THE sacredness of liberty is not affected by changes in latitude or longitude. Like gold it has a fixed value throughout the world.AMS October 12, 1899, page 625.2

THE specter of corrupt government in America is not going to be changed into the angel of good government in Asia by going across the sea.AMS October 12, 1899, page 625.3

THE man who assumes the right to govern another man takes upon himself the responsibility of that other’s conduct before God; but the God who will require every man to stand independently before him at the bar of final judgment, sanctions and demands independence for every man now.AMS October 12, 1899, page 625.4

THE weapons of Christian warfare are aimed at sin; those of carnal warfare are aimed at the sinner. The whole object of Christian warfare is to save men alive; the whole object of carnal warfare is to kill men. Christian warfare means self-denial; carnal warfare aims always at self-supremacy. How much Christianity then can there be in carnal warfare?AMS October 12, 1899, page 625.5

THE nation demands that no citizen within it shall be an open polygamist; that is its highest standard of conduct. But God and Christianity demand that no man be a polygamist at heart; and this only is the right standard of conduct. But should the state adopt a standard, it would be necessary to set up the Inquisition in order to extort the secrets of the heart; and even then it could not enforce heart righteousness.AMS October 12, 1899, page 625.6

“CIVILIZATION” goes to the heathen with tremendous sinking power of drunkenness and other vices, but with no uplifting power to save them from it; for though it may bring to them the knowledge of what is high and noble, the knowledge does not give them power to attain to it. The mere knowledge of good gives no one strength of character; but it requires no strength of character to imitate vice. The heathen, therefore, in their weakness, need not the contact of civilization, but the gospel. And nobody who receives the gospel was found afterward in need of becoming civilized.AMS October 12, 1899, page 625.7

“The Natural Enemy of Free Government” American Sentinel 14, 40, pp. 625, 626.

ATJ

MILITARY government is necessarily despotic government, and therefore necessarily contrary to the free government ordained by the first American statesman for the people of this nation.AMS October 12, 1899, page 625.1

Under military government, the citizen to whom freedom was ordained as a birthright, is brought again in subjection to the despotism that has been characteristic of Old World empires; he is no longer recognized as the independent possessor of unalienable rights, entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” but as a servant subject in all things to the will of his military master.AMS October 12, 1899, page 625.2

All that makes military government necessary, therefore, or that leads up to it, is the natural enemy of free government, of all men, and of man’s Creator.AMS October 12, 1899, page 625.3

This is made very plain in the following which recently appeared, editorially, in the New York Sun, discussing “The Problem of the Volunteer and the Treasonable President“:—AMS October 12, 1899, page 625.4

“A gentleman in Orange, N. J., who had probably found his post-office box to file with seditious pamphlets from Boston or Brookline, took the trouble last week to write Atkinson. He asked that melancholy person what he, Atkinson, would have done if he were a volunteer enlisted in the United States Army and his commanding officer had ordered him to attack the Filipino insurgents.AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.1

“Atkinson promptly responded from Boston: ‘I should have refused to fight in an unjustifiable slaughter of our allies.’AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.2

“A correspondent of The Sun, at Baltimore, thereupon pointed out the circumstance that the volunteer swears upon enlistment not only ‘to serve the United States of America honestly and faithfully against all their enemies whomsoever,’ but also to ‘obey the orders of the President of United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the Rules and Articles of War.’AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.3

“The punishment prescribed by the Articles of War for the line of conduct which Atkinson unblushingly declares he would adopt, in the case stated, is death.AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.4

“Now another correspondent, apparently sympathizing with Atkinson’s views of the soldier’s duty, asks us these questions:AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.5

“‘TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN—Sir: Will you be fair enough to let me reply to the article about “The Volunteer’s Oath?” If that form is correct it should be changed, as a soldier swears allegiance to the President and not to the Union. Again, even with the present oath, the signer is entitled to the supposition that the President must not, as McKinley has done, violate his oath to sustain the Constitution of the United States.AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.6

“‘When the President is guilty of treason is the volunteer bound to follow him? “‘STANLEY G. LEONARD.’AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.7

“The form of the soldier’s oath is correct as it stands. It covers both allegiance to the United States and obedience to the President and to the officers appointed by him to command the private.AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.8

