then the Baltimore thunders forth 
 her mighty cannon. One by one the ships 
 swing into line and the command "Open fire 
 with all guns!" is given. Quickly and bravely 
 the foe returns the fire. The awful war=light- 
 ning gleams and its deafening thunder rolls. 
 The smoke grows dense. Screaming, bursting 
 shells of death are in the air. The walls of 
 
 78 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 steel are pierced and laid open to the sea. The 
 mighty armor parts and rolls before our awful 
 fire. The Spanish fleet, on fire, is sinking. 
 The scalding, gurgling water, foaming in its 
 gory redness, swallows the victims in its whirl- 
 pool of death and hell. 
 
 Our brave men pause to rest and reckon. At 
 11:20 they resume the fight, and at 12:45 the 
 Spanish flag comes down, the enemy surrenders 
 and the victory is won! 
 
 Thanks to our noble Admiral! Thanks to 
 his brave and gallant men! Their names are 
 henceforth inscribed on every loyal American 
 heart. 
 
 Great are the guns of our navy, 
 
 But greater the manhood behind them! 
 
 Thanks also to our English brothers, ever 
 brave and true! Thanks for their soul=stirring 
 music and their hearty cheers. We give them 
 our prayers and our love, as the big tears flow 
 hot and fast. Once more have they endeared 
 themselves to their own by ties of blood and 
 love that time and trial may never part. The 
 story of Quebec is repeated. Quebec, where 
 our English and American brothers fought side 
 by side until the French fled, and this great 
 continent was won for free institutions, human 
 liberty and prosperity, «uch as the world has 
 never seen before. Quebec, where they buried 
 their differences with their dead and pledged 
 eternal friendship to one another. And although 
 
 79 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 that friendship was temporarily disturbed by 
 the disagreement that ssfily came between us, 
 it has never been destroyed. Long since have 
 they come to recognize the justice of our cause 
 and the necessity of our rising in arms against 
 them. It was good for those great nations that 
 they should have been formerly parted in order 
 that years hence they might come together in a 
 more friendly and indissoluble union — and that 
 blessed day has dawned. 
 
 Again at Manila has the covenant been re- 
 newed — on the water where they all sang and 
 cheered — on the shore where they defended 
 each other and took the oath of brothers in 
 blood. May no yellow press or yellow pulpit 
 or demon from the pit of hell ever avail to dis- 
 turb our friendship or destroy our peace. 
 
 Thus we have come forth from this battle of 
 blood and fire more firmly united than before. 
 We have ceased to cherish any feelings of ani- 
 mosity or hatred born out of the conflicts of the 
 past. Did any such wrong feelings linger in 
 our bosoms, it seems tome that in the white fire 
 of loving sympathy and brotherly feeling, which 
 burned in its molding whiteness at Manila Bay, 
 they must have been burned and purged away, 
 and we welded together so firmly that no power 
 of earth or hell can ever tear us apart. Over 
 the ruins of bloody conflict we entwine our 
 glorious flags — the Stars and Stripes and the 
 Union Jack — and clasp in loving friendship, in 
 
 80 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 union strong, great and indissoluble proclaim- 
 ing to the world, that for the best interests of 
 mankind and the glory of God, the lands of 
 Milton, Shakespeare, Macauley, Burke and 
 Browning, Tennyson, Gladstone and Victoria, 
 of Washington, Penn and Lincoln, Holmes, 
 Longfellow and Grant, are one and inseparable 
 forever 1 
 
 81 
 
VII 
 
 THE REAL TRUTH 
 
 Dear Brawn: — The letter which you consider, 
 at certain points, to be " unanswerable," is the 
 least difficult to answer of any that you have 
 written. To many readers it may indeed seem 
 to be unanswerable. But we must always dis- 
 tinguish between apparent and real truth. 
 
 The apparent truth is that all nature is fixed 
 and immovable; the real truth shows all nature 
 — every particle of matter in the universe — to 
 be in quivering motion. The apparent truth is 
 that the world is stationary in space, and the 
 sun revolving about it; the real truth is the very 
 opposite. These examples may be applied to 
 your last letter. You certainly are making the 
 most of a weak case. The cause of war has 
 in my friend an able and faithful defender. 
 And now, since you summon all nature, science, 
 Scripture, the universe, and God Himself, to the 
 defense of your argument, it will be necessary 
 for me to reply to you after the order which 
 you have chosen. 
 
 First: As to nature. You find the whole 
 
 natural realm in a state of conflict — " resistless 
 
 and conflicting to its very heart, particle against 
 
 particle and world against world"; so do I. 
 
 82 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 You recognize the same conflict passing up into 
 the vegetable and animal kingdom; and I say it 
 is so. Then you proceed to show that man, as a 
 part of nature, is subject to the same conflict, 
 and must " struggle for existence or go out of 
 it ": and again I reply, it is so. But let me in- 
 quire whether that conflict, which you discover 
 in nature, is sufficient evidence that men must 
 combine to contend against their fellow men in 
 organized warfare. I claim it is not. Man 
 was born to contend with the whole realm of 
 nature, which is beneath him, but against his 
 brother man — NEVEK! This is quite plain 
 from God's Word in the beginning of Genesis: 
 "And God said. Let us make man in our image, 
 after our likeness; and let them have dominion 
 over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the 
 air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, 
 and over every creeping thing that creepeth 
 upon the earth." And unto man in reference 
 to nature, God said "Subdue it": — namely, 
 triumph over all its forces, conquer it; bring it 
 into subjection to thy will; compel it to serve 
 thee. There is the soil, which, if left to itself, 
 in its own natural state, will yield only rank, 
 poisonous weeds, thorns, briars and the like. 
 Subdue it, and it will produce the golden har- 
 vest, the precious fruit, trees of many species, 
 flowers of fragrance and beauty. 
 
 There is the animal world, wild and ferocioiis; 
 subdue it, and it will become domestic, helpful, 
 
 83 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 even companionable. There is the mineral 
 kingdom, the forest and the sea; subdue these 
 and the iron becomes an engine; the hollow log 
 a ship; the water, steam, propelling the ship 
 against the winds, waves and currents" of the 
 ocean, which becomes a pathway for the com- 
 merce of the world. There is the great electric 
 current that belts the earth, and streams and 
 flashes wild and rampant in the heavens above; 
 subdue it, bring it under thy control, and it 
 becomes thy servant, turning a thousand wheels 
 and spindles, dragging the lighted chariots 
 through the streets, filling the world with 
 energy, enterprise and light. And here is the 
 force of the natural world within us, untamed 
 and powerful; subdue it; put it beneath thy 
 feet; have dominion over it; compel it to be- 
 come thy servant or thou shalt become its slave. 
 This is Grod's kind of warfare. Not man against 
 man for the destruction of his kind, but all men 
 unitedly warring against the forces of nature and 
 conquering those forces for the good of mankind. 
 This is the great discrimination which you 
 have entirely overlooked. Man is created upon 
 a higher plane than all things else. He was 
 created in the image of God, endowed with the 
 mind of God to do the will of God. If then all 
 nature is at war, what of it? Must man con- 
 tend with fellow man because particle contends 
 against particle, or brute against brute? No! 
 the very opposite is the truth. Man's business 
 
 84 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 is to " subdue it." Nature may be "red in tooth 
 and claw"; she may be engaged in a brutal 
 struggle for existence, but.man stands above all 
 of this by divine appointment. He was crowned 
 king of nature at the creation. Let the great 
 realm of nature contend forever, if it will, but 
 man must live at peace with his fellow man. 
 Our divinely ordained mission is to fight, not 
 against one another, but for one another; to 
 help our brother man, and not to hurt him; to 
 build him up, not to tear him down; to do him 
 good, and not evil. Such is the great, glorious 
 warfare which God ordained, and the only war- 
 fare which He sanctions. Any other interpreta- 
 tion of nature, or of God's Word, is contrary to 
 the facts — utterly unscientific and misleading. 
 Here I might rest this part of the case with 
 perfect assurance. The command, " subdue it," 
 settles the case in my judgment. But lest it 
 appear that I have any disposition to pass too 
 lightly over this part of the argument, or to 
 treat with undue consideration that which you 
 have worked out with so much skill, and which 
 you consider unanswerable, I am therefore quite 
 willing to enter with you into a more minute 
 and critical examination of your argument from 
 nature. 
 
 I have admitted the fact of a struggle for ex- 
 istence, and for the sake of argument let me 
 say still further that the struggle seems to be 
 brutal, but is this really the case? Is the strug- 
 85 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 gle in nature a brutal struggle, according to the 
 meaning which that term conveys to us? I 
 must deny that it is, and therefore I must fur- 
 nish reasons for my denial. 
 
 You have summoned " two great scientists," 
 as you term them, to your defense. I was not 
 aware, however, that Mr. Kidd was a great 
 scientist. Indeed, I have my doubts as to his 
 being a scientist at all, or at all scientific. Mr. 
 Drummond is, however, a great scientist. This 
 I cheerfully admit. 
 
 In summoning Kidd to the witness=stand you 
 weaken your case, but when you call up Drum- 
 mond you lose it entirely. Kidd you may have 
 and welcome, but Drummond's testimony is all 
 on my side of the case. Your statement that so 
 many of the leading clergymen, as well as 
 teachers, have accepted Kidd's book and have 
 spoken of it with such unqualified, I might say 
 extravagant, approval, is true, but why they 
 have done so I have been puzzled to know. 
 This book, with the exception of those chapters 
 on the influence of Christianity on our Western 
 civilization. Protestantism, and the French Rev- 
 olution, and on French and English civilization, 
 is a mass of self=contradietions and conflicting 
 statements, from beginning to end. His argu- 
 ment as a whole is erroneous, and many of his 
 statements show that, either language must con- 
 vey very different meaning to his mind from 
 what it does to most others, or that he is ill=in- 
 
 86 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 formed upon the subject which he undertakes 
 to discuss. 
 
 For instance, when he tells us that science 
 from an early stage in her career has been en- 
 gaged in a personal quarrel with religions, and 
 seems to have maintained down to the present 
 time that " her only concern with them is to de- 
 clare that they are without foundation in rea- 
 son." Such a statement seems utterly untrue, 
 and devoid of reason, so far as true science is 
 concerned. For science to proceed upon such 
 an hypothesis would indeed be absurd from a 
 scientific point of view. The fundamental pur- 
 pose of science is the discovery and verification 
 of facts. It matters not where those facts are 
 found; it is the true purpose of science to pro- 
 claim them. Science proceeds irrespective of 
 form or time=honored custom, and it is at least 
 as much her purpose to reveal and proclaim the 
 truth which she has discovered as it is to expose 
 and condemn the error. His statements, that 
 science has lost sight of the main question as to 
 whether religions have any beneficent purpose 
 to perform in the evolution of society, that men 
 are not interested in the welfare of future gen- 
 erations, but wholly in their own, are untrue. 
 When he tells us that " the intellectual forces 
 of the time were directly opposed to Christian- 
 ity," the student will wonder how he is going to 
 dispose of Alexandrian philosophy, or Stoicism, 
 which were certainly not directly opposed to 
 87 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 Christianity. He should read Eusebius' " Prep- 
 aration for the Gospel," and Farrar's " Seekers 
 after God." When he tells us that in the Mid- 
 dle Ages " all attainments of Greek and Roman 
 genius were buried out of sight," the student 
 will be in equal perplexity to know how the 
 author would regard Platonism, the writings of 
 the Schoolmen, also the great system of Boman 
 law. Are not these works of genius? 
 
 He condemns science and yet, his method of 
 procedure is somewhat scientific. Religion is 
 exalted although it has no basis in reason. 
 Socialism is condemned as unscientific and con- 
 trary to the spirit of civilization, and still some- 
 thing in the form of a beneficent social order 
 is recommended. Men are condemned for being 
 engaged in a continuous struggle for existence 
 and yet the time is hailed with joy when the 
 struggle will be even more intense than before. 
 He says it makes no difference as to the truth 
 or validity of religion provided it serves a pur- 
 pose in evolution. But another has said: " An 
 evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit." Thus 
 his arguments, however beautiful they may 
 appear on the surface, are based upon a false 
 philosophy. It does seem unfortunate that so 
 many Christian ministers, laymen and teachers 
 should accept and approve of such a work as 
 this and swallow wholesale anything which 
 seems to be a defense of religion against its 
 supposed enemy, science. 
 
 88 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 I refuse, therefore, to recognize Mr. Kidd's 
 authority on this subject. Turning to Mr. 
 Drummond, however, the contrast is as agreeable 
 as it is striking. He too sees the struggle for 
 existence, but he says something more. There 
 is indeed a strenuous struggle for the life of 
 self, but there is an equally intense struggle 
 for the life of others. To Mr. Drummond all 
 nature reveals itself as the garment of God, 
 woven without seam throughout. There is no 
 disorder, no confusion, no disconnected phenom- 
 ena and no brutal struggle amid handiwork 
 of the Creator. Self»sacrifice begins where life, 
 which at first is self=centered and self-contained 
 in a single cell, bursts its little prison walls in 
 order that it may produce other lives. Here too 
 love begins love, which was not after=thought, 
 or something which descended out of the clouds, 
 but which was distilled on the earth. We learn 
 from Drummond that the struggle for existence 
 is not brutal and selfish, but vicarious and self= 
 sacrificing. Such testimony changes the whole 
 aspect of the case. We see the natural realm, 
 which you believe to be in warlike conflict, 
 really in harmonious cooperation; particle 
 against particle, mass against mass, world against 
 world indeed, not, however, for the purpose of 
 war but of harmony and peace, every part 
 marvelously adjusted and beautifully balanced 
 for the mutual helpfulness of every other part; 
 every particle acting in its own appointed place, 
 89 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 every world moving upon its appointed journey, 
 obedient to its central san, no disorder, no con- 
 flict, but perfect order, harmony and beauty. 
 And this is the inspiring example of the Creator 
 to the creature. All the movements of mankind 
 should likewise be carried on in the spirit of 
 mutual helpfulness, obedience and therefore 
 peace. 80 likewise the struggle in nature, 
 termed " brutal," is nothing of the sort; it is 
 also God's example of self»surrender, one life 
 giving itself in behalf of another, one form of 
 life losing itself in order that other and better 
 forms may come forth. And how inspiring it 
 is to follow this process through its various 
 stages until it reaches the realm of conscious- 
 ness and becomes at last a voluntary act. It 
 dawns to consciousness in the animal kingdom 
 and reaches its highest in the human mother, 
 its complete fulfilment in the Christ. Thus 
 Grod is making all His great realm of nature say 
 to men: "See, I have given you this example of 
 self-sacrifice; the true desire of all things in 
 nature is not to conquer but to yield in behalf 
 of others— to find life only to lose it again that 
 it may be the more truly found in the being of 
 another." And as this desire continues to in- 
 crease and to unfold in our experiences, it 
 becomes still more precious and Godlike, until 
 at last it is known as vicarious sacrifice in him 
 who lays down his life for others. And this 
 being the case, war is therefore contrary to the 
 90 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 plan and purpose of God. It must be ruled out 
 entirely. There is no place for war but hell, 
 where it originated and whence it came. 
 
 Thus God teaches in nature just what Christ 
 proclaims in Scripture: "He that findeth his 
 life shall lose it and he that loseth his life for 
 My sake shall find it." This is God's law— we 
 are to die for others and not to make others die 
 for us. To do the one is Godlike, to resort to 
 the other is devilish. But whatever interpre- 
 tation we may feel disposed to place upon 
 nature, Christ taught the survival of the weak 
 and care for the helpless. The man or nation 
 that will not obey and practise this precept of 
 Jesus, must perish. 
 
 The arguments which you adduce from Scrip- 
 ture are no less erroneous than those which you 
 have forced from nature. The proof=texts which 
 you have cited prove nothing — nothing is more 
 common than proof=texts. Some persons attempt 
 to establish any kind of a theory by the use of 
 proof'texts. A piece of machinery or a bit of 
 bone have little interest for one by themselves; 
 let us see the entire machine or the perfect 
 skeleton. A single sentence or passage read 
 from a letter would not be accepted as proof in 
 any court of justice; the entire letter must be 
 read for the reason that a sentence isolated or 
 taken from its connection may convey an alto- 
 gether different idea than in connection with 
 the context. Now the phrases, " God of armies," 
 
 91 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 and " God of battles," cannot be sustained only 
 upon the basis of an impossible interpretation 
 of the Bible and a false exegesis. 
 
 The God of war which men find in the Bible 
 is not the true Jehovah of the universe, not 
 the Father of light and life and love, not He who 
 binds the sweet influence of the Pleiades. The 
 Old Testament war=god is Mars — Mars the 
 cruel. Mars the bloody, hurling thunderbolts at 
 the enemies of all those who are fortunate 
 enough to be first to solicit his intervention in 
 their behalf as they go forth to slay their ene- 
 mies. Unto him the cruel Spaniard turns for 
 help as he goes forth to oppress and destroy 
 the helpless Cuban. From him the unspeakable 
 Turk solicits aid to massacre his defenseless 
 neighbor, the Armenian. From him or some 
 similar incantation of evil, men seem to derive 
 inspiration for the purpose of destroying their 
 fellow men. 
 
