There are other hypocrites than those of the pulpit. Dr. Gatling, the
ingenious scoundrel who invented the gun that bears his name with
commendable fortitude, says he has given much thought to the task of
bringing the forces of war to such perfection that war will be no
more. Commonly the man who talks of war becoming so destructive as to
be impossible is only a harmless lunatic, but this fellow utters his
cant to conceal his cupidity. If he thought there was any danger of
the nations beating their swords into plowshares we should see him
“take the stump” against agriculture forthwith. The same is true of
all military inventors. They are lions’ parasites; themselves of cold
blood, they fatten upon hot. The sheep-tick’s paler fare is not at all
to their taste.
I sometimes wish that I were a preacher: preachers do so blindly
ignore their shining opportunities. I am indifferently versed in
theology—whereof, so help me Heaven, I do not believe one word—but
know something of religion. I know, for example, that Jesus Christ
was no soldier; that war has two features which did not command his
approval—usually: aggression and defense. He taught not only abstention
from aggression but non-resistance. Now what do we see? Nearly all the
so-called Christian nations of the world sweating and groaning under
their burden of debt contracted in violation of these injunctions which
they believe divine—contracted in perfecting their means of offense and
defense. “We must have the best,” they cry; and if armor plates for
ships were better when alloyed with silver, and guns if banded with
gold, such armor plates would be put upon the ships, such guns would
be freely made. No sooner does one nation adopt some costly device for
taking life or protecting it from the taker (and inventors will as
readily sell the product of their malign ingenuity to one nation as to
another) than all the rest either possess themselves of it, or adopt
something superior and more expensive; and so all pay the penalty for
the sins of each. A hundred million dollars is a moderate estimate
of what it has cost the world to abstain from strangling the infant
Gatling in his cradle.
You may say, if you will, that primitive Christianity—the Christianity
of Christ—is not adapted to these rough-and-tumble times; that it is
not a practical scheme of conduct. As you please; I have not undertaken
to say what it is not, but what it partly is. I am no Christian, though
I think that Christ probably knew what was good for man about as well
as Dr. Gatling or the United States Ordnance Office. It is not for me
to defend Christianity; Christ did not. Nevertheless, I can not forbear
the wish that I were a preacher, in order sincerely to affirm that
the awful burdens borne by modern nations are obvious judgments of
Heaven for disobedience to the Prince of Peace. What a striking theme
to kindle fires upon the heights of imagination—to fill the secret
sources of eloquence—to stir the very stones in the temple of truth!
What a noble subject for the pious gentlemen who serve (with rank, pay
and allowances) as chaplains in the army and the navy, or the civilian
divines who offer prayer at the launching of an ironclad!