And farther: “The nations of Europe … keep … somewhere about 28,000,000 of armed men to settle quarrels by killing one another, instead of by arguing. That is what the Christian nations of the world are doing at this moment. It is a very expensive way also; for this publication which I saw … made out that since the year 1872 these nations had spent the almost incredible amount of £1,500,000,000 of money in preparing, and settling their quarrels by killing one another. Now it seems to me that with that state of things one of two positions must be accepted, either that Christianity is a failure, or that those who profess to expound Christianity have failed in expounding it properly.”
“Until our ironclads are withdrawn, and our Army disbanded, we are not entitled to call ourselves a Christian nation,” says Mr. J. Jowett Wilson.
In a discussion which arose in connection with the question of the obligatoriness of Christian pastors to preach against war, Rev. G. D. Bartlett said, among other things: “If I understand the Scriptures I say that men are only playing with Christianity when they ignore this question,” that is, say nothing about war. “I have lived a longish life, I have heard many sermons, and I can say without any exaggeration that I never heard universal peace recommended from the pulpit half a dozen times in my life. … Some twenty years ago I happened to stand in a drawing-room where there were forty or fifty people, and I dared to moot the proposition that war was incompatible with Christianity. They looked upon me as an arrant fanatic. The idea that we could get on without war was regarded as unmitigated weakness and folly.”
In the same sense spoke the Catholic Abbé Defourny:
“One of the first precepts of this eternal law which burns in the consciences of men is the one which forbids