 " Thee to defend the Moloch priest piefers, 
 The prayer of hate, the bellows to the herd, 
 That deity, accomplice deity, in the fierce jealongy of 
 
 wakened wrath, 
 Will go forth with our armies and onr fleets 
 To scatter the red rnin on their foes! 
 O, blasphemy I To mingle fiendish deeds with blessed- 
 ness." * 
 
 But the Bible idea of the true God is the 
 
 exact opposite. He does not aid men in war 
 
 under any condition whatever; He lends not 
 
 His sanction nor His aid unto men or nations 
 
 * Ooleiidge. Beligious Musings. 
 92 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 who take up arms against their fellow men. He 
 never did. They seek His aid in vain, and have 
 always done so. The belief that God has ever 
 helped men to destroy one another in war is a 
 delusion from the devil. 
 
 The passages of Scripture which you quote 
 do not have reference to material warfare. This 
 is wherein the world has long been deceived. 
 For instance (in Eccles. 8: 8) we read: "There 
 is no man that hath power over the Spirit; 
 neither hath he power in the day of death: and 
 there is no discharge in that war." Again in 
 Micah (4:3) we read: "And He shall judge 
 among many people, and rebuke strong nations 
 afar off; and they shall bend their swords into 
 plowshares, and their spears into pruning=hooks ; 
 nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, 
 neither shall they learn war any more." James 
 asks (4:1): " From whence came wars and fight- 
 ings among you? Came they not hence even of 
 your lusts that war in your members?" Paul 
 says (2 Cor. 10:3, 4): "For though we walk in 
 the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (for the 
 weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but 
 mighty through God to the pulling down of 
 strongholds)." 1 Timothy 1 : 18, Paul instructs 
 young Timothy to "war a good warfare" in 
 faith. He also speaks elsewhere of the " armor 
 of light " and " the helmet of salvation," and so 
 forth. In 2 Cor. 6:7: "By the word of truth, 
 by the power of God, by the armor of righteous- 
 
 93 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 ness on the right hand and on the left." Eph. 
 6:13-17: " Wherefore take unto you the whole 
 armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand 
 in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. 
 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about 
 with truth, and having on the breastplate of 
 righteousness; and your feet shod with the 
 preparation of the Gospel of peace; above all, 
 taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be 
 able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. 
 And take the helmet of salvation, and the 
 sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of 
 God." 
 
 Tacitus declared the invoking of the Deity by 
 the Germans to be a delusion. The polite 
 Roman did not think God present in the fight- 
 ings of men. Frederick of Prussia declared that 
 he always found the God of battles on the side 
 of the strongest regiments, and when it was pro- 
 posed to place upon his banner the inscription, 
 " For God and country," he rejected the name 
 " God," declaring it not proper to introduce the 
 name of Deity in the quarrels of men. 
 
 Your high approval of the war of competition, 
 because of the great blessings which you say it 
 has yielded, and the high degree of perfection 
 which you say it has produced, is no less 
 astounding than your strongest statement in 
 regard to the war of weapons. To my mind the 
 war of competition is very little more honorable 
 or humane, and it certainly is not Christian. 
 94 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 No Christian can believe in the war of compe- 
 tition which is being waged in the labor world 
 to=day. That competition is a promoter of en- 
 terprise, is another only apparent truth — a de- 
 lusion — another hallucination of moonshine 
 philosophy. The real truth is the exact oppo- 
 site. The war of competition, as carried on to= 
 day, tends to the destruction of all legitimate 
 enterprise, and the degeneration of society. 
 There is a kind of competition which is always 
 commendable, namely, the struggle to attain 
 unto the ideal — a competition such as we find, 
 for instance, in the world of art; but this noble 
 desire to attain unto the highest degree of per- 
 fection that has ever yet been reached, is not to 
 be compared for a moment with the brutal 
 struggle to manufacture and place goods on the 
 market for the lowest possible price. Such a 
 struggle is degrading. It is injurious from 
 every point of view. It cheapens the goods, 
 cheapens the manufacturer, cheapens the labor 
 and the laborer, grinding him down into the 
 earth. It creates such a line of cleavage be- 
 tween the employer and the employe that they 
 have nothing in common. Sympathy is crushed 
 out, all fellow feeling is obliterated, and true 
 manhood degraded and destroyed. 
 
 " Competition," says Dr. Walker, " to have the 
 beneficent effect ascribed to it, must be alUper- 
 vading and unremitting pressure like the atmos- 
 phere which we are unconscious of because it 
 95 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 is all the while within and without us, above 
 and below us. Were the pressure of the atmos- 
 phere to be made unequal, its effect would be- 
 come instantly crushing and destructive; so it 
 is with competition." Speaking of the disas- 
 trous results of such competition, the author 
 goes on to say that " every gain which one 
 party makes at the expense of another, furnishes 
 the sinews of war for further aggressions; every 
 loss which one person or class of persons sus- 
 tains in the competition of industry weakens 
 the capacity for future resistance. This princi- 
 ple applies with increasing force as nien sink in 
 the social scale." 
 
 In such a struggle the weak must give way io 
 the strong. The same is practically true of 
 monopolies and trusts, as we find them to=day. 
 These are without doubt the evils which should 
 give the American people most cause for alarm. 
 Every monopoly is a Mt. Vesuvius in the in- 
 dustrial world, lifting its dark, threatening sum- 
 mit above the heads of the laboring people, and, 
 indeed, all of the people on the plane beneath 
 it. Any one who has watched the workings of 
 the Standard Oil Company, for example, must 
 see that the American people cannot endure 
 such an injurious private despotism indefinitely. 
 Some twenty-five million dollars income, it is 
 said, must be distributed annually and by one 
 man. This fabulous sum of money must go 
 just where that one man determines, and be 
 
 96 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 applied to the purposes which he designs. 
 
 Every generous gift, for example, made by 
 the head of a leading trust to a great univer- 
 sity seems to have been accompanied by a 
 raising of the price of the product of that particu- 
 lar company. This has been repeated so often as 
 to become almost unbearable. The man at the 
 head of this gigantic enterprise claims to be a 
 Christian, but such a conception of Christianity 
 is as far from the teaching of Jesus as the East 
 is from the West. 
 
 A recent law suit brought by a business part- 
 ner against the head of a leading steel trust, 
 reveals still farther a condition of things which 
 may result in untold injury to the American 
 people if it is allowed to continue unchecked. 
 Both of the contending parties admit tha:t, on 
 a formal capital of twenty=five millions, and an 
 actual capital of ten millions, the company had 
 in the year 1899 net profits of twenty=^one mil- 
 lion dollars, and yet the people were paying at 
 that time nearly twice as much for steel and iron 
 as they were twelve months before. 
 
 Professor Ely says: "An examination of our 
 social history reveals the fact that laborers have 
 been guilty of no offense for which they could 
 not find a precedent in the conduct of un- 
 principled employers. I myself have seen the 
 property of one railroad corporation seized 
 by another without the slightest ground 
 in right or justice." * Unless the Ameri- 
 
 * The Labor Movement in America, pp. 164-165. 
 97 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 can people shall rise in their might and 
 scatter this Moloch of monopoly, arid destroy 
 this fast increasing evil of trusts, their doom is 
 sealed. They must destroy him or he will 
 destroy them. 
 
 A few days before his death President Lin- 
 coin spoke prophetically when he said: " Our 
 nation has rid itself of the great evil of slavery 
 at a great cost, but I foresee in the future a 
 greater evil, that will test the nation's life. It 
 is the power of corporate bodies that will seek 
 to dominate the nation's economic policy." 
 
 But you ask: " What other power under the 
 sun could have wrought such results as this war 
 of competition has produced? " Another power 
 under the sun has wrought infinitely better re- 
 sults and its success is as far beyond the competi- 
 tion of to'day as peace is beyond war. It is the 
 blessed humane power of cooperation. Wher- 
 ever properly applied its success has been 
 established and its history is honorable. You 
 seem to indicate that only competition has 
 succeeded. Have you not heard of the great co- 
 operative banking system of Germany, France 
 and Italy? Have you not heard of the great 
 cooperative industries of England and France; 
 the Cheney Silk Works of Connecticut, where 
 employes in most cases remain all their days, 
 and where the employer and employes are one? 
 Have you not heard of the Bon March6 of 
 Paris where ten thousand clerks are their own 
 employers? The success of cooperation thus 
 
 98 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 far achieved proves that men should work to- 
 gether for each other's prosperity, welfare and 
 happiness. Men and nations are ruining their 
 highest interests and destroying their best life 
 by fighting each other and working against one 
 another. If only they would cooperate, bury 
 their weapons of devilish warfare and go to 
 work in each other's interest, in ten years we 
 would not know it was the same world. 
 
 "A man may be a Christian who is a master 
 or a slave, but the logic of Christianity is 
 liberty. A man may be a Christian who is an 
 aristocrat or a plebeian, but the logic of Chris- 
 tianity is democracy. A man may be a Chris* 
 tian who is a capitalist or a wage laborer, but 
 the logic of Christianity is cooperation."* 
 The war of competition acts on the same principle 
 as all other wars, it is disintegrating, destructive 
 and demoralizing in its nature. Peace has the 
 opposite results, and if only the great energy 
 and expense wasted in cruel warfare were turned 
 to the higher, gentler and nobler pursuits of 
 peace, ours would become an infinitely more 
 beautiful world ere long. On this point let 
 Longfellow f speak: 
 
 " Were half the power that fills the world with terror, 
 Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts 
 
 H: Washington Gladden: Tools and the Man. 
 ■f The Arsenal at Springfield. 
 
 99 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 Given to redeem the human mind from error, 
 There were no need of arsenals or forts: 
 The warrior's name would be a name abhorred, 
 And every nation that shonld lift its hand against a 
 
 brother, 
 On its forehead would wear forever the curse of Cain." 
 
 100 
 
VIII 
 
 WAR A CONSTRUCTIVE AGENCY 
 
 My Dear Brain: — As I finish your last let- 
 ter I can heartily wish that you had been the 
 creator of the world, for you certainly construct 
 an admirable world, and people it with a class 
 of beings among whom I could never hope to 
 be numbered. That your world and God's 
 world are quite different, however, I am still 
 thoroughly convinced. I would not insist that 
 your picture of the world is any better than the 
 world really is. The finite cannot comprehend 
 the larger plan and purpose of the Infinite. But 
 I am deeply impressed with your interpretation 
 of nature, and although it has not availed to 
 change mine, I am free to say that it has set me 
 to thinking along this line as never before. 
 
 I do not believe, however, that your estimate 
 of Mr. Kidd is quite just. I still think he is 
 something of a scientist, and the claim that 
 Drummond is on your side of the question I 
 hope still to disprove. You claim him because 
 he finds love at the heart of all conflicts. I 
 might justly make the same claim, at least in a 
 general way. I find many exhibitions of love 
 in war. You have asked me to give examples 
 of those blessings which have been obtained by 
 
 101 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 war. I am pleased to do so. War has produced 
 many blessings, as history quite plainly shows. 
 From the overthrow of the Persian Empire by 
 the trained soldiers of Macedonia, down to our 
 last contest at arms, war has wrought a purpose 
 and yielded blessings which could not be ob- 
 tained in any other possible way. We beheld 
 the wave of barbaric contest sweeping across 
 the ^gean Sea until met and conquered by 
 united Greece, armed in the sacred cause of 
 liberty. Marathon, Salamis, Plataea, Ohalon, 
 Attila, Hastings, Waterloo, are names which be- 
 speak the progress of mankind. The overthrow 
 of the Persian Empire, the downfall of Carthage, 
 and the elevation of Rome, were so many step- 
 ping-stones in the progress of the human race. 
 It was through the long and bloody conquests 
 of Hannibal that the martial powers of Rome 
 were developed, and the City of the Seven Hills 
 prepared to give to the world the most perfect 
 system of political law and organization which 
 it has ever received. It was war that preserved 
 Greek literature and art against the inroads of 
 Persian satraps, and so caused Greece to shine 
 for all time as the brightest star in the diadem 
 of cultured nations. It was war, under Napo- 
 leon, which broke up the petty states of Ger- 
 many and Italy, swept away an effete feudalism, 
 and so prepared the way for the intellectual and 
 national life of the most scholarly nation. Our 
 own Civil War was a blessing in disguise. 
 
 102 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 There were latent powers in the South which 
 could not have been called forth in any other 
 way. The selfishness of the North could not 
 have been overcome by any system of arbitra- 
 tion. The differences between North and 
 South were such as could be settled only 
 at the point of the bayonet. This war 
 aroused the finer as well as the coarser 
 feelings. It heightened the sensibilities, it 
 sweetened the songs, it inspired the poets, it 
 intensified the oratory, it gave the people some- 
 thing to think about, and pray over and 
 fight for. It strengthened the ties of love, and 
 gave to life a sweeter meaning in the parting of 
 father from home, lover from loved one. It has 
 given us the beautiful " Memorial Day," with 
 its flowers and songs and tender feelings, the 
 influence of which for good can never die. Had 
 it not been for this war, the South would not 
 have been anything to-day, and the North, 
 through greed for the productions of the South, 
 would have become debauched. 
 
 China presents another unanswerable argu- 
 ment. Why is it that the old, staid, solidified 
 empire is only now rousing from the sleep of 
 centuries? Simply because we taught the 
 "Japs" how to fight, and they in turn have 
 instructed the Chinese in the art which they 
 acquired from us. Before the war, China had 
 " no pushee, no pullee," but now she goes right 
 along like — Japan. 
 
 103 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 How much time has been wasted in discuss- 
 ing the slow progress of the missionaries in the 
 christianizing of China! Of course it was slow 
 — how could it have been otherwise? How can 
 we cultivate the blossom until the rocky soil is 
 changed; why scatter the seed of Christian kind- 
 ness upon a hard, rocky surface to wither and 
 to die? The fallow ground must first be broken, 
 the red plowshare of conflict must precede or go 
 along with the scattering of the seed of Chris- 
 tian love, the lazy soul must be thrilled by the 
 sound of drum and fife. And I will not be sur- 
 prised if some of the other nations which are 
 now receiving, at the hands of our missionaries. 
 Christian, at the expense of military, training, 
 may not have to go back and do their work all 
 over again. China presents a sad example of 
 this fact to'day. 
 
 And so I believe there is a time in the affairs 
 of men and nations when no other agency can 
 fill the place of war. I therefore recognize it as 
 a divinely appointed means for good, if used 
 and not abused. Only in this way can I under- 
 stand the meaning of the Master's words; "I 
 came not to bring peace, but a sword." 
 
 The world has at least seven civilizing and 
 humanizing agencies. These are the army, the 
 press, the church, the school, the home, the 
 hearse, and fire. The army and the church 
 must go hand in hand; the Gospel=ship and 
 battle=Bhip must sail side by side, until they 
 
 101 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 reach the shores of the better land where the 
 bugle notes and the sound of the approaching 
 enemy are heard no more. International peace 
 conventions are good, but very limited in their 
 influence; they simply indicate the time when 
 armed warfare will ultimately pass away, but 
 nothing more. 
 
 The Ozar of Kussia seems to be the peace= 
 loving monarch of Europe. His highest hope 
 is that he may never have to conduct a war, but 
 his "peace covers an infernal barbarism"; 
 what else but war can puncture the tartar ulcer? 
 Russia and China are pre-eminently the peace* 
 loving empires of the world. Out of such a 
 peace, anarchists and good=for=nothings are cre- 
 ated; with war, patriots and philanthropists. 
 
 It must not be overlooked that the lowest 
 races are exterminated faster in peace than in 
 war, and that degenerating conditions exist with 
 the lessening of strife. Red Jacket was right 
 when he said: " Our only salvation is in war; 
 with peace the white man will destroy the cour- 
 age of our young men, and the chastity of our 
 young women; we cannot live together, we shall 
 be destroyed." Thus war clears up the moral 
 atmosphere and rouses the people to higher life 
 and enterprise. Without it our great, intelli- 
 gent, enterprising nation would soon drop to 
 the level of the Chinese Empire, and fall into 
 the torpid sleep of indifference, until at last we 
 should become another kingdom of Celestials. 
 
 105 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 You declare war to be wholly disintegrating 
 and destructive in its nature. Let me remind 
 you that it is a uniting and a constructive 
 agency as well. At the close of the Napoleonic 
 wars we were fearful for the future of Europe, 
 as we looked upon her broken and fragmentary 
 condition; but we have since witnessed that 
 wonderful reconstruction which began immedi- 
 ately to follow those wars. We have seen 
 France compelled to relinquish what she had 
 unjustly acquired, Lombardy given back to 
 Austria, with Venice humbled in the dust; Ger- 
 many receive back her many principalities, 
 Holland and Belgium become a kingdom, Han- 
 over restored to England, Norway annexed to 
 Sweden, Switzerland gradually resume her in- 
 dependence, England restore to France the 
 spoils which she had unjustly taken. We have 
 seen Grermany, which in 1815 was broken up 
 into forty distinct sovereignties, grouped under 
 eight names, become united into one grand 
 civilized power. We have seen Italy, from her 
 broken and scattered condition, become united 
 under Victor Immanuel, and Austria and Hun- 
 gary come together in friendly alliance. We 
 have witnessed the overthrow of slavery in 
 England, although not directly by war, yet 
 likely through fear of it. We have seen China 
 roused from the sleep of centuries by the small, 
 but wonderful, Japan. We have seen the hard 
 shell of Spanish tyranny broken by the guns of 
 
 106 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 Dewey, releasing from its cramped and corrupt 
 surroundings the beautiful bird of liberty, 
 which is now rising to soar in the pure air of 
 freedom. A hundred years of progress in a 
 hundred days of war. 
 
 And through the wars of the past we are now 
 witnessing the blessed union of the Anglo= 
 Saxon peoples, as never before. Who can 
 make a thorough study of the subject without 
 reaching the conclusion that war is a blessing, 
 if it is a curse? 
 