“As to the hypothetical case in which the President is guilty of treason, that is a question which cannot arise and the volunteers experience. Neither the Constitution nor any law of the United States constitutes Private Atkinson or Private Leonard a tribunal to decide whether the President is guilty of treason.AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.9

“If Atkinson and Leonard, in the presence of an enemy whom they were ordered to attack, should refuse on the ground that Atkinson and Leonard were convinced, after mature reflection, that the commander-in-chief whom they had sworn to obey, had himself violated his oath of office, thus relieving them of the obligation to obey, they would be probably court-martialed and shot, with the hearty approval of all right-minded soldiers and civilians.AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.10

“On second thought, they might not be shot. The reviewing authority might look them over and decide to consign them to a lunatic asylum.”AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.11

Thus, no matter what the individual’s own convictions of right may be, he must act as another man may dictate; and if he refuses to do what he believes to be wrong, when commanded, he will be “promptly court-martialed and shot;” and this should have “the hearty approval of all right-minded soldiers and civilians.” Where does God come in under this arrangement?AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.12

Plainly, God is left out of the matter entirely; and what must be said, from a Christian point of view, of an undertaking in which God is left out? To what must it lead the nation and the individual involved in it?AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.13

And plainly, from the Christian standpoint no individual is ever justified in entering into such a God-denying and God-defying compact; he is never justified in substituting any human authority for the authority of conscience, which is the voice of God; he is never justified in divesting himself of the individuality which constitutes him a free moral agent.AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.14

From the Christian standpoint and from that of an American citizen, war, militarism, and the war spirit, are things to be shunned and protested against, always and everywhere. In the direction of militarism is the road that leads surely back to the despotism from which our fathers fled across the Atlantic to an unknown world. The road to military greatness is one upon which a nation early bids farewell to civil and religious freedom.AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.15

“The Messages, the Messengers, and the People” American Sentinel 14, 40, pp. 626-628.

ATJ

FROM 1120 B.C. to 800 B.C. a mighty empire was built up by the kings of Assyria. Many nations were overrun, plundered, and laid under tribute. Thus vast sums of treasure were brought into the coffers of the kings of Assyria and into the hands of the Assyrians, especially in the capital city of Nineveh.AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.1

This long-continued flow of wealth carried in its train corresponding luxury. With luxury came love ease. With luxury and love of ease inevitably came vice. And at last their wickedness became so great that it reached heaven and deserved vengeance. The Lord sent Jonah to warn them of the coming destruction. “And Jonah begun to enter the city a day’s journey, and cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.2

And in that proud city—the leading city of the world—wicked as it was, and though the word came to the king upon the throne, Jonah was not accused of disturbing the peace; he was not put in the lock-up; he was not taken to the station-house; he was not accused of inciting insurrection; he was not charged with being an enemy of the country.AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.3

Instead of any such thing is that, “the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them unto the least of them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything: let them not feed, nor drink water: but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn everyone from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not.”AMS October 12, 1899, page 626.4

And nobody has ever charged that in this procedure Jonah was taking part in politics, nor that he was speaking against the government, nor that he was in any way disrespectful to the authorities. And if anybody had ever charged him with any of this, it would have been false; and by it the one making the charge would have shown that he did not know any distinction between religion and politics: and in that he would have shown that he did not know anything in reality of religion, but politics only.AMS October 12, 1899, page 627.1

In the course of empire Assyria was followed by Babylon. It was, too, the course of conquest, wealth, luxury, ease, and vice, even to the danger of ruin that Babylon followed. One day a man walked into the broad streets of Babylon and took position on the bank of the Euphrates which flowed through the midst of the city, and there as the vast crowds of the busy and pleasure-loving city passed and repassed he read with a loud voice a long arraignment of Babylon for her pride, her oppression, and her great wickedness; and also the doom of destruction that certainly would come. When he had read the whole account, he tied a stone to the scroll of what he had read and plunged it into the river, and exclaimed, “Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her.”AMS October 12, 1899, page 627.2

And in that proudest and wickedest of cities the man was not arrested or charged with any disturbing practises nor mischievous intent.AMS October 12, 1899, page 627.3

