The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1883-06-02
WAR!
The Champion Curse of the
Universe.
Sermon Preached in Brooklyn Tabernacle
by Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage D. D., on
Sunday. May 81, 1888.
Opening hymn:
MY country, tits Of thee.
Sweet land OF Ilbertyn

Subject 1.-The Sword Sheathed in
- flowers"
TExT-Isaiah xviii, 4: "The Lord of
hosts is his name"
Under the God of armies we meet to-
day. He has been on one or the other
side of the great fights of the ages He
was present with Indignation and pity
at the great hemOrhages Of the world,
Salamis, Marathon, Carmal, Navarro,
Leipsig, Sedan, Waterloo Gettysburg.
He saw all the armies of the ages march
and where they fell. He presided over
all grave trenches and all the national
cemeteries, and not a private soldier
that was sacrificed in all the wars of the
centuries but God knows where his dust
IS as well as though every man had been
built monument of marble, glOTified
from base to top with epitaph and eulO-
gium. Over all the armies of the liv
ing and over all the armies of the deadl
"The Lord of hosts is His name" In
this spring time the American nation
kneels with cool bandage of garlands to
bind up the wounds of battle. War is
more CHASTITY now than once, not only
because of the greater destructiveness of
its weapOnry, but because now it takes
down the best men, whereas once 1t
chiefly took down the worst. Bruce, in
1717, in his institutions of Military
Law" said of the European armies of
his day: "If all infamous persons and
such as have committed capital crimes,
heTetics, atheists, and all dastardly anu
feminine men were weeded out of the
army it would soon be reduced to a
pretty moderate number" FlOgging
and mean pay made them still more
ignOble. Officers were appointed to see
that each soldier drank his ration of
pint Of spirits day. There were noble
men in battle, but the moral character
of an army then was 90 per cent. lower
than the moral character Of an army to-
day. By 80 much is war now the more
detestable, because it destroys the pick
ed men of the nation.
The South last week and the North
this week, in great and solemn cere-
mOny of decoration, first of all deplOre
the desOlatiOn of war. L know there are
those who intimate that blOOd-letting is
healthful for nations, and that nothing
but the lancet can keep them from pie
thOra, and that frequent wars are neces-
sary in order to kill off the useless and
bad populations of the earth. That
heathenish idea Is utterly lOathsOme to
me, especially when l remember that
war is indiscriminate and takes down
the good as we'll as the bad. Then l
think the time has come when Chris
tian nations ought to substitute arbitra
tiOns and treaty in the place of whole
sale massacre. A glance at isolated
latiOn, the suffering, the determination
of war. When NapOleOn's army march
ed up toward Moscow they burned every
house for 140 miles. Our Revolutionary
War cost the English Government $780,
100000. The wars growing out of the
French Revolution cost England $3,OO0,-
100000. ChristendOm-Or, as / might
mispTOnOunce it in order to make the
fact more appalling, Christ endOm-has
paid in twenty-five years $15 5,OO0,OO0,O
for battle. Those were the twenty-five
years, think, ending in 1920 or there
about. The eXOrbitant and exhausting
taxes Of Great Britain and the United
States are for the most part resultant
from conflicts. When we complain about
our taxes we charge the fault upon this
Administration. upon this line Of policy
or upon that line of policy, but it is a
simple fact that to-day we are paying
for the shot, and the shell, and the am
balances, and the cavalry horses, and
the batteries, and the exploded fortress
es, and the broken bones, and the dig
glng OF the grave trenches, and for four
years of national martyrdOm. Edmund
Burke estimated that the nations of this
world had expended $35, ,00O,000,000 in
war, but he did his ciphering before our
great American and European wars
were plunged into. He never dreamed
that in this land, in the latter part of
buAb C6hLulyy III AOul yddlO We
eXpend in battle $3,000,000,000. But
what was all this waste of treasure
when compared with the waste of hu-
man lifep The story lis appalling be-
yOnd everything. In one battle under
Julius Cesar 100000 fell. Under Xerxes
in one campaign 100000 were slain !;
under Gengis Khan, at Herat, 100000
were slain; at Nishar 1,747.OO0 we're
slain; at the seige of Ostend, 10000; at
Acre, 100000; at the siege of Troy 1876
600 fell. The Tartar and African wars
cost 108,0O0,000 lives. The wars against
the Turks and the Saracens cost $780, 0,OOO,-
600 lives. Add to all these the million
who fell or expired in hospital in our
own conflict. 1t might seem to some a
small addition, but vast addition it
seems to me, because 1t comes so near
our own hearts. Then take the fact
that thirty-fiVe times the present pOpu-
latiOn of the earth have fallen in battle.
Looking on these things am L not right
In charging you, oh, Christian men and
women, to pray every day of your lives
that the Lord Will hasten on the day
when our war shall ceaseP Enough the
tears; enough the blood; enough the be
reavement; enough the martyTdOm.
Again, by this annual ceremony we
propose to wildly impress the rising
generation. Subtract 1865, when the
war ended, from our 1888. and you will
realize what vast number of people
were born since the war, or were so
young as to have no vivid appreciation.
No one under twenty-eight years of age
has any adequate memory of that pro-
lOnged horror. Young man, do you re-
member itp "Well," you say, 81 only re-
member that mother swOOned away
while she was reading the newspaper,
and that they brought my father home
wrapped in the flag, and that good
many people came in the house to pray,
and that mother faded away after that
until again there were many people in
the house, and they told me she was
dead" There are Others who cannot re-
member the roll of the drum or the
tramp Of the regiment. or q sigh or a