 " On the whole we cannot speak of war as in 
 its essence immoral without impeaching the en- 
 tire method of human progress and the Provi- 
 dence that has ordained it. The capital moral 
 distinction here is not between war and peace, 
 but between war that is righteous and war that 
 is unrighteous. There have been wars that 
 were villainies and wars that were salvations. 
 There have been evils for which no remedy 
 appeared but the sword. Our Puritan Fathers 
 used that remedy in the seventeenth century 
 against absolutism; the Northern States of 
 America used it in the 'sixties against slavery. 
 In both cases Schiller's words apply: 'The 
 world's history is the world's judgment.' In 
 both periods men went to the fields as Christ 
 went to the cross, to offer their blood for a 
 great redemption. And the blood was not shed 
 in vain. Strange and awful is the whole pro- 
 cess of human history — a process which we may 
 
 107 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 not in this life hope wholly to understand. 
 Ours it is to stand always firm to our duty, and 
 for the rest to say in Lessing's solemn, yet 
 hopeful words: ' Advance at Thy imperceptible 
 pace, Eternal Providence! But let me not, be- 
 cause it is imperceptible, despair of Thee! 'i Let 
 me not despair of Thee even if Thy steps should 
 seem to go backwards! It is not true that the 
 shortest line is always the straight one.' " 
 
 108 
 
IX 
 
 WAR A DESTRUCTIVE AGENCY 
 
 My Dear Brawn: — Your glowing description 
 of war reminds me of the words of that French 
 writer who hailed war as " divine in itself, di- 
 vine in its consequences, divine in its mysteri- 
 ous glory and seductive attractions, divine in 
 the manner of its declaration, divine in the re- 
 sults obtained, divine in the indefinable force 
 by which its triumph is determined," You 
 have shown to the uttermost from your point of 
 view the blessings which war has yielded and 
 the good which it has done, You have chal- 
 langed me to prove by actual facts the truth of 
 my assertion, that war is a device of the devil, 
 and forever contrary to the mind of God and 
 the teachings of Jesus. I have purposely 
 avoided painting the darkest side of the war 
 picture, because I do not believe that it makes 
 for our best moral improvement to have those 
 scenes of blood and carnage and destruction 
 laid bare to the gaze of the people. I thought, 
 moreover, that I had stated suflBcient facts to 
 establish the proposition which you call into 
 question. Indeed the dark side of war is too 
 horrible to be fully portrayed; its scenes of 
 blood and suffering and misery have never been 
 
 109 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 pictured too extravagantly — the half has never 
 been told. The Czar of Kussia was right when 
 he refused to have a terrible war picture re- 
 moved from the principal art gallery of Russia, 
 on the ground that its scenes were so awful as 
 to discourage the art of war, and to destroy the 
 inclination of many who had desired to enter 
 the military service. The Czar, after looking 
 upon the picture, which was so objectionable to 
 many, declared that it should not be removed, as 
 it was no exaggeration. He who had been 
 through many conflicts knew too well that it 
 was a faithful portrayal of the a wf ul miseries 
 and the indescribable sufferings of war. 
 
 The four points to which I wish to confine 
 myself in this lecture, and those which make it 
 most impossible for a Christian to believe in 
 war, are: 
 
 First: Its unspeakable cruelties; Second: Its 
 demoralizing influences; Third: Its absolute 
 unfairness; and, Fourth: Its destructive char- 
 acter. 
 
 First: Its unspeakable cruelties, Sumner's 
 description may serve to bring these cruelties 
 in some degree before our minds. He says : * " At 
 Terragona, were six thousand human beings, al- 
 most all defenseless men, women and children; 
 gray hairs and infant innocence, attractive 
 youth and wrinkled age, were butchered by the 
 infuriated troops at early night, and the morn- 
 
 *True Grandeur of a Nation. 
 110 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 ing sun arose upon a city whose streets and 
 houses were inundated with blood and yet this 
 is called a glorious exploit." And the storming 
 of Badajoz he speaks of as " a shameless rapac- 
 ity, a brutal intemperance, savage lust, cruelty 
 and murder; shrieks of piteous lamentation, 
 groans, shouts, imprecations, the hissing of 
 fires bursting from the houses, the crashing of 
 doors and windows, and the reports of muskets, 
 used in violence, resounded for two days and 
 nights in the streets of Badajoz. On the third 
 day, when the city was sacked, when the sol- 
 diers were exhausted by their own excesses, the 
 tumult rather subsided than was quelled. The 
 wounded men were then looked to, the dead dis- 
 posed of." Again he says: "What seems more 
 awfully monumental than Salamanca after the 
 long great battle? The ground strewn with 
 fragments of casques and cuirasses was still 
 white with the skeletons of those who fell. 
 What catalogue of horrors more complete than 
 the Russian campaign? At every step is war 
 and this is enough; soldiers black with powder; 
 bayonets bent with the violence of the encoun- 
 ter; the earth plowed with cannon shot; trees 
 torn and mutilated; the dead and dying wounds 
 and agony; fields covered with broken carriages, 
 outstretched horses and mangled bodies; while 
 disease, sad attendant on military suffering, 
 sweeps thousands from the great hospitals, and 
 the multitude of amputated limbs, which there 
 111 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 is no time to destroy, accumulate in bloody 
 heaps, filling the air with corruption. What 
 tongue, what pen, can describe the bloody 
 havoc at Borodino, where, between rise and set 
 of a single sun, one hundred thousand of our 
 fellow men sank to earth dead or wounded? 
 Fifty days after the battle, no less than thirty 
 thousand are found stretched where their last 
 convulsions ended, and the whole plain is 
 strewn with half=buried carcasses of men and 
 horses, intermingled with garments dyed in 
 blood, and bones gnawed by dogs and vultures. 
 Who can follow the French army in its dismal 
 flight, avoiding the spear of the pursuing Cos- 
 sack only to sink beneath the sharper frost and 
 ice? " 
 
 And this is only a small part of our author's 
 description of the horrors of war, into which 
 we cannot enter further. It reminds one of 
 Dr. Franklin's fable of the young angel who 
 was desirous of knowing something of the 
 worlds in space. An elder angel guides him 
 from world to world. He expresses a desire to 
 see earth, and they reach it just as an awful 
 battle is being waged upon the sea. Ships, in- 
 stead of spreading the white wings of commerce 
 and bearing blessings to mankind, are engaged 
 in deadly conflict, and the sea is red with blood. 
 The young angel turning to his guide, exclaims: 
 " I asked you to show me earth, and you have 
 brought me to a sight of hell." 
 
 112 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 For an even more appalling description of 
 war given by one who has drained its cup of 
 bitterness to the last drop, I call your atten- 
 tion to that heart=rending story by Countess 
 Von Suttner. * Her father and her brother, 
 and, indeed, nearly all of their ancestors, were 
 imbued with the war spirit. They seemed to 
 find as much wild delight in discussing the 
 thrilling tales of war as did the Spartans of old. 
 The love of war was literally bred in the bone 
 and circulated in the blood. But the actual 
 reality of war began to dawn upon the Countess 
 when she heard her young husband rejoicing in 
 the "dashing, jolly, glorious" war with Sar- 
 dinia, which would give him another opportu- 
 nity to go to the front. " Great God," she ex- 
 claimed, "that would be terrible! Must you 
 go?" "I hope so," was his reply. "How can 
 you say that, how can you leave your wife and 
 child?" she said. Then for the first time in 
 her life she realized how much dearer was war 
 to the heart of her brilliant young husband 
 than even his sweet young wife, the Countess, 
 and her baby, both of whom he loved with pas- 
 sionate affection. When the ultimatum had 
 been ignored and her young husband was ready 
 to go, the experience was so heart=breaking, 
 that in her agony all of the old=time wonder 
 and glory of the battle=^field disappeared, and 
 she could see only the stern reality of brutal 
 
 ♦Ground Arms. 
 
 113 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 war. When that loved husband fell, her father 
 tried to comfort the young widow with such 
 words as these: "A state and an empire have 
 longer existence than individuals: and for the 
 existence and extension of these the individual 
 must be glad to die." " In war it is proper to 
 kill, to plunder, to destroy. In peace, thank 
 God, we have tender and loving hearts." 
 
 A description of that war as conveyed to her 
 by a letter reads somewhat as follows, the view 
 being from a lofty eminence: "The picture is 
 magnificent, giving all the effect without the 
 horrors, and disguising the realities. No flow- 
 ing blood, no death rattle, nothing but superb 
 effect of line and color. On the roads, long, 
 serpentine marching columns as far as the eye 
 can reach; upon the plains, regiment after regi- 
 ment of infantry, detachments of cavalry and 
 battalions. Stirring is the picture when on the 
 plains below we watch the onslaught and en- 
 gagement of two hostile forces, the glitter of 
 arms, the flashing of bayonets, the uniforms of all 
 sorts, excited, prancing horses, all in one mad 
 whirl of action; over this, clouds of dust so 
 thick that at times it veils all within it. At 
 times it rises and we catch a glimpse of the 
 struggling, fighting masses, then, as an accom- 
 paniment, echoing through the hills, the roar of 
 artillery, whose every shot means death — death. 
 Yea, and this is something to inspire a battle^ 
 song. It is something also for the writer of the 
 114 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 history of his time to have been upon the hilly 
 out'look." 
 
 An extract from a letter written by her second 
 husband, Frederick, reads thus: "What I have 
 seen to=day ! Nothing but scenes of agony and 
 horror 1 Why do others bring back from war 
 such fresh and wonderful experiences? They 
 do not attempt in their accounts to stick to 
 truth and nature, but paint scenes story-book 
 fashion, as is deemed heroic; the more horrible, 
 the more indifferently, the more shocking, the 
 more dispassionately the better. Of disappro- 
 bation, indignation, rebellion, not a word. Lift 
 up your hearts to God, and your heads against 
 the enemy, hurrah! " and here he pictures scenes 
 too horrible to be related. Moved by the 
 thought that her Frederick is wounded, the 
 Countess goes to the battle=field. The terrible 
 scenes which she relates cannot here be told. 
 The wounded and dying are too numerous to be 
 waited on, wounds are torn open again by the 
 bursting of shells around the sufferers. A hun- 
 dred wounded, helpless men are quartered in a 
 farmhouse; a shell bursts over it and all are 
 destroyed. Shrieks of despair arise, but all in 
 vain. There is something still more frightful 
 than the battle, and that is the scene after the 
 battle is over. We hear no thunder of cannon, 
 or roar of muskets, or roll of drums, or blasts of 
 trumpets. We hear the gasps and groans of 
 dying men. The trampled earth reeks with 
 
 116 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 ghastly, shimmering puddles. The villages are 
 laid in ruins and ashes, the trees charred and 
 destroyed, and upon this desolated spot lie thou- 
 sands and thousands of helpless dead and dying. 
 Not a blossom or a blade of grass is to be seen, 
 only bayonets, knapsacks, clothing, abandoned 
 caissons, and spiked cannon — near the cannon 
 the ground is bloodiest; there lie the largest 
 number of dead and dying. Horses wounded 
 attempt to rise, but fall back in helpless agony; 
 gullies are filled with mangled bodies; battle= 
 field hyenas rob the poor wounded victims, tear- 
 ing rings from their fingers and jerking boots 
 from the wounded bleeding feet of the sufferers 
 while they are still living. Her vision of the new= 
 made graves and the half=buried multitudes of 
 men with faces half shot off and bowels shot out, 
 no one to hand the dying or wounded even a 
 drink of water to cool their parched lips; the 
 sad sight of the pale, wan emperor, moving at 
 nightfall among the fresh made graves, with 
 heart breaking at the loss of his noble youth, as 
 he seemed to be saying to himself: " It might 
 have been avoided; without my consent it could 
 not have been. O God ! Why did I ever give 
 my consent to this!" is agonizing. 
 
 And so the sad scenes move before our vision 
 until son and husband are dead and in their 
 graves. Then is the old father's heart broken 
 also and he dies with the curse of war upon his 
 lips. The scene shifts to Paris where she be- 
 ne 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 comes an eye=witness to still more terrible 
 scenes. Hundreds lie dead and dying in the 
 streets; horseflesh is at a premium, and a 
 favorite elephant is slaughtered and sold at an 
 exorbitant price by the pound and by the 
 ounce. And the saddest of all is the fact that 
 these most cruel wars were thrust upon the 
 helpless people to satisfy the selfish, fiendish 
 ambition of a few designing, cruel, heartless 
 people — brutes in human form. 
 
 Let me recall the words of Channing:* " By 
 war we understand the resort of nations to 
 force, violence, and the most dreaded methods 
 of destruction and devastation. In war the 
 strength, skill, courage and resources of a whole 
 people are concentrated for the infliction of 
 pain and death. The bowels of the earth are 
 exploded, the most active elements combined, 
 the resources of art and nature exhausted to in- 
 crease the power of man in destroying his fel- 
 low creatures. Would you learn what destruc- 
 tion man, when thus aided, can spread around 
 him? Look then at that extensive region, deso- 
 lated, overspread with ruins; its forests rent, 
 as if blasted by lightning; its villages prostrated, 
 as if by an earthquake; its fields barren, as if 
 swept by storms. Not long ago the sun shone 
 on no happier spot, but ravaging armies plowed 
 over it; war frowned upon it; and its fruitful- 
 ness and happiness have fled. Her thousands 
 
 * Ohanning's Works. 
 
 117 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 and tens of thousands were gathered from dis- 
 tant provinces, not to embrace as brethren, but 
 to renounce the tie of brotherhood; and thou- 
 sands in the vigor of life, when least prepared 
 for death, were hewn down and scattered like 
 chaff before a whirlwind. Here are heaps of 
 slain, weltering in their own blood, their bodies 
 mangled, their limbs shattered, and almost every 
 vestige of human form and countenance des- 
 troyed. Here are multitudes trodden under 
 foot, and the war=horse has left the track of his 
 hoof on many a crushed and mutilated frame. 
 Here are several suflPerers; they live, but live 
 without hope or consolation. Justice dispatches 
 the criminal with a single stroke, but the victims 
 of war, falling by casual, undirected blows, often 
 expired in lingering agony, their deep groans 
 moving no compassion, their limbs writhing on 
 the earth with pain, their lips parched with a 
 burning thirst, their wounds open to the chill- 
 ing air, the memories of home rushing to their 
 minds, but not a voice of friendship or comfort 
 reaching their ears." 
 
 Second: Its demoralizing influences. You 
 claim that war is necessary in order to clear 
 up the moral atmosphere. Yes, when the open- 
 ing of the graves in our cemeteries will purify 
 the atmosphere around us, when poison in 
 the fountain will purify the stream, when 
 evil shall have been overcome of evil, then will 
 war serve as a purifier of the moral atmosphere. 
 118 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 This claim borders on the ridiculous. My 
 friend will soon make of war the universal 
 panacea for every human ill. The one who can 
 make war a purifier of the moral atmosphere 
 deserves to be classed as the great miracle= 
 worker of modern times. War has never had 
 such influence and never will until nature shall 
 have reversed her processes. Examples of the 
 opposite influence are to be seen on every hand. 
 Any one familiar with the workings of war as 
 they really are must know that its moral influence 
 is the greatest curse of all things connected 
 with the terrible scourge. War is in every re- 
 spect cruel in its nature, inhuman in its practise, 
 and grossly immoral in its influences. It has 
 not one redeeming quality; it is beastly and 
 rotten to the core. Look at the days of our own 
 Civil War. While thousands of our best boys 
 were literally rotting in prison, or dying on the 
 fields of battle, dissipation was never more rife 
 at home. Gambling flourished in its worst form, 
 and in that immoral atmosphere men pillaged 
 the Grovernment on every hand. Many of the 
 present ill=gotten fortunes were then begun in 
 gigantic contract frauds, and that idea of getting 
 rich by a scheme of gambling, or some of the 
 unholy methods of war=times, still lingers, 
 like ia virus, in the veins of public sentiment. 
 Listen once more to the strong words of 
 Channing: "Consider the influence of war on 
 the character of those who make it their trade. 
 
 119 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 They let themselves for slaughter, place them- 
 selves, servile instruments, passive machines, in 
 the hands of rulers, to execute the bloodiest 
 mandates without a thought of the justice of 
 the cause in which they are engaged. What a 
 school is this for human character? Prom men 
 trained in battle to ferocity, accustomed to the 
 perpetration of cruel deeds, accustomed to take 
 human life without sorrow or remorse, habitu- 
 ated to esteem an unthinking courage a substi- 
 tute for every virtue, encouraged by plunder to 
 prodigality, taught improvidence by perpetual 
 hazard and exposure, restrained only by an iron 
 discipline, which is withdrawn in peace and 
 unfitted by the restless and irregular career of 
 war for the calm and uniform pursuits of ordi- 
 nary life. From such men what ought to be 
 expected but contempt of human rights and of 
 the laws of God? From the nature of his 
 calling the soldier is almost driven to sport with 
 the thought of death, to defy and deride it, and, 
 of course, to banish the thought of that retri- 
 bution to which it leads. The influence of war 
 on the morals of society is always to be deplored; 
 the suspension of industry multiplies want, and 
 criminal modes of subsistence are the result of 
 this suffering. Commerce, shackled and en- 
 dangered, loses its upright and honorable charac- 
 ter and becomes a system for stratagem and 
 collusion. In war, the moral sentiments of a 
 community are perverted by the admiration of 
 
 120 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 military exploits. The milder virtues and 
 Christianity are eclipsed by the baleful luster 
 thrown around a ferocious courage. The dis- 
 interested and benignant, the merciful and 
 forgiving, those whom Jesus pronounced blessed 
 and honorable, must give place to the hero 
 whose character is stained not only with blood, 
 but sometimes with the foulest vices, but all 
 whose stains are washed away by victory. War 
 especially injures the moral feelings of a people 
 by making human nature cheap in their esti- 
 mation and human life of as little worth as that 
 of an insect or brute. It creates evil passions, 
 causing people to delight in the stories of 
 famine, pestilence, want, defeat and the most 
 dreadful scourges, which Providence sends on 
 a guilty world. The slaughter of thousands 
 of fellow beings, instead of awakening pity, 
 flushes them with delicious joy, illuminates 
 the city, and dissolves the whole country in 
 revelry and riots. Thus the heart of man is 
 hardened; his worst passions are nourished. 
 Were the prayers, or rather the curses, of war- 
 ring nations prevalent in heaven, the earth would 
 have long since become a desert; the human 
 race, with all their labors and improvements, 
 would have perished under the sentence of 
 universal extermination." 
 