But, unlike Nineveh, Babylon paid no attention to the warning. In a few years her doom came. In the midst of a drunken and lascivious feast the judgment was written, and spoken, “God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting. Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.” And before the judgment was spoken, he who interpreted it said the king, citing the example of the king’s grandfather, how he was taught “till he knew that the most high God ruleth in the kingdom of men and appointeth over it whomsoever he will. And now, his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this; but hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven ... and the God in whose hand thy breath is and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified: then was the part of the hand sent from him; and this writing was written.”AMS October 12, 1899, page 627.4

And instead of that man being punished as a disturber of the peace, or as an inciter to insurrection, or charged with meddling in politics, he was rewarded with the highest honors a king could possibly bestow. The Lord Jesus himself came and lived among his own people and sought to bring them to God. They rejected his counsel and would not receive his message. He knew that national ruin could be the only result. And he told them so: woes that would reduce them to ruins and bring them even down to hell, proclaimed against Capernaum, Chorazin, and Bethsaida. He declared that Jerusalem should be compassed with armies, she should be laid low even in the dust, and her children within her, and the temples which were their pride and their trust should be so ruined that not one stone would be left on another.AMS October 12, 1899, page 627.5

He was charged with high treason. In the condemnation proceedings, his saying that the temple should be ruined was produced against him and perverted by a false witness into the charge that he had said that he would destroy the temple. Yet at the time everybody knew, and ever since everybody has known, that the charge of high treason or treason of any other kind was false, as well as every other charge was false. And these charges of treason, although made by the chief religionists, were in reality made only by the chief politicians: which is to say that their religion was only politics.AMS October 12, 1899, page 627.6

His disciples went everywhere preaching the word of the gospel. Paul reasoned with the people out of the Scriptures, “opening and alleging that Jesus must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead, and that this Jesus who I preach to you is Christ.” And in so doing he told them of certain ruin of the Roman Empire, the establishment of ten new kingdoms in its place, then the coming up of another that should destroy three of the ten and establish itself “the man of sin, the son of perdition,” “the mystery of iniquity;” and in the time of this one and of the remaining seven of the ten, Christ should come the second time and the world should end.AMS October 12, 1899, page 627.7

And when Christianity had been spread throughout the Roman Empire the Christians were always expecting the fall of Rome and were talking of it, and were prepared for it when it came.AMS October 12, 1899, page 627.8

It is true that the early Christians and the later Christians in the Roman Empire were charged with undermining the state, and like Jesus were condemned and put to death upon the charge of high treason. But everybody knows that all such charges against them were false; that all these things that the Christians said were true; and that to be faithful to their trust in the world and to their fellow-men, the Christians must say these things.AMS October 12, 1899, page 627.9

And God’s Word stands to-day with instruction and warning to the nations of to-day, as truly as it ever did to Assyria, Babylon, Judea, and Rome. That word will be spoken to the nations of to-day as really as it ever was to those of old. It is true that the politicians, even of the professed brethren of the understanding ones, will charge “disrespect of authority,” “treason,” etc., even as they did against Jesus in Judea, and the early and the later Christians in the Roman Empire. Nevertheless the truth of God will be spoken and the people will be warned.AMS October 12, 1899, page 627.10

Yet there is a striking contrast between the treatment of the messengers in Nineveh and in Babylon, and those in Judea and Rome and the United States. The world is not better than it was, nor is it getting better.AMS October 12, 1899, page 628.1

A. T. J.

“Militarism Against Christianity” American Sentinel 14, 40, p. 628.

ATJ

THE worst wounds ever inflicted on the world’s Redeemer, are those that he receives in the house his friends; that is, of his professed followers. And when his professed followers justify militarism and war, and command the armed battalions going forth to slaughter and be slaughtered as being divine agents going out to fight the battles of the Lord, they deny the Prince of Peace and give great occasion of glory to those who are his open enemies. This is illustrated in what a well-known atheist has to say of Christianity as exemplified in the practises of the armed “Christian nations” of to-day. The prevalent militarism, in which these armed nations of the earth, with their vast millions of hosts ready to fly at each other’s throats, their horrid engines of destruction, and there gospel of force, immensely outdo in display of brutal might all that paganism, ancient or modern, ever accomplished or dreamed of, is, says the spokesman of atheism, the shortest and most effective arraignment of Christianity that the despise pagan of to-day can desire.AMS October 12, 1899, page 628.1

