sword, bribed by gold, paralyzed by fear ... shielding itself.... The federated tribes of Israel slink to their tents, murmuring some safe platitudes about peace and prayer meetings whilst the world triumphs, the flesh riots and the devil grins with infinite content.... It were hard to say which is worse,—the silence of the pulpit or the timidity or wickedness of its speech when it does find tongue.... A dumb dog is bad, but a bloodhound baying upon the trail is worse.... What is to be said of a preacher, who, when the war spirit and the peace spirit are trembling in the balance, either can not speak or speaks only to blaspheme his own gospel?... _It can not be doubted that the church, exerting herself in accordance with her principles, could make all bloodshed impossible, and could have averted every war of recent times_; yet on many such occasions the multitude of ministers stir no finger, preach no sermon, sign no petition, sound no note that the government, willing enough to know the temper of a nation, can interpret as hostile to their project.... The appalling truth has to be faced: that the church, contrary to every expectation that might be formed from her principles and the character of the Being she worships, is always, as a whole, for the war of the day. It is true that when peace is the popular cry, the preachers are also for peace. If there is a peace crusade on hand which excites the shallow enthusiasms of the fashionables, the preachers will also catch the excitements of the hour; but when the white banner yields to the red, the pastors beat the drums for the fighters as furiously as they had previously denounced the savagery of armed conflict.... Organized Christianity divests herself of her robe of righteousness and her garments of meek humility to clothe herself in khaki.... A thousand pulpits are manned by Bible bullies who cite every obsolete and bloody precedent of the wars of the Jews and show themselves destitute of the elementary humanities and of the faculties necessary to discriminate between Judaism two thousand years before Christ and Christianity two thousand years after him.... What can mankind do with a church that peels itself like a pugilist and reveals the murdering pagan instead of the martyred Christian; which for carnal reasons cancels the Sermon [on the Mount], contradicts the Beatitudes, flatly denies the gospel, repudiates every specific Christly ideal, and unseats Jesus in order to elevate Mars to the throne of conscience?... At frequent intervals the cross with its suffering victim recedes and out of the blood-red mist emerges the foul idol of war erect on his crimson chariot.... The sanctification of revenge is, indeed, the vilest function performed by a war-poisoned, blood-stained church.... It is thus that the masses are kept from seeing the degenerate nature of the thing.... Their pastors lead them into the