 Third: Its absolute unfairness. War has 
 been defined as a " public armed contest between 
 nations under the sanction of International Law 
 
 121 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 for the purpose of eBtablishing justice between 
 them."* Lord Bacon speaks of war as "the 
 trials of the right when princes who acknowl- 
 edge no superior on earth shall put themselves 
 on the justice of Grod for the deciding of con- 
 troversies by such successes as it shall please 
 Him to give on either side." One of the earliest 
 and most popular forms of war was the " trial by 
 battle." All diflScult questions, whether of 
 property, or of right to an abbey, or even 
 theological disputes, were settled in this out- 
 rageous manner. The combatants were usually 
 hired for the occasion and the battle ground 
 was sought with great care. Quite frequently 
 an open space was reserved in a field, or near 
 some church, for the bloody quarrel. Through 
 the influence of the Lombard king, Liutprand, 
 and especially St. Louis of Prance, the " impious 
 law" was at last abolished, and trial by wit- 
 nesses established in its stead. The unfair 
 thing in this kind of trial, and that which led to 
 its condemnation and abolition, was the fact 
 that the innocent were made to suffer in the 
 place of the guilty. Now the same principle 
 applies to war and it is open to a like condem- 
 nation. In war the innocent suffer for the 
 guilty. We might have had some grounds for 
 rejoicing in the Spanish^ American War if those 
 who caused it had been made to suffer, but this 
 was not the case. Such is the demoralizing in- 
 
 ♦ Sumnei: Trae Orandeni ot a Nation. 
 122 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 flaenoe of war, but how in the nature of the 
 case can it be otherwise? How can a corrupt 
 tree bring forth good fruit? Remember also 
 that jealous revenge, or love of conquest, has 
 caused the bloodiest wars on record. We have 
 noticed, for example, that the War of the Eevolu- 
 tion of France was waged by King William for 
 the sole purpose of humbling the pride of Louis 
 XIV., and the War of the Spanish Succession was 
 thrust upon the people by Queen Anne for the 
 purpose of crowning with glory the Duke of 
 Marlborough. War is not the fault of the peo- 
 ple. The French are said to be an industrious 
 peace-loving people in general, and the French 
 wars have been waged to gratify the passionate 
 desire of young officers who were so ambitious 
 of rising to military glory. The war=^loving 
 element of France cherishes a secret desire to 
 restore the former glory of the empire— the 
 glory graven on monuments, public buildings, 
 boulevards, etc. For this cause she has been 
 willing to engage in war for a quibble of the 
 Monks or to assist the Jesuits, or to make an 
 expedition to Rome in defence of the Pope, or 
 to Mexico for the exaltation of the Latin races. 
 The same is true of Germany and Russia. The 
 German peasantry are said to be a peace4oving 
 people, but their rulers are fired with a burning 
 ambition to rise in military power and extend 
 their dominion to all lands. It has long been 
 the ambition of Russia to extend her boundaries 
 
 123 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 to the Kiver Danube and so make herself mis- 
 tress of the Eastern world and at last reach 
 Constantinople. But Austria and Hungary of 
 course oppose such a project, and thus con- 
 tention is kept alive. And it is through the 
 continuation of such desires and feelings on 
 the part of officers and nobility that Prance 
 cherishes such devotion for the army, such 
 hatred for Germany, and such bitter memory of 
 Waterloo. To the same cause may be attributed 
 Great Britain's determination to maintain some 
 of her ill=gotten possessions by the construction 
 of a navy equal in fighting power to that of 
 any other two nations in the world, and the 
 same may be truly said of Russia's aspiration 
 for supremacy in Asia and Southern Europe. 
 Hence the necessity for those great standing 
 armies in the old world. Every old nation is 
 thus burdened and bowed to earth. 
 
 The army is the center of iniquity, an instru- 
 ment of crime in the hands of government, a 
 demoralizing influence. It is an anachronism, 
 the organized absolutism of medseval ages pro- 
 jecting itself into our modern civilization. 
 Look at the influence of the army upon France, 
 not only upon her treasury but upon the charac- 
 ter of her citizens! Behold how it has defeated 
 civil righteousness and caricatured justice! 
 The army is France and France is the army and 
 soon there will be nothing else. The French 
 nation has become enslaved to the army, and 
 
 12i 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 will sometime be ground to powder beneath the 
 weight of its ponderous massiveness. Look at 
 the influence of the army upon Grermany, that 
 great camp of armed men, that war college of 
 the world, yea, and upon all nations of the Old 
 World that are groaning beneath the weight 
 which is fast becoming unbearable. 
 
 You say war is necessary in order to arouse 
 sleeping nations to a sense of activity and enter- 
 prise, and you cite Cuba, China and Japan as 
 examples. If I read history aright, the poor 
 Cubans have done little else than fight since the 
 days of Columbus. The long cruel centuries 
 of warfare begun by Cortes and Pizarro have 
 continued unbroken to the time of Weyler. 
 Whatever else the Cubans need, it is quite 
 evident that they have had more than enough 
 of war. So far as China is concerned, it might 
 not be the greatest injury that could come to 
 the world should she remain in perpetual sleep! 
 China, asleep in peace, is infinitely better than 
 China awake in war. In reference to Japan, I 
 will say only this, that her recent victory over 
 China seems to have made her drunk with pride 
 ever since, and her ambition to build a great 
 navy and to become equal in fighting power to 
 any modern nation is already imposing a burden 
 upon the people under which they will be 
 crushed ere long. 
 
 You say, furthermore, that if war is abolished 
 nothing else can take its place in the creation 
 
 12.5 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 of the heroic in man and in the nurture and 
 perfecting of patriotism. To this point I shall 
 reply in another place, but let me say here that 
 this is the greatest mistake imaginable. All 
 that is required is a change of motive. Let 
 man's chief desire be to aid his fellow man and 
 build him up rather than injure and tear him 
 down. Here is abundant opportunity for all that 
 is noblest and most heroic in our nature. This 
 is the law of God and the teaching of Jesus, 
 which are always as true as the stars and suns in 
 their courses. Whoever will but practise the 
 conflict of construction, will learn ere long that 
 "peace hath her victories no less renowned than 
 war." 
 
 Fourth: The destructive character of modern 
 warfare. The engines of modern warfare mean 
 absolute destruction. I know this has been 
 used as an argument in favor of peace. It has 
 been argued that since war is so destructive in 
 its nature, for that reason men will not desire to 
 engage in it. Preparation, it is claimed, is a 
 preventative rather than a promoter of war. 
 The more thoroughly a nation is armed, the less 
 cause it will have for going to war and the 
 safer it will be. But what if nations really do 
 go to war? They sometimes do. Nations 
 with these modern engines of destruction are 
 even now engaged in bitter • and fierce con- 
 test. And when men go to war they will use 
 the most effective engines of destruction avail- 
 126 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 able. This means the annihilation of the army 
 that is unfortunate enough to be first charged 
 upon. The infantry rifles will shoot, one hun- 
 dred times every four minutes, bullets that will 
 pierce sixty pine boards an inch thick, and kill 
 at a distance of one mile and a half. The 
 Maxim guns can fire seven hundred missiles a 
 minute, killing at a two=mile range. The Gat- 
 ling gun, with its electric motor, will discharge 
 eighteen hundred missiles of death every 
 minute. The heavy field'pieces will discharge 
 twenty^five six^pound projectiles a minute. 
 Troops cannot live or move in sight of such 
 weapons of destruction. The moment a regi- 
 ment appears in sight or begins to manuver, 
 it may immediately be swept out of existence 
 by the enemy. Such warfare is infinitely 
 different from what it was in the days of our 
 fathers. They went into battle with squirrel 
 guns, and such fighting as they did might be 
 considered mere sport as compared with war in 
 the face of these field=pieces, Gatling guns, 
 dynamite, and busting shells of death and 
 annihilation. 
 
 This phase of the subject has been handled in 
 a masterly manner in a recent book by Jean De 
 Block. Great preparation for war makes most 
 warriors restless for action. But if this foolish, 
 yea, insane, preparation for war in time of peace 
 is in any degree a preventative, it is not the less - 
 demoralizing, It weakens trust, it destroys 
 
 127 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 confidence. How can there be any real fellow- 
 ship between individuals who cannot trust 
 each other enough to meet unarmed? And 
 how can manhood be developed under such 
 conditions? What real fellowship can exist 
 between nations willing to advertise to the world 
 that they are not noble enough to trust each 
 other? To arm is to mistrust, to mistrust is to 
 betray a lack of confidence in man and faith in 
 God, and this is demoralizing. What can man 
 ever become while he lacks confidence? And 
 how can nations ever hope to rise in the scale 
 of being while they continue to arm to the 
 teeth and glare at each other in bull=dog 
 fashion? 
 
 THE poet's theme 
 
 (" What is the cause of the strange silence of 
 American poets concerning America's triumphs 
 on sea and land "?) 
 
 " Why should the poet of these pregnant times 
 Be asked to sing of war's unholy crimes f 
 To laud and eulogize the trade which thrives 
 On horrid holocausts of human lives? 
 Man was a fighting beast when earth was young, 
 And war the only theme when Homer sung. 
 'Twixt might and might the equal contest lay — 
 Not so the battles of our modern day. 
 Ah, there are worthier themes for poet's pen 
 In this great hour than bloody deeds of men 
 Or triumphs of one hero, (though he be 
 Deserving song for his humility). 
 The rights of many, not the worth of one, 
 The coming issues, not the battle done, 
 128 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 The awful opnlence and awful need, 
 
 The rise of brotherhood, the fall of greed, 
 
 The soul of man replete with God's own force, 
 
 The call: ' To heights,' and not the cry: ' To horse!' 
 
 Are there not better themes in this great age. 
 
 For pen of poet or for voice of sage. 
 
 Than those old tales of killing? Song is dumb 
 
 Only that greater song in time may come. 
 
 When comes the bard, he whom the world waits for. 
 
 He will not sing of war." 
 
 — Slla Wheeler Wilcox. 
 
 12a 
 
EXPANSION 
 
 And still, dear Brain, the facts remain — they 
 remain substantially as stated. Everything in 
 nature has eyoluted but the human heart — that 
 still remains deceitful and desperately wicked. 
 The trouble in your case is, as I have already 
 tried to point out, that you are dealing with an 
 ideal condition of society. Life is awful, life is 
 tragic, life is deceptive; it is full of conflicting 
 emotions, of heartaches, of enmity and murder- 
 ous intent. Man simply cannot trust his fellow 
 man — not even his dearest friend. These 
 dreadful influences, which seem to rise out of 
 eternity, at times take complete possession of us 
 all; and what are the nations but aggregations 
 of such wicked, cruel individuals, as we our- 
 selves are? For nations to disarm under such 
 conditions would be the veriest folly. I have 
 often said, with Sherman, that " War is hell," 
 but all is not misery and dissatisfaction, as you 
 declare. There is glory in it; there are 
 expressions of love and good=will which could 
 not be called forth in any other way; there are 
 songs, soul= thrilling and touching and sweet, 
 that only war could create. To sacrifice in a 
 noble cause is Godlike. It is always " sweet to 
 die for one's country." 
 
 130 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 I find myself agreeing with you on more 
 points and in a larger degree, however, than I 
 at first thought possible, and I now find myself 
 in substantial agreement with your last lecture 
 and therefore, there is little or nothing that 
 calls for reply. So I turn in this letter to another 
 phase of the subject which I have overlooked. 
 You have made frequent use of the terms 
 " imperialists " and " imperialism," as applied 
 to our occupancy of the Philippines. You have 
 condemned in strong language the idea of ex- 
 pansion, declaring that in expanding our do- 
 minion we have weakened and endangered our 
 national life, opening the way to other and 
 more dreadful complications. I find myself 
 entirely out of sympathy with these ideas. Our 
 occupancy of the Eastern Islands came in the 
 divine order of things. It was ours to deliver 
 them and it is ours to protect them. Having 
 released them from Spanish oppression, it would 
 have been worse than cruel to have abandoned 
 those helpless, half=enlightened, ill=treated 
 children of misfortune to their own destruction 
 or to the mercy of the merciless Spaniards. 
 Having wrested them from the bonds of the 
 cruel government, only one righteous Christian 
 thing remains, and that is to stand by and 
 protect them until they are able to govern 
 themselves. And, in regard to expansion, I am 
 sure, dear friend, that when you consider the 
 matter thoroughly, you will not wish to class 
 
 131 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 yourself among the anti=expansionists of Amer- 
 ican history. That men should oppose expan- 
 sion is not strange; they always have done so. 
 Many have always been opposed to that which 
 was for the best interest of mankind. Never- 
 theless, expansion has ever been the watchword 
 of the ages. 
 
 Abraham was an expansionist. God called 
 him to leave his narrow surroundings, his home 
 and kindred, and go out into a great, unknown 
 region, where his posterity was to become as 
 numberless as the sands of the sea and the 
 stars in the firmament. 
 
 Moses was an expansionist. He listened to a 
 call commanding him to bid adieu to the 
 beautiful palace of the Pharaohs and to lead 
 the oppressed Israelites out of the night of 
 Egyptian bondage into the land of liberty — 
 into a larger world of prosperity and happiness. 
 Inspired by this command he feared Pharaoh's 
 hosts as little as he feared the bulrushes on the 
 banks of the Nile. 
 
 Isaiah was an expansionist. He had a 
 glorious vision of a better world — a larger and 
 nobler humanity. " Lift up thine eyes round 
 about and see: all they gather themselves 
 together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come 
 from far and thy daughters shall be nursed at 
 thy side. Then thou shalt see, and flow to- 
 gether, and thine heart shall fear and be 
 enlarged; because the abundance of the sea 
 
 182 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the 
 Gentiles shall come unto thee. The multitude 
 of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of 
 Midian and Epha; all they from Sheba shall 
 come: they shall bring gold and incense; and 
 they shall show forth the praises of the Lord." 
 Again the same writer declares: "Ye shall go 
 out with joy and be led forth with peace: the 
 mountains and the hills shall break before you 
 into singing and all the trees of the field shall 
 clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall 
 come up the fir=tree and instead of the briar 
 shall come up the myrtle=tree: and it shall be to 
 the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign 
 that shall not be cut off." 
 
 The revelator of Patmos was an expansionist. 
 He beheld the new Jerusalem coming down 
 from above, which means a larger and a more 
 glorious world, regenerated and like unto 
 heaven. 
 
 Paul, the apostle, was an expansionist. His 
 aim was to carry the Gospel to Rome, and from 
 thence to the whole world. He declared that 
 there was no difference between the Jew and 
 the Greek, and that all nations, classes and 
 colors, were alike in the sight of the Creator. 
 
 Jesus himself was an expansionist. He said : 
 " Other sheep I have that are not of this fold." 
 " He that doeth the will of My Father which is 
 in heaven, the same is My brother and My sister 
 and My mother." And when He was sending 
 133 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 forth His disciples, He said: " Go, make dis- 
 ciples of all nations." His touching illustration 
 of what took place on the Jericho road shows 
 plainly- that in Jesus' thought all classes and 
 races of mankind are alike. 
 
 Our great poets have been expansionists, and 
 Tennyson was one of the greatest of these. 
 
 " For I doubt not, throngh the ages, 
 One unceasing purpose runs ; 
 And the thoughts of men aie broadened 
 With the process of the suns." 
 
 The heroes of the Reformation were expan- 
 sionists. They felt constrained to break with 
 the tyranny and superstition of the dark ages; 
 to place the Bible in the hands of the common 
 people, that they might study, understand, be- 
 lieve and worship, in accordance with en- 
 lightened reason and the dictates of their own 
 consciences. 
 
 Columbus was an expansionist. He felt 
 moved to cross the sea and bring to light a 
 great new continent. 
 
 Galileo was an expansionist. He saw a vision 
 of a new and more wonderful universe, with the 
 sun, and not the earth, as a center of a system 
 which was only a small part of the vast whole. 
 
 The Pilgrim Fathers were expansionists — ex- 
 pansionists in government and religious liberty. 
 They refused any longer to be dictated to in 
 matters of conscience by kings and potentates: 
 they sought liberty of worship and of goveru- 
 X34 
 
Put Up , Thy Sword 
 
 ment: and for this cause they cut clear from the 
 old world and steered their barque toward the 
 new. 
 
 " Laws, freedom, truth, and faith in God, 
 Game with those exiles o'er the waves." 
 
 Lowell was an expansionist, as he claimed we 
 all should be. 
 
 (( !l 
 
 Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves 
 
 Of a legendary virtue carved upon our father's 
 
 graves." 
 
