14. Prayers for the success of war
It is the custom, during the continuance of a war, to offer public prayers for the success of our arms; and our enemies pray also for the success of theirs. I will acknowledge that this practice appears to me to be eminently shocking and profane:
The idea of two communities of Christians, separated perhaps by a creek, at the same moment begging their common Father to assist them in reciprocal destruction is an idea of horror to which I know no parallel:
“Lord, assist us to slaughter our enemies.” This is our petition. “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” This is the petition of Christ.
It is certain that of two contending communities, both cannot be in the right:
Yet both appeal to Heaven to avouch the justice of their cause, and both mingle with their petitions for the increase, perhaps, of Christian dispositions, importunities to the God of mercy to assist them in the destruction of one another.
Taking into account the ferocity of the request – the solemnity of its circumstances – the falsehood of its representations – the fact that both parties are Christians and that their importunities are simultaneous to their common Lord – I do not think that the world exhibits another example of such irreverent and shocking iniquity.
Surely it would be enough that we slaughter one another alone in our pigmy quarrels, without soliciting the Father of the universe to be concerned in them.
Surely it would be enough that each reviles the other with the iniquity of his cause,
without each assuring Heaven that he only is in the right – an assurance that is false, probably in both cases, and certainly in one.
To attempt to pursue the consequences of war through all her ramifications of evil would be, however, both endless and vain:
War is a moral gangrene that diffuses its humours through the whole political and social system. To expose its mischief is to exhibit all evil; for there is no evil that it does not occasion, and it has much that is peculiar to itself.
That, together with its multiplied evils, war produces some good; I have no wish to deny:
I know that it sometimes elicits valuable qualities that would have otherwise been concealed, and that it often produces collateral, adventitious, and sometimes immediate advantages.
If all this could be denied, it would be needless to deny it, for it is of no consequence to the question whether it is proved or not:
It can never happen that any widely extended system should not produce some benefits. In such a system, it would be an unheard-of purity of evil that was evil without any mixture of good.
But, to compare the ascertained advantages of war with its ascertained mischiefs, or with the ascertained advantages of a system of peace, and to maintain a question as to the preponderance of good, implies not ignorance but guilt – not incapacity of determination, but voluntary falsehood.
But I rejoice in the conviction that the hour is approaching when Christians shall cease to be the murderers of one another.
Christian light is certainly spreading, and there is scarcely a country in Europe in which the arguments for unconditional peace have not recently produced conviction.
This conviction is extending in our own country in such a degree, and upon such minds, that it makes the charge of enthusiasm or folly, vain and idle.
The friends of peace, if we choose to despise their opinions, cannot themselves be despised; and every year is adding to their number and to the sum of their learning and their intellect.