War is Inhuman | 4

4. War Is Inhuman,
As It Spreads Terror and Distress among Mankind

In the benign reign of the Messiah, the earth will be filled with the abundance of peace; there will be nothing to hurt or destroy; everyone will sit quietly under his own vine and fig tree, having nothing to molest him or make him afraid.

But in times of war, mankind is usually full of anxiety; people’s hearts failing them for fear, looking for those things that are coming upon our wicked world.

One of the most delightful scenes on earth is a happy family in which all the members dwell together in love, being influenced by the blessed precepts of the gospel of peace.

But how soon does the sound of war disturb and distress the happy circle!

If it is only the distant thunder of the cannon that salutes the ear, the mother starts from her repose, and all the children gather round her with looks full of anxiety to know the cause.

Few women can so command their feelings as to hide the cause;

and let it be said to the honour of the female sex that they have generally tender feelings, which cannot easily be disguised at the distress of their fellow-beings.

Perhaps a mother’s heart is wrung with anguish in the prospect that either the partner of her life or the sons of her care and sorrow, or both, are about to be called into the bloody field of battle.

Perhaps the decrepit parent views his darling son leaving his peaceful abode to enter the ensanguined field, never more to return. How soon are these joyful little circles turned into mourning and sorrow!

Who can describe the distress of a happy village suddenly encompassed by two contending armies –

perhaps so early and suddenly that its inhabitants are aroused from their peaceful slumbers by the confused noise of the warriors, more ferocious than the beasts that prowl in the forest?

Were it not for the tumult of the battle, shrieks of distress from innocent women and children might be heard from almost every abode.

Children run to the arms of their distracted mothers, who are as unable to find a refuge for themselves as for their offspring.

If they fly to the streets they are in the midst of death: hundreds of cannon are vomiting destruction in every quarter;

the hoofs of horses trampling down everything in their way; bullets, stones, bricks, and splinters flying in every direction;

houses pierced with cannon shot and shells which carry desolation in their course;

outside, multitudes of men rushing with deadly weapons upon each other with all the rage of tigers, plunging each other into eternity, until the streets are literally drenched with the blood of men.

To increase the distress, the village is taken and retaken several times at the point of the bayonet. If the inhabitants fly to their cellars to escape the fury of the storm, their buildings may soon be wrapped in flames over their heads.

And for what, it may be asked, is all this inhuman sacrifice made?

Probably to gain the empty bubble called honour – a standard of right and wrong without form or dimensions.

Let no one say that the writer’s imagination is heated while it is not in the power of his feeble pen to half describe the horror and distress of the scenes, which are by no means uncommon in a state of war.

If such are some of the effects of war, then it must be a very inhuman employment, and wrong for Christians to engage in it.