War Inconsistent with the Religion of Jesus ChristDodge, David Low
Religion
War Inconsistent with the Religion of Jesus Christ
Dodge, David Low
Peace -- Religious aspects -- Christianity; War -- Religious aspects -- Christianity
To describe the fatigues and hardships of a soldier's life would require
the experience of a soldier, so that only some of their common
sufferings can be touched upon by a person who is a stranger to the
miseries of a camp.
A great majority of those who enter the ranks of an army are persons
unaccustomed to great privations and severe fatigues; hence the great
proportion of mortality among fresh recruits. Their habits and strength
are unable to endure the hard fare, rapid and constant marches generally
imposed upon them in active service.
The young soldier commonly exchanges a wholesome table, a comfortable
dwelling, an easy bed, for bad food, the field for his house, the cold
earth for his bed, and the heavens over him for his covering. He must
stand at his post day and night, summer and winter; face the scorching
sun, the chilling tempest, and be exposed to all the storms of the
season, without any comfortable repose; perhaps during most of the time
with a scanty allowance of the coarsest food, and often destitute of
any, except the miserable supply he may have chance to plunder,--not
enough to satisfy but only to keep alive the craving demands of nature;
often compelled to march and countermarch several days and nights in
succession, without a moment to prepare his provisions to nourish him
and glad to get a little raw to sustain his life. Frequently this
hardship is endured in the cold and inclement season, while his tattered
clothing is only the remains of his summer dress. Barefooted and half
naked, fatigued and chilled, he becomes a prey to disease, and is often
left to perish without a human being to administer to him the least
comfort. If he is carried to a hospital, he is there surrounded by the
pestilential breath of hundreds of his poor fellow-sufferers, where the
best comforts that can be afforded are but scanty and dismal.
But all this is comparatively trifling to the sufferings of the wounded
on the field of battle. There thousands of mangled bodies lie on the
cold ground hours, and sometimes days, without a friendly hand to bind
up a wound; not a voice is heard except the dying groans of their
fellow-sufferers around them. No one can describe the horrors of the
scene: here lies one with a fractured skull, there another with a
severed limb, and a third with a lacerated body; some fainting with the
loss of blood, others distracted, and others again crying for help.
If such are some of the faint outlines of the fatigues and sufferings of
soldiers, then their occupation must be an inhuman employment, for they
are instrumental in bringing the same calamities on others which they
suffer themselves; and of course it is unfriendly to the spirit of the
gospel, and wrong for Christians to engage in it.
VI. WAR IS INHUMAN, AS IT DESTROYS THE YOUTH AND CUTS OFF THE HOPE OF
GRAY HAIRS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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