I sometimes wish that I were a preacher: preachers do so blindly ignore their shining opportunities. I am indifferently versed in theology—whereof, so help me Heaven, I do not believe one word—but know something of religion. I know, for example, that Jesus Christ was no soldier; that war has two features which did not command his approval—usually: aggression and defense. He taught not only abstention from aggression but non-resistance. Now what do we see? Nearly all the so-called Christian nations of the world sweating and groaning under their burden of debt contracted in violation of these injunctions which they believe divine—contracted in perfecting their means of offense and defense. “We must have the best,” they cry; and if armor plates for ships were better when alloyed with silver, and guns if banded with gold, such armor plates would be put upon the ships, such guns would be freely made. No sooner does one nation adopt some costly device for taking life or protecting it from the taker (and inventors will as readily sell the product of their malign ingenuity to one nation as to another) than all the rest either possess themselves of it, or adopt something superior and more expensive; and so all pay the penalty for the sins of each. A hundred million dollars is a moderate estimate of what it has cost the world to abstain from strangling the infant Gatling in his cradle. You may say, if you will, that primitive Christianity—the Christianity of Christ—is not adapted to these rough-and-tumble times; that it is not a practical scheme of conduct. As you please; I have not undertaken to say what it is not, but what it partly is. I am no Christian, though I think that Christ probably knew what was good for man about as well as Dr. Gatling or the United States Ordnance Office. It is not for me to defend Christianity; Christ did not. Nevertheless, I can not forbear the wish that I were a preacher, in order sincerely to affirm that the awful burdens borne by modern nations are obvious judgments of Heaven for disobedience to the Prince of Peace. What a striking theme to kindle fires upon the heights of imagination—to fill the secret sources of eloquence—to stir the very stones in the temple of truth! What a noble subject for the pious gentlemen who serve (with rank, pay and allowances) as chaplains in the army and the navy, or the civilian divines who offer prayer at the launching of an ironclad! IV