Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1845-04-18
PEACE DEPARTMENT.
For the Freeman.
THE CHRISTIAN-BUTCHER CHRIS
TIAN

THE CHRISTIAN-BUTCHER CHRIS
TIAN.
Persons who have nice scruples about religion, have
no business in the army DUKE OF WELLINGTON.
We trust that few can be found in this en-
lightened age disposed to dissent from this SEN
timent of the Hero of Waterloo. What business
a follower of the meek and lowly Jesus can have
in the army, is a question which has troubled,
for centuries, the darkened understanding Of the
heather world. To them-poor pagans!-and
to all the beings that look down with pity and
wonder upon this terrestrial scene, field ofbat-
tie, where christians meet and mingle in savage
butchery has been the most unaccountabe phe-
nomenon in the moral world In what state of
sentiment the love-breathng religion Of the gos-
pei exists in the heart of Christian, while, with
his eyes glazing like tiger, he is pushing his
bayonet through the body of another Christian,
or stamping him, breathing, into Jelly beneath
his horses hoofs, is problem which no moral
psychologist has ever solved. We know there
are some insects reptiles, and quadrupeds, which,
after long winter of suspended animation, re-
sumo, or assume, under the breath of Spring,
new and vigorous existence But during this
long interregnum of death, they retain no char
acterstic of their several natures. Nothing but
their cold and leless forms ascertain to you that
they were once flies, snakes, or mice Through
all this period they assume no new qualities
They sleep and awake, live and die, mmutable
and unchanged in their natures, If the Chris
titan warrior could take advantage of state anal
agous to this condition. the vital principle of re-
ligion might, perhaps, be perpetuaed in his heart
through long winter of suspended animation.
But here is difficult defect of parity in the two
cases. While training for the profession of man
butcher, and engaged in its ferocious and half
cannibal duties, he is compelled to sweep his
heart clean of any vestge of humanity, and take
unto himself seven other spirits as unlike the
spirit of Christ-the vine of which he purportsto
be branch-as any that ever fell out of heaven
and kinded the fires of the internal pit with the
burning intensity of their malice.
In the first place. the oath that he takes to
violate every law Of God, at the command ofhis
commanding officer, is all that Satan ever asked
of the rebel angels, with whom he assayed to
dethrone the Almighty And, in complying
with that oath, and the fendish service it invol-
yes, history in seeking the most expressive terms
of euIogy of the conduct of Christian armies on
the field of battle, has described them as fighting
not only like tigers, lions and hyenas, but like
devihI This is just discrimination. 10 say
that Christians ever fought like tigers and lions,
is libel upon those carniverous animals, In the
most insane ferocity of those illuminated ami
mails, they generally fight for food, as we'll as
vultures and other birds of prey. 1t would nit
ioate the bloody occupation of the Christian man
butcher, if he could proher the same excuse, g.
say that he fought as cannibal His inhuman
work would then be slightly relieved by the plea
of necessity and his character as beast. In
such a character only can the Christian fight like
lion or tiger But as an intellectual and NOR
al being, if he fights at ALL he must fight like a
deviL If he could destroy his fellow beings
with fire and sword; if he could take up little in
fants on the point of his bayonet and roast them
in the flames 'at the word of commando if on
his furious steed he could ride down the new
widowed mother, as she fled through the GRIM
soned snow with her babe on her breast if he
could chase old age and infancy into the house
of God and fire it over their heads; if he could
do all this and to do it is in the bond-wlth
no worse appetites and passions in his heart than
those which stimulate the most ferocious beasts
of prey, he might still retain the dignity flight
ing like lion or tiger. If he could do it in cold
blood, without an angry emotion stirring in his
bosom, the world, with united voice, would de-
nounce him an irrational monster, below the
lowest of the brute creation-a numbering au
tomaton, human butcherng machine, wounc
up and set going by superior officer But i
he must do it as an intellectual and moral being
possessing moral conscience and in face o
all the laws, attributes, and revelations of God
he may not do it as a carnlverous beast, can
nibal, or soulless, cast-ron machine, then mus
he fight like dcpiI, invested with the chiefes
attributes of that character. He must do it witt
those malignant passions burning in his heart
which make devil, which set on fire in mass
make hell in any part of the universe. d. B.