War is Criminal | 10

10. War Is Criminal,
As It Is Actually Doing Evil That Good May Come

That it is an evil to spread distress, desolation, and misery through a land and to stain it with the blood of men, probably none will deny.

War, with its attending horrors, is considered by all, even those who advocate and prosecute it, to be the greatest evil that ever befalls this wicked, bleeding, suffering world.

Though men go to war primarily to gratify their corrupt passions –

for they can never propose the attainment of any good by war which shall be commensurate with the natural and moral evils that will be occasioned by the acquisition

– yet the prospect of attaining some supposed good must be held out as a lure to the multitude and a means of self-justification.

Usually, the object of war is pompously represented to be to preserve liberty, to produce honourable and lasting peace, and promote the happiness of mankind;

and to accomplish this, liberty, property, and honour – that honour which comes from men – must be defended, though war is the very thing that generally destroys liberty, property, and happiness, and prevents lasting peace.

Such is the good proposed to be attained by the certain and overwhelming evil of war.

But no maxim is more corrupt, more false in its nature, or more ruinous in its results than that which tolerates doing evil that good may come.

Nor can any defend this maxim without taking the part of infidels and atheists, to whom it appropriately belongs, and with whose principles and practice alone it is consistent.

The apostle Paul reprobates this maxim in the severest terms, and he considered it the greatest scandal of Christian character to be accused of approving it:

“As we be slanderously reported,” said he, “and as some affirm that we say, ‘Let us do evil that good may come,’ whose damnation is just.”

If war is in fact an evil, and it is prosecuted with a view to attain some good, then going to war is doing evil that good may come.

It is therefore doing that which scandalizes Christian character; that which is wholly irreconcilable with the principles of the gospel, and which it is highly criminal for any man or nation to do.