War is Inhuman | 2
2. War Is Inhuman,
As in Its Nature and Tendency It Abuses God’s Animal Creation
When God at first created man, he gave him authority over the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the deep;
After he had swept away the old ungodly world of mankind for its violence with all the animal creation, except those in the ark, he was pleased to renew to Noah the same privilege of being lord over the animal world.
It may not perhaps be improper here to digress a little and remark that this appears to have been the original bounds of man’s authority – that of having dominion only over the animal world and not over his fellow-man.
It appears that God reserved to himself the government of man, whom he originally created in his own image;
from which it may be inferred that man has no lawful authority for governing his fellow-man, except as the special executor of divine command,
and that no government can be morally right except that which acknowledges and looks up to God as the supreme head and governor.
But to return: although the animal world is put under the dominion of man for his use, yet he has no authority to exercise cruelty towards it:
“For the merciful man regards the life of his beast.”
God is very merciful to his creatures; he not only hears the young ravens when they cry but he opens his hand and supplies the wants of the cattle upon a thousand hills.
Though God has decorated the earth with beauty and richly clothed it with food for man and beast,
yet where an all-devouring army passes, notwithstanding the earth before them is like the garden of Eden, it is behind them a desolate wilderness;
the lowing ox and bleating sheep may cry for food, but, alas! “The destroyer hath destroyed it.”
The noble horse, which God has made for the use and pleasure of man, shares largely in this desolating evil:
He is often taken, without his customary food, to run with an express, until, exhausted by fatigue, he falls lifeless beneath his rider.
Multitudes of them are chained to the harness with scanty food, and goaded forward to drag the baggage of an army and the thundering engines of death,
until their strength has failed, their breath exhausted, and the kindness they then receive is the lash of the whip or the point of a spear.
In such scenes the comfort of beasts is not thought of, except by a selfish owner who fears the loss of his property.
But all this is trifling compared with what these noble animals, which tamely bow to the yoke of man, suffer in the charge of the battle; the horse rushes into the combat not knowing that torture and death are before him.
His sides are often perforated with the spur of his rider, notwithstanding he exerts all his strength to rush into the heat of the battle, while the strokes of the sabres and the wounds of the bullets lacerate his body,
and instead of having God’s pure air to breathe to alleviate his pains, he can only snuff up the dust of his feet and the sulphurous smoke of the cannon, emblem of the infernal abode. Thus he has no ease for his pains unless God commissions the bayonet or the bullet to take away his life.
But if such is the cruelty to beasts in prosecuting war, what is the cruelty to man, born for immortality? It is no wonder that those who feel so little for their fellow men should feel less for beasts.
If war is an inhuman and cruel employment, it must be wrong for Christians to engage in it.