“The world has been devastated with sanguinary encounters, and the followers of Jesus have neither prevented those horrors nor done much to mitigate their evil effects upon mankind. Indeed, Christians on both sides of the contending forces have implored God to aid them in killing each other. This was the case in the Crimean War, the Franco-German war, and the Civil War in America. In all these conflicts each side prayed to God that it might win all the battles. One would think that the disastrous consequences of those dreadful struggles between Christian nations would have been sufficient to destroy all belief in the efficacy of the prayer of supplication, for every Sunday during all these events the clergy repeated the request: ‘Give us peace in our time, O Lord.’ Still, the tragic slaughters went on, and got ignored all such appeals. Surely, if anything could show the impotency of the Christian faith as a promoter of peace, it would be the present expenditure of millions of people’s money, and the loss of millions of human lives in reckless warfare. Even to-day the prayers of the churches are offered up for the peace conference, which does not even propose to adopt Christianity as a cure for the evils of war. What a satire on Christian prayer for peace are the busy state of the warship building trade and the extra military preparations now going on, absorbing as they do a vast proportion of the earnings of the laborers of all the great nations of the world!”AMS October 12, 1899, page 628.2

In view of such statements by the champions of atheism, why can not Christian people understand that they are deeply wounding the Christian cause when they encourage the spirit of war?AMS October 12, 1899, page 628.3

“‘When?’” American Sentinel 14, 40, p. 628.

ATJ

THINGS will go right when the people are right and public opinion is informed with the principle of justice. Cabinets will reach fair and humane conclusions when the members of the cabinets are broadly intelligent, and lovers of their kind as well as of their country. Rulers will rule in equity when their hearts are set on righteous ends, and there is a sentiment abroad which will tolerate neither duplicity nor oppression.—Rev. F. A. Noble, D. D., at Detroit Christian Endeavor Convention.AMS October 12, 1899, page 628.1

And “when” will the people be right? When will the first and leading “when” become a fact so that the other “whens” can fall into line and follow? Plainly, something must first be done to set things right which the people themselves can not do; for they can not make themselves good. Only the power and grace of God can do that. And the work of divine grace upon the heart is not hastened by the preaching of the power of legislation, of the ballot, and of the gospel of force.AMS October 12, 1899, page 628.2

“Back Page” American Sentinel 14, 40, p. 640.

ATJ

THE bigger tyrant a man is, the fewer people does he see in the world who ought to be allowed self-government. And the biggest tyrant of all is only the man who thinks his own ideas of propriety and right ought to be the standard and the law for all others.AMS October 12, 1899, page 640.1

POLYGAMY is a bad thing, whether it be simultaneous polygamy, as sanctioned by Mormon custom, or consecutive polygamy, as sanctioned by the marriage and divorce laws of the States, or secret polygamy, which lurks everywhere beneath a cloak of respectability. And we are not sure that the Mormon form of polygamy is the worst one.AMS October 12, 1899, page 640.2

THE more militarism there is in the nation, the less freedom will there be, since military government is in its very nature despotic. And the less freedom there is in the nation, the less manhood will there be; for despotism always crushes out the manly qualities in those who submit to it. And the less manhood in the nation, the less power will it have, for national virility is inseparable from manhood in its citizens. So that by cultivating militarism with the idea of making itself powerful, a nation really makes itself weak. This may seem paradoxical, but it is a statement approved by experience.AMS October 12, 1899, page 640.3

IT was predicted that the disciplined troops of Spain in Cuba would prove superior to the “raw” American volunteers who went against them; but just the opposite proved to be true. The volunteers were better men, because they had grown up under a freer government. And all history testifies that the breath of civil and religious freedom does more to create power in a nation than the discipline which reduces men to mere machines. That nation is strongest which can depend on its citizens rather than on its soldiers.AMS October 12, 1899, page 640.4

The United States has nothing to gain, but much to lose, from a development upon military lines.AMS October 12, 1899, page 640.5

“EXPANSION” is in harmony with the Declaration of Independence when it is peaceable. Forcible expansion is imperialism.AMS October 12, 1899, page 640.6

IDENTIFY yourself with a truth that is eternal, and that truth will identify you through eternity.AMS October 12, 1899, page 640.7

October 5, 1899

October 19, 1899