 "Lol before us gleams her camp»fires; we ourselves 
 
 must pilgrims be; 
 
 Launch our Mayflower and steer boldly through the 
 
 desperate, wintry sea, 
 Nor attempt the future's portal with the past's bloods 
 rusty key." 
 
 Jefferson was an expansionist and for that 
 cause our nation has not ceased to thank heaven. 
 When Napoleon was about to engage in that 
 awful contest with England, the whole of Loui- 
 siana, including New Orleans, was in the posses- 
 sion of France. Napoleon, fearing that England 
 would send a fleet and seize it, offered to dispose 
 of the immense territory for the paltry sum of 
 fifteen million dollars, or two cents an acre. 
 President Jefferson saw his great opportunity, 
 and made the purchase, although in the face of 
 the strongest protests. Men like Mr. Quincy 
 condemned such action, declaring that it was 
 unconstitutional, and that the natural boundaries 
 of the United States on the west were the 
 Rocky Mountains; that the addition of this vast 
 territory, embracing a seaboard of fifteen hun- 
 
 135 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 dred miles, and including a race of "Anglo=His- 
 pano=Gallo= Americans, who bask in the sands of 
 the Mississippi," would be an injury to the wel- 
 fare of this country from which it might never 
 recover. The majority ruled; however, Jeffer- 
 son's opinion prevailed; and he thus achieved 
 one of the greatest acts of statesmanship in his 
 grand career, for this purchase not only settled 
 the matter with France, but prevented England 
 from getting control, and gave us the great West 
 beyond the Mississippi, besides giving us New 
 Orleans. It gave us a million square miles, or 
 six hundred million of acres, thus more than 
 doubling the area of the United States. 
 
 Dr. Marcus Whitman was an expansionist. 
 After the Louisiana Purchase, when Congress, 
 under President Polk, had decided to annex 
 Texas, the question arose as to what should be 
 done with this vast country called Oregon, west 
 of the Rocky Mountains and reaching to Alaska. 
 The English would likely have gotten posses- 
 sion of it, had it not been for the indomitable 
 energy and far=sightedness of our noble mission- 
 ary, Marcus Whitman, who was then laboring 
 at Walla Walla. The story of his long journey 
 over four thousand miles on horseback, in the 
 midst of terrible suffering, storms and torrents, 
 starvation, sickness and wild Indians, is famil- 
 iar, and how he was enabled to reach Congress 
 in time to save this great territory to the United 
 States. We have conquered the Philippines, 
 
 136 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 and, according to the principles of International 
 Law, they have become our rightful possessions. 
 We must defend the defenseless; we cannot 
 leave these poor creatures to their own destruc- 
 tion. They are not able to govern themselves; 
 it is our right to govern them until they are. 
 AH opposition to expansion in the past has 
 therefore been mistaken and absurd. 
 Kipling has expressed it well: 
 
 " Take up the white man's harden, 
 
 Send forth the best ye breed; 
 Go bind your sons to exile, 
 
 To serve your oaptives' need; 
 To wait in heavy harness. 
 
 On fluttered folk and wild; 
 Your new^caught, sullen peoples, 
 
 Half devil and half child." 
 
 187 
 
XI 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE WAR SYSTEM 
 
 Dear Brawn: — find myself in hearty agree- 
 ment with your ideas on expansion, in the 
 main, and I thank you for what your instructive 
 letter has done toward clearing up my thought 
 in this direction. No, I do not care to be 
 classed among anti=expansionists, but I must 
 still insist that it is not in great extent of terri- 
 tory that a nation's true greatness consists. You 
 speak of the evil of human nature. It is un- 
 questionably so. There are all the evils which 
 you mention, and more, but I rejoice to believe 
 that there is good enough to counteract and 
 overcome the evil. We are commanded to " be 
 not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with 
 good." The war system has had no small part 
 in generating this fighting, quarrelsome dispo- 
 sition which has caused the unhappiness and 
 destruction of humanity in the ages past. Here 
 is a boy with a fighting nature. Some are ig- 
 norant enough to say, " Let him fight it out," 
 but that is absurd. Every fight strikes the 
 fighting desire deeper and deeper into his 
 nature — the more he fights the more he wants 
 to. Fighting will devilize, but it will never 
 humanize, the boy. Or here is a young fellow 
 
 138 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 with a desire for drink: what then? "O, just 
 let him drink it out." Indeed! When did the 
 drink habit ever work in that way? A fire 
 bursts out in the center of your dwelling. What 
 are you going to do? Nothing, just let it burn 
 out. But how much is going to remain after 
 the burning=out process is over? All this is 
 just as reasonable as an attempt to fight the war= 
 spirit out of the nations by keeping them at it. 
 War does not so act upon the nations. The 
 more they fight the more they want to, and the 
 more cause will they have for fighting. Every 
 war and every quarrel of any kind sows the seed 
 of contention and hatred and strife, which are 
 sure to yield fruit after their kind. War makes 
 wars, and wars make hell. 
 
 Second, in reply to your inquiry as to why 
 this war nature exists, has always existed, and 
 is not essentially different to=day from what it 
 was in the dark ages. Let me explain to you 
 just why it is so. You claim that it is a God= 
 ordained element in our nature, by which, 
 coming into conflict with the good, man is dis- 
 ciplined, developed, and perfected; that it acts 
 as the positive and negative poles, by means of 
 which all that is good and precious in life and 
 thought is born into the world. Then one of 
 the poles must necessarily be evil; one side of 
 life must needs be bad. This is an old doctrine 
 which most sensible people have ceased long 
 since to believe If this were true the devil 
 139 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 would fill just as honorable a place in the uni- 
 verse as God Himself. Study this theory hon- 
 estly and earnestly and see where it will land 
 you — in fatalism and inevitable disaster. 
 
 The war system of to=day is the result of false 
 education — the ripened fruit of evil sowing. 
 Man has been misguided: human energy and 
 thought have been directed in wrong channels: 
 men should have grown up through higher 
 thought into nobler living, and thus help one 
 another as the angels in heaven do. Instead of 
 this they have been taught to hate, to plunder, 
 and to destroy one another. How has this false 
 training been promoted? It was born and nur- 
 tured in savagery. We may not be able to de- 
 termine how far back those rude, brutal children 
 of men and nature began to disagree, but some- 
 where, sometime, and for some cause, they came 
 to blows. That was the beginning of war. 
 Soon fists were intensified by stones, and arms 
 by rude spears. At last it was not only indi- 
 vidual against individual, but clan against clan, 
 and tribe against tribe. Of course they had to 
 compete with each other as best they could in 
 the production of the most deadly weapons and 
 in the most effective use of them. Thus war 
 became a business and the war system continued 
 to become more perfect. At last music, glitter- 
 ing armor and beautiful uniforms were added as 
 a means of counteracting the horrors of war. 
 Now man is so constituted that he comes to love 
 140 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 those things which he is taught to love, and to 
 hate those things which he is taught to hate. 
 So men have grown to be lovers of war: not so 
 much lovers of the real fighting part, perhaps, 
 as of the pomp and glitter and imagined honor 
 which has been thrown around the cruel thing. 
 As humanity advanced, and men grew to be lov- 
 ers of greatness and worshipers of heroes, a false 
 standard of greatness was created by war; and 
 as love for beautiful women has ever been the 
 chief source of inspiration to the hero, and since 
 women have become lovers and worshipers of 
 the heroes of battle, so war has become the chief 
 attraction for the ambitious youth; and the 
 whole war=system has in this way reached its 
 present height of perfection. 
 
 In the early heroic days of Greece and Rome, 
 children were literally nurtured on the thrilling 
 tales of savage wars. The command of the 
 Spartan mother to her son, as he was departing 
 for the battle was, that either he must return 
 "with the shield or upon it." In the song, 
 " Bingen on the Rhine," a soldier gives us the 
 impressions which in childhood days he received 
 from his father, I think it runs like this: 
 
 " And in those young and tender years. 
 
 When I was but a child, 
 My heart leaped forth to hear him tell 
 
 Of battles fierce and wild; 
 And when he died and left us 
 
 To divide the scanty horde, 
 I let them take whate'er they \roTild, 
 
 But kept my father's sword. 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 And with boyish love I hung It 
 
 Where the bright light used to shine, 
 
 On the cottage walls of Bingen, 
 Of Bingen on the Rhine." 
 
 Such influences have been instilled into the 
 minds of children from time immemorial, even 
 to the present day, not by fathers only, but by 
 their mothers as well. " The voice of man is 
 yet given to martial praise, and the honors of 
 victory are chanted even by the lips of women. 
 The mother rocking the infant on her knee 
 stamps the image of war upon his tender mind, 
 at the age more impressionable than wax; she 
 nurses his slumber with its music, fills his wak- 
 ing hours with its stories, and selects for his 
 playthings the drum and sword. From the 
 child is formed the man; and who can weigh 
 the influence of a mother's spirit upon the opin- 
 ions of his life? The hand which trains the 
 child is like the hand at the end of a long lever: 
 a gentle effort suffices to heave the enormous 
 weight of succeeding years. As the boy ad- 
 vances to youth he is fed, like Achilles, not on 
 honey and milk only, but on bear's marrow and 
 lions' hearts; he draws the nutriment of his soul 
 from a literature whose beautiful fields are 
 moistened by human blood. Pain would I offer 
 my tribute to the father of poetry, standing 
 with harp of immortal melody on the mountains 
 top of distant Antiquity — to those stories of 
 courage and sacrifice which emblazon the an- 
 nals of Greece and Rome — to the fulminations 
 
 142 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 of Demosthenes and the splendors of TuUy — 
 to the sweet verse of Virgil and the poetic prose 
 of Livy; fain would I offer my tribute to the 
 new literature, which shot up in modern times 
 as a vigorous forest from the burned site of 
 ancient woods — to the passionate song of the 
 troubadour in France and the minnesinger in 
 Germany — to the thrilling ballad of Spain and 
 the delicate music of the Italian lyre: but from 
 all these has breathed the breath of War that 
 has swept the heart-strings of men in all the 
 thronging generations." * 
 
 The child mind is plastic and impressionable; 
 the stream of life is directed from its fountain. 
 
 " Time its impressions stronger makes 
 And streams their channels deeper wear." 
 
 Thus channels of thought are determined and 
 habits are formed. War has plowed its bloody 
 furrows through suffering humanity until peo- 
 ple have come foolishly to feel that it is a part 
 of our national existence, an indispensable 
 necessity. But no greater fallacy has ever 
 inflicted its deceptive and destructive influence 
 on the minds of men. That men should be 
 lovers of conquest is clearly the result of an 
 abnormal condition of life. No sane man can 
 believe in it, no just and good God can be its 
 author, and no righteous man its defender. 
 
 Third, in reply to your question as to what 
 shall take the place of war in the settlement of 
 ♦ Sumner. Trne Gran deur of a Nation. 
 143 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 those diflBculties which arise between nations. 
 I reply, a court of arbitration such as shall meet 
 the approval of all nations. But such a method, 
 you insist, could not give universal satisfaction 
 at this time — and would not therefore be at all 
 practicable. I do not quite understand what 
 you mean by the phrase, " this time." Surely 
 this time is not essentially different from most 
 other times. You seem to indicate that ar- 
 bitration has been almost, if not entirely, a, fail- 
 ure. On the contrary, no project for the settle- 
 ment of differences between men and nations 
 has had a more effective or a more commendable 
 history for the time it has existed. According 
 to Mr. Trueblood* it has been a hundred years 
 in practise, during which time it has settled 
 over one hundred difficult questions with entire 
 satisfaction. " Wherever it has been applied," 
 says Mr. Trueblood, " it has succeeded; there is 
 not a real exception to be noted. The cases 
 which it has settled have stayed settled; not 
 even the ghost of such a case has ever arisen to 
 disturb anybody's tranquility; it has been tried 
 by thirtyone nations great and small, in the 
 Old World and the New, the United States and 
 Great Britain leading, the former with about 
 half the whole number of cases, ' the latter with 
 nearly one=third." The Court of Arbitration 
 here described is not however the kind that I 
 shall advocate. Of course it is good and has 
 * The Federation of the World. 
 Ill 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 done good, but there is one that is infinitely 
 better, simpler and more to be desired. This 
 one has always been at our disposal and when 
 we shall learn to apply it to nations as well as 
 to individuals, all wrongs shall be righted, and 
 the evil source, out of which all disputes and all 
 wars arise, destroyed. The world will be better, 
 for it ought to be; man shall live in peace with 
 his fellow man, for this is what he ought to ,do; 
 man shall help his brother, and each shall seek 
 the good of the other, for this is man's plain 
 duty. Then shall our little war=cursed planet 
 be what Grod designed it should be, and what 
 He would have us make it — an emblem of 
 heaven and not of hell. Then shall " righteous- 
 ness spring out of the earth and joy shall look 
 down from heaven." 
 
 145 
 
XII 
 
 THE PROBLEM SIMPLIFIED 
 
 Dear Brain: — Discussion of the great prob- 
 lems of human life and destiny may be classed 
 under a two=f old division, namely, what has been 
 and is: what might have been and may be. 
 
 This two=fold division suggests two classes of 
 thinkers, and two lines of thought: first, those 
 who seem to believe that everything that has 
 ever occurred in the world has taken place ac- 
 cording to fixed and unalterable laws over which 
 man has had absolutely no control; second, the 
 larger number who believe in man as a free 
 moral agent endowed with power of choice, and 
 therefore able to subdue the forces of nature 
 and to stand triumphant above them. 
 
 The first view may, in its extremest form, be 
 called fatalism. This makes man the victim of 
 a merciless plan, the subject of an arbitrary rul- 
 ing. If the world happens to go well with him, 
 if fortune smiles upon his pathway, then for 
 him, at least, life may be worth the living, 
 But if he is destined to fall beneath the grind- 
 ing wheels of fate, then is he utterly powerless 
 to change the sad condition, and the only spark 
 ofcomfort that life can possibly hold for him 
 is his ability to take himself out of it. 
 
 116 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 This kind of God is only sovereignty and law. 
 His laws are greater than their maker because 
 He is powerless to change them. He has set 
 His world agoing, then has withdrawn from it 
 and left it to go on and on forever, grinding out 
 something that may be for His own glory. Ac- 
 cording to this view, all wars and pestilence 
 and famine, and every kind of cruelty that the 
 world has kaown, have been prearranged and 
 definitely planned. Human volition is pre- 
 determined by antecedent causes, acting by 
 necessity. Of course this doctrine takes various 
 forms and includes various shades of thinkers, 
 among whom are those who believe that the 
 plan is a good one made by a good being and 
 will come out all right in the end; others who 
 believe that it is cruel, that life is an imposition, 
 something that would have been contrary to our 
 wishes had we been consulted in regard to it. 
 
 Now if we include such a cruel thing as war 
 in God's original plan, how are we going to har- 
 monize it with Infinite goodness? If war is 
 evil in its nature it must have had an evil origin 
 and cannot therefore have been of God. On 
 the other hand, if we leave war out of God's 
 plan on the ground that it is cruel and evil in 
 its nature and in its results, how are we going 
 to account for its existence through the cen- 
 turies, and how are we going to dispose of the 
 wars of the Old Testament? If we take this 
 position, insurmountable difficulties confront 
 
 117 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 us. One is, that the human race has been per- 
 mitted to go contrary to the will of the Creator 
 through all the centuries past; the other, that 
 the prophets and all the inspired writers of the 
 Old Testament have not spoken truly. You 
 can thus see where such a view, carried to a 
 logical conclusion, will land one — in utter un- 
 belief in the inspiration of the Bible, and in- 
 evitable denial of the omnipotence and overru- 
 ling power of the Almighty. But now you ask 
 if we abandon this position as impossible, are 
 not we still confronted by grave difficulties? 
 How can we believe in the God of battles, how 
 can we believe in the wars of the Old Testa- 
 ment as having been sanctioned and conducted 
 by Jehovah? How can we believe in the Fa- 
 ther who would not only permit, but aid, one 
 portion of his children in triumphing over 
 another portion in such cruel conflicts as are re- 
 corded in the Old Testament; and how can we 
 believe in the God who has not only permitted 
 the bloody conflicts of history, on land and sea, 
 but who seems to have answered the prayers of 
 those whose cause was just, in granting victo- 
 ries to their armies? 
 
 To these profound questions I apply the 
 scientific method, namely: I seek to discover 
 the simplest and most reasonable explanation. 
 What God should do becomes a question of 
 what I would do if I were in His stead, and 
 what God has planned for the human race be- 
 ns 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 comes a question of what I should plan were it 
 possible for me to create a similar world, people 
 it with similar beings and launch it upon its 
 wondrous journey. We know God by our bet- 
 ter selves, for every man's God is but an en- 
 larged edition of himself; and are not God's 
 forethought and final purposes toward hu- 
 manity our own best and noblest thoughts 
 in the interests of mankind infinitely ex- 
 tended? 
 
