War is made to look a magnificent spectacle. The gaping crowd admires the pomp and pageantry of militarism. The appeal is cleverly made to the craving for the sensational and the spectacular. Serried ranks, shining helmets, gorgeous uniforms, glittering weapons, prancing horses, flying banners, the proud bearing of the participants, stirring martial music hypnotizes the imagination of the beholder. But the inward spirit is the very cruelty and bitterness of hell.
War is a colossal imposition on the moral judgment of mankind.
It is a impudent declaring that which is wrong to be right. The first two propositions appeal to honest minds and tender consciences, but there is another which is the end of all controversy to the follower of the Lamb. War is contrary to His example, opposed to His teaching and subversive of the principles of His Kingdom. We might not perhaps succeed at the present time of convincing governments and the mixed multitudes called nations swayed by prejudice and passion for that particular part of the earth's surface they call their country that war should be done away with. But we ought to be able to convince every Christian man, that for him to have any lot or part in war is to commit treason against his Lord, For He has introduced him into a different sphere and order of things than that in which the nations of the world move.