“The belief that Christianity is incompatible with war, was designed to abolish war ... was held by all the Christians of the first three centuries.... Christianity is the religion of peace. How then is Christendom still at war? We naturally turn to the professional teachers of religion for an answer. “The paid teachers of Christendom are numbered by hundreds of thousands: Priests, bishops, ministers, catechists and so on,—while their lay helpers—deacons, church-wardens, elders, Sunday-school teachers, missioners, lay preachers—may be counted by the million and _it is incomprehensible that war should continue to exist in Christendom unless by first demoralizing these formers of religious opinion_. The fact also that all Christian countries alike compete in the equipment and spoils of war can be understood only as a proof of a corrupt or undeveloped conscience. The reason why Christendom is today in such straits and that so many countries wallow in debt, waste, ignorance, covetousness, poverty and misery unspeakable, is chiefly that the paid teachers of Christianity with their hosts of unpaid assistants have capitulated to the war god.... War is never pure, but is hell; and it can never be permissible to inaugurate heaven by the help of hell.... Here and there a smaller Elijah refuses to bow the knee to the military Baal, a faithful Micaiah, tho’ smitten on the mouth, continues to bear his testimony to the true significance of the gospel.... ‘For centuries the church met the hostility of a pagan and unscrupulous world and never flinched.... No revenge or bitterness marred the security of her soul.’... The appalling nature of the preacher’s defection is seen by the contrast with the magnificent opportunity war time affords him, than which prophet or apostle never had a greater.... _A trial of strength between conflicting nations is also a trial of the preacher’s moral character_; the height of noble opportunity to which it lifts him has its counterpart in the base opportunism to which he may descend. He may temporize like a politician.... He may accept the carnal policies of the parliament as limitations of his gospel and hang his head like a dumb dog when statesmen fling Christianity incontinently out of the house of legislation. He may soothe his conscience with the lie that war is a matter of politics, having nothing to do with the preaching of the gospel, and slide gently down into the dastard, blind equally to _the humor and the atheism of his position_. Between the churches which cry, “No politics in the gospel!” and parliaments which cry, “No gospel in politics!” the Son of Man is hard put to it to maintain a footing in modern affairs.... Few invocations to the Prince of Peace are heard [in time of war], but many to the God of battles.... The conscience [of ecclesiasticism] lies limp and voiceless before the uplifted