 In order to understand the meaning and pur- 
 poses of war, and in order to justify the Al- 
 mighty in permitting it, we must needs admit 
 into our discussion an important factor, namely, 
 the disobedience and fall of man. This I state, 
 not as a theological dogma, but as an historic 
 fact — a fact that is too plain to be overlooked, 
 for it is being illustrated all around us and in 
 our own individual experiences. Man has been 
 disobedient, and war is one of the sad fruits of 
 that disobedience. This does not solve the 
 problem but it simplifies it; it does not remove 
 the mystery but it does diminish it. Take, for 
 example, two families who are brought up side 
 by side, with equal advantages, equal opportu- 
 nities and equal temptations. In the one case 
 the entire family puts forth the best possible 
 effort, they overcome, and rise to positions of 
 trust and honor, thus making life happy for 
 themselves and bringing gladness and rejoicing 
 to the hearts of the parents. But the other 
 
 149 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 family proves to be disobedient, does not strive 
 to overcome or to rise in the scale of being; 
 hence they fall into sin and crime and so find 
 themselves struggling in the midst of a thorny 
 and thistly world where their struggles are hard 
 and their punishments severe. Between the 
 two families there is an infinite difference. We 
 can see what one might have been by observ- 
 ing what the other is. And yet they are not 
 forsaken or cast off. The father's heart is made 
 warm toward them by the intensity of his 
 grief. They must be punished, but in the 
 midst of punishment he stands by them to 
 strengthen and to aid them all he can. It 
 would have been infinitely better had they not 
 gone astray, but having disobeyed and having 
 gone astray, other and different means must 
 now be permitted; they must be punished to 
 the end that they may be redeemed. 
 
 The human race has been disobedient. War 
 is one of the sad results of that disobedience. 
 God permits what He did not originally plan 
 for; He permits this awful discipline, though 
 it pains and wrings the Infinite heart. He 
 guides His children through the grief and sor- 
 row which disobedience has brought upon them; 
 He would not be a true Father could He do 
 otherwise. And therefore the wars of the Old 
 Testament were sanctioned and guided by Him. 
 He interposed in behalf of those whose cause 
 was righteous. He turned the tide of battle 
 
 160 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 against the enemies of His people and of right- 
 eousness, not because He sought their destruc- 
 tion or gloried in their downfall, but rather be- 
 cause He desired that they should repent and 
 turn unto Him and live. And the same has 
 been true of every righteous war in history, 
 until the present time. God has permitted 
 them for such a wise purpose; and surely every 
 sensible person will admit that His plans have 
 been extended and His mission fulfilled by 
 means of war, in a manner that could not have 
 been accomplished in any other way. But war 
 certainly is wrong when it could have been 
 avoided. This I now see more clearly than 
 ever. That it is a crime for nations which 
 have reached a high degree of civilization and 
 Christian culture to settle their differences by 
 a resort to bloody conflict when they are ca- 
 pable of settling such contentions infinitely bet- 
 ter by peaceful methods, I gladly admit. The 
 nations are coming gradually to recognize this 
 as they advance in the scale of being, and so 
 they are resorting less and less to the use of 
 arms. But they reach this position only in the 
 hard processes of human development. The 
 real purpose of weapons of war is to teach peo- 
 ple how to do without them. Human nature 
 cannot be forced or driven — it must learn 
 through bitter experience. 
 
 No longer do I base my argument on the ex- 
 istence of a conflict in nature. Your treatment 
 
 151 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 of that part of the subject has convinced me 
 that harmony rather than conflict is the chief 
 characteristic of God's handiwork. But you 
 have enabled me to reach this more practical 
 position which I am sure you must necessarily 
 accept. All the evils of this cruel tragic world 
 are the sad result of man's disobedience and 
 armed force is a God ordained means of hold- 
 ing evil in check and protecting society until 
 poor prodigal, humanity shall come again unto 
 that holy and happy condition from which it 
 has departed. 
 
 If what I have said in this letter is true, then 
 must your position seem to be more disastrous 
 than ever. Your claim that all wars are wrong 
 and contrary to the will of God casts discredit 
 upon the holy prophets and inspired writers, 
 who claim to have revealed the will of God to 
 man. And your assertion that those writers 
 only thought that they were interpreting God's 
 mind to man, but were really reading their own 
 will and their own human ideas and nature 
 into the Divine Record to such a degree as to de- 
 stroy its divinity, making it the will of man 
 rather than of God, destroys for me the inspira- 
 tion of the Bible entirely; for if I do not know 
 when it is that God is speaking, or when it is 
 that man is speaking, then must I be in doubt 
 as to wl;iat is man's and what is God's; what is 
 inspired or what is not; and the Holy Book is 
 no safe guide for me. Just think of what such 
 
 152 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 a position involves and where it must neces- 
 sarily lead the one who holds it — into endless 
 difficulty, confusion, scepticism, and inevitable 
 despair. Bbawn. 
 
 163 
 
XIII 
 
 WHERE THE BLAME BELONGS 
 
 At this juncture we dismiss our fictitious 
 characters, Brawn and Brain. They have 
 served our purpose well. Brawn, on account 
 of pressing engagements at home, finds himself 
 unable to continue the discussion. That 
 is not strange. With all he has on hand 
 it would be quite unfair to expect him to con- 
 tinue; and what more could we hope for from 
 any man on that side of the subject? He has 
 certainly made the most of a weak case; the 
 cause of war has surely found in him an able 
 advocate. He marshalled his arguments as a 
 general would marshal his soldiers, and he has 
 fought bravely to the end. He started in with 
 a consciousness of triumphant success. But we 
 have seen him weaken at many a point as he 
 was brought face to face with the other side of 
 this great truth which he had not analyzed or 
 thought of before. So we have noticed with 
 delight how our honored friend has been led to 
 make one admission after another until at last 
 he reached a medium position, but we can read 
 between the lines the short and blessed story of 
 complete surrender. Forced to abandon his ar- 
 gument based on war in nature, which argu- 
 ment he considered "unanswerable," and no 
 16i 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 longer able to maintain his theory by the au- 
 thority of Scripture, he falls back, as a last 
 resort, upon an old theological dogma— the 
 " Fall of Man." And in this he finds sufficient 
 cause for all the wars that have cursed the 
 world. That all wars and all other evils are 
 due to man's disobedience is not denied. But 
 why should men and nations continue to be 
 disobedient ? Why don't they become obedient ? 
 Why do they continue to fall? Why don't they 
 rise in the scale of being and so lift others with 
 themselves? But I do not consider this last 
 argument of Brawn's to be of sufficient weight to 
 merit an extended reply. In all his discussion, 
 however, Mr. Brawn has surely shown a fair 
 Christian spirit, and absolute honesty. His set- 
 ting forth of evidence from the war point of view 
 has certainly been masterly; but as war is built 
 up and sustained upon the basis of a false phi- 
 losophy, so our good friend has come at last to 
 realize, by his own independent thought rather 
 than by our instruction, that the evidence em- 
 ployed in the defense of the war system must 
 likewise rest upon the basis of a false philoso- 
 phy; and the same result must come to all who 
 will study the subject as thoroughly, and deal 
 with it as honestly as Mr. Brawn has done. 
 Grod grant that every Brawn may meet his 
 Brain ere long! 
 
 And now I proceed to place the blame where 
 it most truly belongs, namely, upon the Ohris- 
 
 155 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 tian Church, minister, teacher, statesman and 
 editor. The Church and ministry of this 
 age have so far departed from the spirit of 
 Christ in teaching and example, that it be- 
 comes exceedingly difficult for a close student 
 to discover on just what grounds we may lay 
 claims to being the Church and ministry of 
 Jesus Christ, I limit this part, however, 
 strictly to the theme under discussion. Upon 
 what grounds can the Church and the ministry 
 of Jesus lend their approval to the cruel war 
 system by which the minds and hearts of so 
 many of even Christ's professed followers have 
 become imbued and intoxicated? Certainly 
 not on the grounds of Jesus' teaching, or His 
 example. No straw of evidence can there be- 
 found in favor of war in any form or under any 
 condition whatsoever. 
 
 Look at the sweet picture of the early Church. 
 Oh that we could enjoy such fellowship to»day! 
 It was Christian, the only Christian Church 
 that the world has ever seen; it was indeed the 
 society of Jesus; He was its center, and His 
 spirit was its life. As all the roots of the tree 
 take up their nourishment into one stem; as all 
 the rivers of the earth pour their waters into 
 one sea; as all the veins of the body empty 
 themselves into one heart, from whence the tide 
 of blood, borne along the bounding arteries, is 
 returned again and yet again to be distributed 
 to every member according to its need, so was 
 
 1S6 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 it in the early Church. All things were held in 
 common — for the good of all; it was a mutual 
 society in which no one made claims to absolute 
 ownership of anything, but all was for the com- 
 mon good. Think of those sweet characters 
 such as Felicita, and Perpetua, Ignatius, and 
 Polycarp. How the true spirit of Jesus was 
 revealed in that humble, sweet, Church life; 
 how it attracted and conquered kings as well as 
 princes; the warrior unsheathed his sword at 
 the altar of self=sacrificing devotion, and the 
 king knelt in humble submission to Jesus the 
 King of Kings. Glorious triumph, that the 
 emperor should one day declare Christianity 
 the religion of the empire! But since that time 
 the real Church of Christ has not been seen; its 
 members became absorbed in earthly power, 
 wealth, and splendor; and the battle=song has 
 been even sweeter than the psalm of praise. 
 And so imbued were men, like even the great, 
 good Constantine, with the spirit of war, that 
 the vision of the cross, as it blazed in the sky, 
 was to him a symbol of triumph in the literal 
 fight; and the words, "In this sign conquer," 
 were thought to mean the conquering of their 
 enemies in literal warfare. But such is not, 
 nor ever was, the true meaning of the cross of 
 Christ. The cross is a symbol of suffering, of 
 endurance, of patience, of self=sacrifice and 
 death, and these are the forces which always 
 conquer in the end. 
 
 157 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 So, bishops and popes became the heads of 
 armies, clanking their golden spurs through the 
 streets of Cologne, or thundering the praises of 
 warriors at the holy Vatican, and the Protestant 
 ministry has followed in their footsteps. Too 
 often is the Christian pulpit desecrated even 
 to'day by the voice of some yellow preacher who, 
 under the guise of patriotism, bids for the ap- 
 proval of those lovers of gore, by advocating war 
 with some nation whose conduct he declares 
 has been very impolite. I have heard the yel- 
 low preacher advocating war between England 
 and America on account of the little Venezue- 
 lan ruffle. Think of a war between England 
 and America! What unspeakable calamity 
 would that be for the whole world! But the 
 fact that one is at liberty to advocate such a 
 calamity in the Christian pulpit of to=day is 
 still more to be deplored. The yellow 
 preacher — what a pest he is! He loves to be 
 heard far and loud. He love3 recognition, and 
 is willing to have it even at the expense of war. 
 He works hand in hand with the yellow press, 
 and obtains many flattering notices from the 
 editor, who secretly despises him. The yellow 
 press and the yellow pulpit are continually call- 
 ing for the redress of some national wrong — 
 usually an imaginary one. There are ministers 
 who take delight in making their own nation 
 compel some other, or, in fact, all others to lick 
 the dust in the presence of the congregation, 
 158 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 They often create a ripple of applavise from a 
 portion of their hearers, and even the older ones 
 show a wonderful power of endurance. Would 
 it be irreverent to inquire whether these dear old 
 saints do not at times enjoy such exhibitions 
 of bold, courageous, (?) outspoken patriotism? 
 Perhaps it would. But appearance has a lan- 
 guage which we cannot help interpreting. Quite 
 often such a man receives much praise, and he 
 acquires the name of being a courageous, out- 
 spoken, brave fellow; one who is not afraid to 
 tell what he believes; a man of great learning 
 and stalwart courage. Such men, for such rea- 
 sons, receive praise even from Christians, be- 
 cause the Christian Church is still so unchrist- 
 like. But from the higher or more Chriatlike 
 type of Christians, and from the higher order of 
 Christ's ministers, we expect better things. 
 
 How may this sentiment be changed. First, 
 the change must begin where every good and 
 precious thing begins — in childhood. This is 
 the province of the mother. Let her cease to 
 lull the babe to sleep with war=songs; let her 
 cease to purchase little implements of war — the 
 toy drum, swords and bugles, and the like — for 
 the amusement of the little child; let her know 
 that there is a higher life and a nobler calling 
 than that of the soldier for her boy to follow. 
 He serves his country best who serves it out of 
 armor. He who dies for his country does well, 
 but he who lives for it does better. To become 
 
 159 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 an excellent swordsman is only a cheap thing at 
 best, but to become a hero of peace, a savior of 
 life, a benefactor of mankind, this, this is brave, 
 heroic, Ohristlike, and no higher achievement 
 can ever be recorded in the annals of the world. 
 Great is the sphere of the mother's influence! 
 Let it be for good. Let her remember that 
 " the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand 
 that rules the world." The child will rally 
 around the standard of the mother; what is 
 greatest in her thought will always be greatest 
 in his. In the words of Fanny J. Crosby: 
 
 " O woudrons power, how little understood; 
 Entrusted to the mother's mind alone, 
 To fashion genius to the sonl for good!" 
 
 Second, in education. Here I shall consider 
 the school teachers and the books. Many of 
 our school books are still generative of the war» 
 loving spirit which, in embryo at least, exists in 
 the nature of every child. Heroes of carnal 
 warfare still hold the most important place in 
 the curriculum of modern education. Children 
 are required to study battle=fields with their 
 degrading scenes of carnage, blood and death. 
 Men of war are quite frequently invited to 
 address school children, and quite often they 
 will choose scenes of bloody conflict which 
 have become a part of a warrior's life. Thus 
 the highest ambition of many a youth has been 
 excited and aroused to become a soldier that he 
 may, at last, become a general. And here, too, 
 160 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 the teacher is quite often at fault. It is true 
 that the teacher cannot revise the school books, 
 or erase those injurious things from their pages, 
 but he can do considerable to avoid that which 
 is injurious. Any teacher who would select 
 such a reading as " Sparticus to the Gladiators " 
 as a proper oration for one of his pupils to 
 recite at some public contest, ought to be 
 ashamed. We blot out all that is considered 
 injurious before we place the newspapers in the 
 hands of our prisoners to read. Would it not 
 be well to adopt the same method with the text= 
 books of to=day? Let it be the teacher's prin- 
 cipal mission to stamp upon the heart and 
 mind of each child the truth of a grand old 
 text=book too much neglected: " He that is slow 
 to anger is greater than the mighty; and he 
 that ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a 
 city." 
 
 Third, the Church and the ministry have sadly 
 departed from Christ's teaching and spirit in 
 this matter, as has been already shown. Prom 
 the lower grades of church=members and the 
 lower types of ministers we may not hope for a 
 much better condition for a long time to come. 
 Multitudes will continue to court and to applaud 
 the coarsest kind of harangue by the coarsest 
 grades of preachers, if only it bears, or seems to 
 bear, the stamp of patriotism upon it — patriot- 
 ism falsely so called — patriotism, that much 
 abused term — patriotism, which needs to be 
 
 161 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 lifted out of the filth and mire into which its 
 murderers have trampled it. There are two 
 kinds of patriotism. One is the kind that 
 would influence a nation to separate itself from 
 all other nations, and set itself against all others; 
 to rise by putting all others down; to build 
 itself upon the ruins of those whom it would 
 destroy for that purpose. This is the patriot- 
 ism of the jingo. It creates jealousy; it gener- 
 ates hostility and strife, which ripen into armies, 
 navies, wars, devastation and ruin. The other 
 is the patriotism which acknowledges the rights 
 of all other nations and the dependence of the 
 one upon all of the others. Therefore it seeks 
 to cooperate with all others for the promotion 
 of unity, peace, brotherly friendship and pros- 
 perity. This is the patriotism of the true 
 statesman. It is harmonious and peaceful be- 
 cause it is beneficent, humane and Christian, 
 this is the only true patriotism, because it is 
 founded upon the beneficent laws of God. 
 
 There are two great powers by which man- 
 kind has always been controlled. One is the 
 law of force and the other is the law of love. 
 These powers are represented by Kbme and 
 Palestine, Oaesar and Christ; the one is external 
 and forced, the other is internal and is a growth; 
 the one is natural and harmonious, the other is 
 unnatural and conflicting. It may be diflScult 
 for some people to determine which of these 
 two forces is the stronger or the most effective, 
 
 163 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 but as to the one that is most commendable and 
 most enduring, no argument is necessary. The 
 law of love is the law of God; and upon the basis 
 of this law all mankind can unite and cooper- 
 ate if they will. And it is no sign of weakness, 
 it is no indication of a lack of heroism, it is not 
 for the purpose of giving expression to some 
 fine'sounding phrases or beautiful theory, that 
 we declare that it is not only possible, but also 
 practicable, for the whole world to unite and 
 cooperate; and each work for the good of all, 
 upon the basis of the eternal and all= powerful 
 law of love, which is the law of God. 
 
 To glory in the Stars and Stripes is of course 
 patriotic; to sing its praises is patriotic; but to 
 make every other flag on the high seas "dip" to 
 it is, of course, the essence of patrotism; to 
 ridicule some other nation and to remind their 
 people that they would be lost sight of in one 
 corner of certain of our great states is also quite 
 patriotic; to boast that we could feed the world 
 with the production of one state and then have 
 enough and to spare is also somewhat patriotic; 
 but it is too mild a kind of patriotism for the 
 majority, and so the patriot must resort to the 
 highest pinnacle of bombastic oratory, warning 
 whatever remains of the inhabited world that we 
 are an unconquerable nation and could whip 
 them all together if we would so desire, and the 
 only reason why we don't do it is because we 
 are such a long=sufEering, peace4oving, benevo- 
 
 163 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 lent and Ohristlike people. What marvelous 
 triumphs these patriots achieve! To what infi- 
 nite heights do they raise their gazing admirers! 
 What worlds their country might conquer if 
 only they could get at them — if only they were 
 tangible — if they could but bridge the chasms 
 and land the troops. But now from the higher 
 type of ministers and the more Ohristlike dis- 
 ciples of Jesus we do expect better things, and 
 to those higher classes I now appeal. First: 
 the ministry. Let the ministers of Jesus abstain 
 from all that the Master in His teaching and 
 spirit does not approve; let them cease to in- 
 dulge in war^scenes and thrilling illustrations 
 taken from the fields of blood and death. Let 
 those abominable scenes be expunged or omitted, 
 and above all, let the servant of the Prince of 
 Peace never advocate war either in public or 
 private, under any circumstances whatever. 
 Second: the Church must reform or cease to 
 bear the name Christian. Christ's mission was 
 peace on earth and good=will to men; and this 
 also is the mission of His Church or she 
 has none. Church=members should refuse to 
 do military service. Churches ought not 
 to tolerate such an institution as the boys' 
 brigade, at least in its present form. It 
 costs the writer no small Sacrifice to make 
 such a statement. Personally no society could 
 be dearer to him. The likeness of every mem- 
 ber of a certain boys' brigade is literally stamped 
 
 161 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 on his heart. Part of the exercises are excel- 
 lent and thoroughly in accordance with Jesus' 
 teaching. The pledge, for instance, to " abstain 
 from all profane, vulgar or indecent language, 
 from the use of tobacco and all intoxicating 
 liquors." The requirement of each boy to " at- 
 tend church and Sunday-school " cannot be too 
 highly commended; but the rifle and sword ex- 
 ercises, when we consider what they mean, can- 
 not be called Christian, and are therefore unbe- 
 coming to any branch of the Church of Christ. 
 What can we substitute for the guns and swords, 
 what can take the place of the war=element in 
 the brigade? This, we are informed, is the 
 part which trains the boys to be heroic and 
 courageous; this denied, then the organization 
 must lose its interest and fall to pieces. Here 
 let me introduce that principle up to which all 
 that I have said has been leading. I mean a 
 different motive, a different and a higher stand- 
 ard of greatness, the standard of Jesus, the 
 practise of non=resistance, which is the highest 
 possible achievement and the most truly heroic. 
 Smiting with the fist or the sword is weakness 
 on exhibition; non=resistance is the noblest 
 manifestation of strength that the world can see. 
 The men who overcome are the truly great. 
 And what is true of an individual is likewise 
 true of a nation. Here then is a glorious op- 
 portunity for the boys' brigade. Let them re- 
 vise their creed, let them reorganize upon this 
 165 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 new basis, the basis of noii=resiBtance; let it be 
 in their pledge never to lift up sword against 
 fellow man or sister nation. They will soon 
 learn that to be a hero of peace requires infi- 
 nitely more courage and endurance than to be 
 a hero of war. Whatever seems to them to be 
 the greatest and bravest thing, that will the boys 
 desire to do. What boys' brigade will be the 
 first to start? May it be the one that the 
 writer has in mind and heart. 
 
 Fourth, the Christian statesman. The author 
 would not cast any uncharitable reflections upon 
 England. For an American, especially one 
 born under the British flag, to abuse the land 
 of his birth would be somewhat like beating the 
 mother who nurtured him. But English states- 
 men must be warned. England should be made, 
 through her friends, to know the feeling of the 
 world towards her. Who is to blame for the 
 war in South Africa, and what was the motive 
 which prompted that cruel wai:? English states- 
 men largely are to blame and the world knows 
 well that the motive was greed. The coloniz- 
 ing spirit has become to England, a disease. 
 The world has agreed, therefore, to inform her 
 that she must call a halt. For another coloniz- 
 ing expedition on the part of England can 
 never be tolerated by the civilized world. Let 
 England's statesmen who bear the name of 
 Christ cease talking of " revenge " or of " clean- 
 ing up " any part of the world, because they 
 166 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 desire to grasp what property belongs to others. 
 The world is warning England; let England 
 warn some of her injudicious statesmen to 
 be more cautious. 
 
 It cannot be denied that Christian nations 
 and Christian statesmen are largely to blame 
 for the unfortunate uprising in China. Chris- 
 tian nations are responsible for the existence of 
 the present alien Manchu dynasty. It was 
 General Gordon and the American Generals 
 who prevented its being overthrown by the Tai 
 Ping rebellion. It was Christian statesmen 
 who persuaded the Chinese to receive instruc- 
 tion in modern warfare. We taught them how 
 to fight and they are rising up to prove to us 
 that our instruction has been a great success. 
 The Christian nations must reap what the Chris- 
 tian generals have sown. It is only the good 
 seed that is sown in tears and reaped in joy; the 
 bad seed is sown in joy and reaped in tears. And 
 the seed of war is bad seed. 
 
 " Perhaps we think that the Chinese have no 
 right to squirm or kick, but if Germany came 
 over here and took possession of Boston harbor 
 and Boston town, would we squirm? If Italy 
 laid hold of New Orleans, because a mob killed 
 a lot of Italians, would it jar us? If China 
 knocked down the Golden Gate and chased some 
 Californians into the woods for mobbing their 
 people, would we wriggle? If Great Britain 
 asked us to give up the Mississippi Valley would 
 
 167 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 we 8mile? If Salisbury put a man in Washingi 
 ton to collect our revenue, would we get down 
 on our knees to thank him? If somebody got 
 awfully hurt for this kind of business, how 
 would we divide up the blame? Perhaps the 
 Chinaman should not have any nerve centers; 
 but what if he has? And perhaps there are so 
 many of them that a lot of them could be used 
 for bait and hardly missed; but suppose that 
 they object? " 
 
 The writer seeks not to defend China in any 
 wrong. But surely the oldest empire in the 
 world is deserving of more consideration and 
 respect than Christian nations are wont to show 
 to it. Let China be punished so far as she 
 deserves it; but let our punishment be just. 
 Who is to blame? That is the question. We 
 wish to teach those backward, superstitious peo- 
 ple of the celestial empire, that the introduc- 
 tion of modern inventions — plows, engines, elec- 
 tric light, education etc., are not their enemies 
 but their benefactors. But to do this by force 
 is to prove ourselves untrue to the principles of 
 Jesus, "China for the Chinese" is just as 
 reasonable and Christian a motto as " America 
 for the Americans." 
 
 Germany has used her missionaries in China 
 for the extension of the German Empire rather 
 than the Kingdom of God. The same Kaiser 
 who lent his sanction to the cruel murder of 
 Armenians is now interposing in behalf of the 
 168 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 murdered missionaries in China! This is con- 
 temptible hypocrisy! Any ruler who could 
 give such bloodthirsty advice to his departing 
 soldiers cannot have any heart=felt interest in 
 the missionaries of Christ. O how zealously 
 the irreligious will defend religion when it can 
 be made to foster a selfish purpose! O how 
 France and Germany do love her foreign 
 missionaries— a^ times! Not a single war that 
 has ever been waged against China by the 
 Christian nations can be justified at the bar of 
 human justice. 
 
 Fifth: the Christian press. We are not 
 surprised when we see the daily press, espe- 
 cially the "yellow press," lend its sanction to 
 war and indulge in the sentiments of hostility. 
 But when the Christian press descends to such 
 a low plane, the sad fact is to be deplored. 
 Quite often the Christian press is colored with 
 war=taleB, illustrations from war, and even quite 
 long stories of famous battle=fields, out of which 
 the editor attempts to bring forth some moral 
 lesson. Of course there are some worthy ex- 
 amples of heroic courage and self=saerifice; but 
 coming as they do out of such wholesale slaugh- 
 ter of human life, the morals are lost sight of, 
 and only the horrors which crowd them out, 
 remain. A clergyman of more than national 
 reputation, and editor of one of the most influ- 
 ential Christian papers in this country, has re- 
 cently made use of Jesus' example in driving 
 
 1'j9 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 buyers and sellers out of the temple as an argu- 
 ment for resorting" to arms! Another religious 
 paper has recently printed, above the initials 
 "O.S.H." the following: 
 
 " Now I want to introduce Christ as the great 
 Commander=in=Chief. We are not to 'know 
 Christ after the flesh any more.' He is through 
 with His sacrificial work; no longer the Lamb, 
 but the 'Lion of the tribe of Judah.' John, 
 who knew Him as the Meek and Lowly, was 
 overwhelmed with awe as he beheld Him in His 
 imperial majesty. When He laid the founda- 
 tion of His new nation He was non=resistant, 
 and enjoined His followers to be. He did not 
 wish to wake up a tribe of anarchists. He had 
 a sacrificial life, so had His Church in those 
 first centuries of blood. Paul made a distinc- 
 tion between his work as a servant of Christ, for 
 he took his stonings and scourgings without 
 lawsuits; but he did several times assert the dig- 
 nity of his Roman citizenship, and he foreshad- 
 owed the time when saints should judge the 
 world. Nowhere are nations commanded to be 
 non-resistant against wrong. 
 
 " Read carefully the second Psalm. How won- 
 derful! When nations despise the Lord and 
 His anointed, and propose to break their bonds 
 in sunder, and oast their cords from them, then 
 they are to be broken with a rod of iron and 
 dashed in pieces as a potter's vessel. The 
 second Psalm, the 110th also, and Revelation, 
 
 170 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 give us an introduction to the imperial Jesus. 
 ' He that overcometh and keepeth My works to 
 the end, to him will I give power over the na- 
 tions, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, 
 and as vessels of a potter shall they be broken 
 to shivers, even as I receive of my Father.' 
 This refers back to God's warranty deed of the 
 nations in the second Psalm. 
 
 Revelation 19: 11-16 reveals to us the Christ of 
 to=day. ' And I saw heaven opened, and behold 
 a white horse, and He that sat upon him is 
 called Faithful and True, and in righteousness 
 doth He judge and make war. And He is 
 clothed in a vesture dipped in blood, and His 
 name is called the Word of God.' "We cannot 
 mistake the person. 'And out of His mouth 
 goeth a sharp sword, that with it He should 
 smite the nations, and He shall rule them with 
 a rod of iron; and He treadeth the wine=press 
 of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. 
 And he hath on His vesture and on His thigh 
 a name written: King of Kings and Lord of 
 Lords.' 
 
 " Now when I look at this glorious and im- 
 perial One, I feel that He is at the helm, and I 
 rejoice in our growing army aiid navy. I glory 
 in our banner and realize that our Great Gom- 
 mander=in=Chief is righteous, and just, and 
 mighty, and the nations are in His hands. War 
 is often inevitable. It must come, it will come. 
 We cannot stop to count the cost when we are 
 
 171 
 
Put Up Thy Sworid 
 
 carrying out the plans- of; God; His is a king- 
 dom of power." 
 
 Such statements are not only non^Ohristian, 
 they are untrue. They show a low condition of 
 of intellectual, not to say Christian life. When 
 one reads in a Christian paper about the " Im- 
 perial Jesus," riding through the streets of 
 heaven on a " white horse" to smite the nations 
 and "rule them with a rod of iron, clothed in 
 a vesture dipped in blood, a sharp sword going 
 forth out of His mouth." he feels constrained to 
 inquire whether the editor has opened his col- 
 umns to some savage in the jungle. Such a 
 caricature on the "Prince of Peace" is little 
 short of blasphemy. 
 
 Some men have been great in war, but as the 
 years roll on we see that they were infinitely 
 greater in peace. In the annals of French his- 
 tory no name shines in greater radiance than 
 that of St. Louis. For his nobld sense of justice, 
 his high regard for the rights of others, his 
 fatherly affection for his people and his deep 
 interests in warfare and happiness, he will be 
 remembered when the name of Napoleon shall 
 have been forgotten. But the noblest achieve- 
 ment of his life, and the thing which will serve 
 to keep his memory green for all time, is the 
 fact that he used all his royal power and best 
 influence for the abolition of that most cruel, 
 unjust and " impious trial by battle " When 
 does our own Washington appear before us at 
 
 172 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 his noblest and greatest? Not when he is 
 mounted on a foaming steed of war, nor even 
 when he is struggling to cross the Delaware on 
 his way to the capture of Trenton, nor compel- 
 ling Cornwallis to surrender, but we behold him 
 in his true greatness refusing a kingly crown, 
 urging a peaceful neutrality and refusing to ad- 
 here to the demands of the people who clamor 
 for war. 
 
 When does William Penn appear at his great- 
 est, when does he rise to angelic stature and 
 seem like a god? When he is establishing the 
 law of love with his fellow men. " To> William 
 Penn belongs the distinction destined to 
 brighten as man advances in virtue, of first in 
 human history establishing the law of love as a 
 rule of conduct in the intercourse of nations. 
 His serene countenence as he stands with his 
 followers in what he calls 'the sweet air of 
 Pennsylvania,' all unarmed, beneath the spread- 
 ing elm, entering into the great treaty of friend- 
 ship with the Indians, whose savage display 
 fills the forest around as far as eye can reach — 
 not to wrest their lands by violence but to ob- 
 tain them by peaceful purchase— to my mind is 
 the proudest picture in the history of our coun- 
 try. ' The great God,' said the illustrious Qua- 
 ker, ' hath written His law in our hearts by 
 which we are taught and commanded to love and 
 help and do good to one another. It is not our 
 custom to use hostile weapons against our fellow 
 173 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 creatures, for whicli reason we are unarmed; 
 our object is not to do injury but to do good. 
 We are now met in the broad path of good faith, 
 and good will, so that no advantage is to be taken 
 on either side, but all is to be openness, broth- 
 erhood and love-, while all are to be treated as 
 the same flesh and blood. Without any carnal 
 weapons we enter the land, and abide therein 
 as if there had been thousands of garrisons. 
 Greater than the divinity that doth hedge a 
 king is the divinity that encompasses a righteous 
 man and a righteous people. ' "* 
 
 The flowers of prosperity delight to grow in 
 the footprints of William Penn. His people 
 were unmolested and happy, while other col- 
 onies, acting upon the policy of the world, 
 building forts and showing themselves in arms, 
 were harrassed by perpetual alarm, and pierced 
 by the sharp arrows of savage warriors. 
 
 This pattern of a Christian commonwealth 
 never fails to arrest the admiration of all who 
 contemplate its beauty. So even it has been 
 eulogized by the caustic pen of Voltaire. Every 
 ingenious soul in our day offers a willing tribute 
 to those graces of justice and humanity by the 
 side of which contemporary life, in this conti- 
 nent, seems coarse and earthly. 
 
 Jesus Himself, in His practise of non=re- 
 sistance reveals the grandest and noblest type 
 of- the true hero. Never does He seem more like 
 
 * True Grandeur of a Nation. 
 174 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 God than when He declines to talk back, or strike 
 back; even to permit others to do so in Hisbehalf. 
 It is those withheld blows of Jesus that are 
 now breaking the world's hard heart. When 
 society was brutal, when men's highest ambition 
 was to destroy their fellow men, when prisoners 
 dwelt in palaces and robbers congregated by 
 the wayside, when all manner of instruments 
 of torture that hell itself could suggest were 
 being invented and employed by man to inflict 
 pain upon his fellow man, when the finest works 
 of art — the treasures of the art=loving world — 
 were being destroyed by the enemies of each 
 other, Jesus came forth uttering those strange 
 words, "Peace on earth, good=will to men"; 
 " Love your enemies"; " Blessed are the peace= 
 makers"; " I came not to destroy"; He raised 
 no mailed hand to smite, He drew no sword, He 
 went about doing good. The feet that ran on 
 errands of mercy, the hands that were never 
 lifted but to bless, were nailed to a cross of 
 wood, and He offered no resistance against this 
 cruelty, although He might have summoned the 
 armies of the world and the hosts of heaven to 
 His defense. But His is the greater triumph 
 — ^the triumph of non=resistance. His sword is 
 the sword of the Spirit, His shield the breast= 
 plate of truth and righteousness; His victory is 
 the victory of peace, and once more we can 
 truly say: " Thou hast conquered, O Galileeanl " 
 His words are coming literally to pass — " They 
 
 175 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 that take the sword shall perish by the sword." 
 This is literally true of individuals. Those who 
 resort to force will' sooner or later perish by 
 that force. The persecutor injures himself 
 more than the one whom he persecutes; the 
 slanderer wakes up at last to behold that all the 
 while he has been painting his own picture for 
 the world to gaze at. Every blow rebounds 
 in destructive reaction, and every evil word re- 
 turns to distil a deadly poison at the source 
 whence it started. The man who is most often 
 seen in courts of law is least often at the throne 
 of grace. And the nation that takes the sword 
 shall perish by the sword. A glance into his- 
 tory proves the literal truth of this great princi- 
 ple. It is a law of God. Strike nature and 
 nature strikes back. Egypt took the sword and 
 by the sword she perished. Persia took the 
 sword and has perished by it. Babylon took 
 the sword and by the sword she also perished. 
 Grreece did the same, with the same result. 
 Rome resorted to brute force, and that cruelty 
 turned at last upon her own wicked head. The 
 same is true of Spain. Turkey has taken the 
 sword and by the sword she has perished; 
 as a nation she has no respect; her name has. be- 
 come a symbol for cruelty; she stands as a hiss- 
 ing and a by=word among the most respectable 
 nations of the earth. On the contrary, those 
 whom she has persecuted and treated so cruelly 
 are already rising in their might, and will yet 
 
 170 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 rise up into a great, strong, peace=loving people 
 with the whole world as their protector and 
 benefactor. 
 
 My opponent pictured the danger of a nation 
 like England disarming, while she is surrounded 
 by jealous powers who are watching and even 
 anxious for her downfall. " Supposing," he 
 said, "England should disarm, surrounded as 
 she is by nations who still retain the old jeal- 
 ousies and enmities of the past; how quickly 
 would they leap from ambush to divide the 
 spoils." Would not the very opposite result 
 come to pass? Suppose for instance, that a 
 great nation like England would rise in the 
 strength of all that is noblest and best, and 
 place the other nations upon their manhood and 
 their honor; supposing England should say to 
 the world: "We have decided to trust you; 
 therefore we disarm. If ever we have taken 
 anything that was not our due, we cheerfully 
 restore it; we ask the forgiveness of those na- 
 tions to whom we have been overbearing and 
 that we have ill=treated in any way: our highest 
 ambition henceforth shall be to bless and help 
 all nations, to make any sacrifice in the interest 
 of humanity, to seek our own good by seeking 
 the good of others and to find our highest and 
 richest blessings in striving to be a blessing to 
 others. This we do as a Christian nation, upon 
 the basis of the teachings and of the spirit of 
 the Prince of Peace and the King of kings; to 
 177 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 this end and for this cause we are willing, if 
 need be, to lose our national existence and to 
 lay down our life." No nation would then rise 
 against England ; but all of the nations would rally 
 around her in a union of peace and good=will, 
 such as the world has never seen, 
 
 I have tried in justice to apportion the blame. 
 I have placed most of the blame where I honestly 
 believe it belongs — upon the Church, the minis- 
 try and press. Their approval of war is contrary 
 to the spirit and teaching of Jesus. This great 
 preparation for war in the time of peace to which 
 the Church and ministry always lends its 
 approval, breathes a lack of faith in man and 
 trust in God. On this point Dr. Parkhurst 
 speaks truly: 
 
 " If Jesus had gone armed it would have been 
 a confession on His part that the brute force of 
 the visible world is more than a match for the 
 spiritual power of the invisible world. You can- 
 not make a man believe in Grod if you do not 
 convince him that you believe in Him yourself. 
 Peter, by brandishing his sword, denied the 
 divinity of Jesus; and any other man cheapens 
 God when he goes about to yoke God's Spirit 
 alongside of carnal contrivances. It is the 
 absence of such carnal contrivances that explains 
 the rapid extension of Christianity during the 
 first three centuries of our own era. God 
 worked mightily because He had no backing, up 
 to that time. Armies and navies were on the 
 
 178 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 side of the pagans. Christianity is never so 
 safe and so powerful as when it is unprotected 
 and the evangelization that depends for its good 
 results upon soldiers and gun^boats has no 
 future."* 
 
 Jesus' custom is to emphasize the good. He 
 believed thoroughly in man because He believed 
 in God. He is truly optimistic. He believed 
 in the ultimate triumph of the good. To Him 
 evil was a negation, something to be destroyed. 
 He loved the people in spite of their sins, and 
 His pure soul detected the good in the midst of 
 bad. He pitied people in their weakness; and, 
 knowing the cause of this weakness, He loved 
 them none the less. There is good enough in 
 the world to=day to counteract the bad, if only 
 it can be focalized and applied in a whole= 
 hearted manner. There is enough of the Ohrist= 
 spirit in man to triumph over the satanic- spirit 
 and send it to its own place. 
 
 It is not a new or a different organization 
 which the world needs, but more of the disposi- 
 tion and the Christ life in the minds of men. 
 No new organization in the Christian Church 
 is necessary in order to protest against the evils 
 of war; we have too many organizations now. 
 But let every Church that bears the name of 
 Christ reunite in His name for the promotion 
 of peace on earth and good=will to men. That 
 church'member is not Christ's disciple who is 
 
 * Charles H. PaikhoiBt. 
 
 179 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 still willing to do military service and take up 
 arms against his fellow man. That Church, 
 whatever else it may be called, is not the Church 
 of Christ, which lends its sanction to a bloody, 
 unchristlike war, or which will in any degree 
 lend aid or approval to it. And that nation can- 
 not be called Christian which takes up arms 
 against another nation. Only those who do 
 Christ's will are really His and only those who 
 are His by the doing of His will and the living 
 of His life should dare to lay claim to the name 
 of Christian. 
 
 uo 
 
XIV 
 
 THE ULTIMATE TRIBUNAL 
 
 The necessity of absolute obedience to the 
 supreme source of authority is my final plea. 
 Such a source of authority must needs be au- 
 thority which is more than human — righteous, 
 supreme and final. If such source of authority 
 were not available to mankind, the universal de- 
 mand for it, which makes itself felt in the con- 
 sciousness of the world's deep need, would 
 bring such authority into being. But this is 
 just what has come to pass. The true source 
 of authority does really exist and is even now 
 available. It does not need to be discovered or 
 rediscovered, only acknowledged. The Divine 
 Arbiter is here; He has spoken, and His word 
 is final. Different plans for a Court of Arbitra- 
 tion have appeared in print from time to time, 
 and some of these have actually been subjected 
 to the actual test. The spirit which prompts 
 such an organization is good; it is Christian 
 and therefore commendable. But not one of 
 these has met with universal approval; not one 
 of them would be accepted and adopted by all 
 nations to=day. No form of arbitration created 
 in the councils of men will ever meet with the 
 approval of all mankind; it cannot be so, from 
 the nature of the case. The old astronomers 
 181 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 oould put the earth at the center of the solar 
 system, but they could not make the other 
 heavenly bodies move in harmony around it. 
 Such a center, however beautiful it may have 
 seemed in theory, could not result in the har- 
 monious movement of the vast system. There 
 was only one natural and perfect center; but 
 there was one, and that was quite sufficient. 
 Its power and fitness to take its place as the 
 center did not need to be discovered, only ac- 
 knowledged. Its light and beauty had long 
 shone upon the world, but men were blind 
 alike to both; its power had long controlled 
 other worlds, but men were ignorant of that as 
 well. Men rejoiced in the light, although ig- 
 norant of the source whence it came. At last 
 the sun found its natural center, not in the 
 heavens where it had always been, but in the 
 benighted mind of man, and then disorder and 
 confusion, which existed nowhere else, immed- 
 iately disappeared; thus harmony took the 
 place of confusion, and order sprang out of 
 chaos, and then it was discovered that no dis- 
 order or confusion had ever existed amid the 
 handiwork of God, but in the crude, ignorant 
 intellect and in the benighted soul of mankind. 
 Likewise, the center and source of all final au- 
 thority in all human affairs is Christ; where this 
 authority is acknowledged, all is harmony and 
 peace; where it is ignored, all is discord, con- 
 fusion and despair. 
 
 183 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 This truth is beautifully illustrated in indi- 
 vidual lives. Those who walk in His footsteps, 
 those who do His will, those who obey His pre- 
 cepts, those lives that are truly patterned after 
 Him, are harmonious, peaceful, charitable, 
 philanthropic, broad, generous, tolerant, for- 
 bearing, forgiving, and fruitful of all that is 
 good and sweet and precious in the world. The 
 same is true of organizations. The Church, 
 like the individual, which recognizes Christ as 
 its center, has harmony, peace and power. But 
 the Church or organization, like the individual, 
 which makes the world its center, must expect 
 to have disorder, confusion and misery. No 
 Court of Arbitration can ever avail to bring this 
 discordant world into unity, harmony and peace, 
 that is not Christo= centric. If the authority of 
 the Christ who has appeared is not sufficient 
 for this all=important purpose, then a greater 
 than He must necessarily come. But accord- 
 ing to His own testimony no higher authority 
 is possible. He said: " I and My Father are 
 one; He that hath seen Me hath seen the Fa- 
 ther." Either His authority is supreme in all 
 things, or it is useless and of no consequence 
 anywhere. How far do His own claims har- 
 monize with the inspired prophecies concern- 
 ing Him? 
 
 Let us examine the declaration of the Di- 
 vine Word and see. " By Him were all things 
 made, and without Him was not anything made 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 that was made." " He was before all things, 
 and by Him do all things consist." Earthly 
 rulers are warned not to set themselves " against 
 the Lord and against His anointed, lest they 
 be dashed in pieces like a potter's vessel." He 
 is the One by whom " kings rule and princes 
 decree judgment." According to the words of 
 the dying Jacob, " Unto Him shall the gather- 
 ing of all peoples be"; and the prophet Isaiah 
 declares: " The government shall be upon His 
 shoulders and His name shall be called Won- 
 derful, Counsellor, Prince of Peace." 
 
 These prophecies are being literally fulfilled. 
 They have been reproduced and verified by 
 the greatest lives, even down to the present 
 time. 
 
 The tributes which great minds have paid to 
 His personal character even surpass those 
 which they have paid to His genius. Kenan 
 speaks of Him as " One whose beauty is eter- 
 nal and whose reign shall never end." Again 
 he declares: "His worship will grow young 
 without ceasing; His history will call forth 
 tears without end, while coming ages will de- 
 clare that among the sons of men there is none 
 born greater than Jesus." Garlyle declares: "The 
 tidings of the life and death of the divine Man 
 of Judea the most important event ever trans- 
 acted in the world." Matthew Arnold says: 
 " Christ came to reveal what real righteousness 
 is, for nothing will do except righteousness and 
 
 184 
 
Put up Thy Sword 
 
 no other conception of righteousness will do 
 except Christ's conception of it." " The world 
 has changed," says Martineau, " and that change 
 is chiefly due to Christ." 
 
 Therefore, according to the voice of prophecy 
 and the testimony of the wisest and best minds 
 in all ages, Christ's authority is supreme. And 
 if He is supreme, all else must be subordinate. 
 Supremacy implies subordination, and sove- 
 reignty necessitates submission. There can 
 be but one central sun. Every other orb must 
 move around it in obedience to it. There can 
 be only one supreme central power in the 
 world of human activity, but one there must be, 
 and its power must be acknowledged and 
 obeyed. We find such power complete in Him, 
 of whom it was declared that "righteousness 
 shall be the girdle of His loins and faithfulness 
 the girdle of His reins." 
 
 As to the best form for such a Court of 
 Arbitration to assume or the number of persons 
 composing it and what nations shall be repre- 
 sented in it, the writer feels unqualified to 
 determine. This, however, is of secondary im- 
 portance. Acknowledge the center and the 
 system will arrange itself in natural and perfect 
 order around it. I do not care how many 
 nations shall be represented. It may be part or 
 all of them. I am not especially concerned in 
 regard to the numbers which shall constitute 
 the world's Court of Arbitration. The color, 
 
 185 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 name or nationality, will not figure in this 
 problem. The principal point, and in fact the 
 only one for which I contend, is that it shall be 
 conducted according to the principles of Jesus' 
 teaching as stated in the New Testament. 
 However indefinite His instruction may seem 
 in certain cases to be, in the book of Matthew it 
 is plain and explicit. These instructions, I 
 know, have been restricted to Church affairs, 
 but the Master did not intend that they should 
 be so restricted. No such limitation should be 
 placed upon them; they should be applied in 
 all cases, to all nations and by all mankind. 
 Let us consider these teachings and their 
 relations to national difficulties. If they can be 
 applied effectually to individual cases, they will 
 apply equally well to national affairs, for the 
 nations are only aggregations of individuals. 
 The true principles as set forth in Jesus' 
 teachings are negotiation, meditation and arbi- 
 tration. 
 
 I. Negotiation. " If thy brother shall tres- 
 pass against thee, go and tell him his fault 
 between thee and him alone: if he shall hear 
 thee, thou hast gained thy brother," Individ- 
 uals do sometimes offend against one another, 
 but no good sensible persons will ever resort to 
 brute force as a means of redress. Their method 
 of settling these disputes, the degree of self= 
 control and forbearance which they manifest, 
 will always determine the character of the men, 
 
 186 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 And nations sometimes disagree. Disturbing 
 questions are continually arising. How are 
 these to be settled? The method of settlement 
 employed will likewise reveal the character of 
 the contending nations. If they settle according 
 to Christ's methods, then are they like Christ 
 and may properly be called Christian nations. 
 But if they resort to brute force they do thereby 
 exhibit their weakness and their grotesqueness 
 to the world. Their example to other nations 
 is deplorable. Likewise two men are at variance 
 for whatever cause. What is their duty? As 
 Christians their duty is plain. One should 
 approach the other in friendly intercourse; but 
 which one? Who is to take the initiative? 
 Whoever is great enough to realize that a wrong 
 has been committed, a wrong which is injurious, 
 not only to the parties directly concerned, but 
 also to the harmony and peace of the cause 
 which they represent; he should approach the 
 other in the manner described. He may have 
 committed the wrong, he may be the one against 
 whom the wrong has been committed, it makes 
 no difference, his duty is practically the same. 
 This method may result in peace and friendship; 
 it often does so result, and the friendship is 
 deeper and sweeter than before. "If he will 
 hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother." If he 
 will not hear, however, then he is clearly in the 
 wrong. But though he should thus prove to 
 be obstinate, the duty of him who would make 
 
 187 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 peace is not therefore done. He must revisit 
 his obstinate brother in company with one or 
 two others. This is mediation. Should this 
 step prove of no effect, then is he at liberty to 
 tell the matter to the organization of which they 
 are members. It may be the Church or some 
 other organization — the principle is the same. 
 Such organization shall then use all legitimate 
 means for the purpose of bringing the offender 
 to repentance, to the end that he may be re- 
 claimed. Should this method fail, then must 
 public opinion frown upon him. He must be 
 regarded as an outcast, unreasonable, unjust, and 
 therefore unfit to be a member of any decent 
 society. This is his punishment and it may 
 prove to be greater than he can bear. It 
 often does. But no resort to force is per- 
 mitted. 
 
 Some nation offends some other nation. 
 What is the duty of the nation whose pride is 
 wounded? The principle is exactly the same. 
 Let the recognized rulers of those nations do 
 all in their power to restore friendship and 
 peace. This is negotiation. If this fails, let 
 them go to the offender in company with others 
 chosen for such purpose. This is mediation. 
 Should this fail, they can then report to the 
 great tribunal, whose central figure is the Prince 
 of Peace. But there the matter must end, there 
 must be no resort to arms. The nation that 
 still persists should be considered an outcast, 
 
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Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 unjust, unreasonable, cruel, and therefore un- 
 worthy the confidence and respect of all self= 
 respecting nations of the world. No nation 
 under such conditions can live and prosper. It 
 would be a natural impossibility that it should 
 do so. The branch cannot live severed from the 
 vine. But supposing that a certain nation 
 feels conscious of having been wronged? But its 
 consciousness is contrary to the best judgment 
 of an impartial tribunal, which has acted so far 
 as possible upon the righteous principles of the 
 highest authority, which is Christ's. No true 
 individual will desire to be of a selfish, obstinate 
 or grasping disposition. He should not desire 
 to take from another that which he believes to 
 be for his own selfish advantage, at the expense 
 of another's loss. Over what do the nations 
 most often quarrel? Usually territory. The 
 one desires what the other claims. Here Christ's 
 words to the complaining brother are in point: 
 "beware of covetousness." 01 if the nations 
 would only heed this important command, war 
 would soon disappear, for the cause out of which 
 it springs would vanish, Covetousness has 
 been the cause of many an unholy war — pos- 
 sibly all of them. Covetousness is the great 
 mistake of all nations to»day. If only they 
 would seek each other's good they would the 
 better promote their own. " In honor preferring 
 one another," they would best exalt themselves. 
 The dead nations are those which have lived 
 
 189 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 unto self. The nation that shall begin to live 
 
 for other nations shall begin to live forever. 
 
 This is God's law which we observed in nature, 
 
 acting also upon the nations of the earth. By 
 
 helping others rise they also rise, to power, 
 
 dominion and glory. By giving unto others 
 
 they receive from others infinitely more than 
 
 they give; by blessing others they also are 
 
 abundantly blessed; by dying for others they 
 
 live to die no more. But that nation is already 
 
 dead and buried beneath the ruins of those 
 
 wbom it has crushed. 
 
 It is no small cause for rejoicing to know that 
 the multitudes are coming to recognize and to 
 act upon tbis great, unerring principle. Every 
 true Christian should begin at once to act upon - 
 these true principles of Jesus, by practising the 
 great law of non=resistance. Tbis is the kind of 
 revival that the world most needs. Let it re- 
 begin in the Christian Church. Let tbe Church 
 become Christian indeed; let every Christian 
 decide thus: "Grod helping me, I will endeavor 
 to practise non=resistance according to the ex- 
 ample of Jesus. I will return good for evil; 
 I will lay down my life for the good of others, 
 by consecrating every power of my being to the 
 building up of my fellow men, and I will abstain 
 from everything, in thought, word and deed, 
 that would in any way make for their injury. 
 I will strive to cherish the same love for other 
 nations that I do for my own, and I will never 
 
 190 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 take up arms against a sister nation or a fellow 
 being." 
 
 This blessed condition is coming. Already it 
 has come in many noble, Christlike lives. The 
 new day is dawning. Mine eyes have seen the 
 beauty of the coming of its beams. Already 
 grace and truth have met together, righteous- 
 ness and peace have kissed each other. Kight- 
 eousness is springing out of the earth and joy 
 is looking down from heaven. 
 
 " For I dipt into the fntnie, far as hnman eye could see, 
 Saw the Tision of the world, and all the wonders that 
 
 would be; 
 Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magio 
 
 sails. 
 Pilots in the purple twilight, dropping down their costly 
 
 bales. 
 Heard the heayens filled with shouting, and there rain'd 
 
 a ghastly dew 
 From the nations' airy nayies, grappling in the central 
 
 blue; 
 
 Till the war^drum throbbed no longer, and the battle=: 
 
 flags were furl'd 
 In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world." * 
 
 * Tennyson: Locksley Hall. 
 
 191