West Virginia Democrat. [volume] (Charles Town, W. Va.) 1885-1890, 1888-03-16
CHRISTIANITY AS OPPOSED
TO MODERN CIVILIZATION.

4
Hugh o. Pentecost's sermon Of
Sunday, February 10th, to the Unity
congregation in New York, was de-
voted to the consideration of the di-
rest teachings of Christ in their ap
plicability to modern human society
and the pointing out of the artificial
obstacles which our civilization in
terposes to any complete obedience
to the golden rule.
1t is my opinion, said Mr.. Pente-
cost, that even as things are, the
teachings of Jesus are far more easl'
ly followed than we commonly sup
pose.
In my opinion, to set young boy
or girl free, or rather never to arrest
them at all, after the commission Of
a crime, but to habitually treat them
with kindness-to make this the
habit of the community just as it is
now our habit to be especially con-
siderate toward the blind, the lame
or the deformed-would be far bet
ter and safer than to send them, as
we do, to the house of correction,
where they are Immediately thrown
with more hardened offenders and
confined in moral atmosphere in
which the highest virtue is to be-
come skillful in crimes, bitterness
being all the time Iengendered in
their hearts toward the esociety which
| incarcerates them.
Whenever wedu, asif by accident,
put the teachings of Jesus into prac-
tice, we find that they work quite as
we'll as our policy of selfshness and
vengeance.
1t is commonly said, and by great
and good men, that progress depends
upon the exact reverse of these max
inns; that our present glorious civil
lization has been built up by force;
that we should not be as far advan,
ced in all that is called Christianity
but that we have forced men to do
right. If that is true, then the Brit
ish officer who calmly proposed as a
measure economical, expeditions,
and, in the end, calculated to permit
the loss of the fewest souls, the sub
jugation of India to Christianity at
the cannon's mouth,w right. Tier
Mahommed was wrong in nothing
except that he forced men to believe
in the wrong religion. Then the in
quisition was right in torturing men
for the good Of their own souls and
killing them for the good of others.
Then we have made mistake in
abolishing capital punishment for
nineteen OF the twenty crimes for
which it was once inflicted.
Now, / deny this common asser-
tion that it is necessary to do wrong
that good may come; that true civil
lization is built upon force; that the
only way we can make men truly the
imitators of the high life of Jesus
and Buddha and Socrates is to begin
by violating their teaching.
And / assert that the only charac-
teristics of our civilization which
are truly beneficent have been evol-
we'd by the teaching and effort of
men who hate this damnable doc
trine Of salvation by gun powder,
steel and blood.
l assert that the monstrous curses
of the human race to day, land mo-
nopoly at the foundation. and upon
that as a superstrncture every other
heinous monopoly of wealth and op-
portunity; national debts and bur
densome systems Of taxation,are the
direct results of the use Of force in
establishing and maintaining socle-
ty.
And these fruits Of force are the
causes of poorhouses and prisons.
poverty and crime.
! There are those who point to Ger
many as in the van of civilization.
And in scholarship she is. But in
so far as Germany reflects the think
ing and purposing of that devout
Christian and man of iron apd blood,
Bismarck, she is scandal upon the
name of civilization. A nation that
turns women and old men and chill
dren into producers for the support
of it's army. and turns itself into
military camp is, in that particular,
barbarous, not civilized.
There are those who speak of En-
gish civilization, but except in n'the
realm of letters. science and art
there is no such thing. A nation
that never hesitated to do wrong if
she could accomplish it by force and
never was known to do right except
at the mandate of force; nation
that forced opium upon China to
build up her trade, and forces degre-
dation and death upon Ireland TO in
crease her rent roll, represents bar
| barism far more terrible in its effects
than that of the jungles of Africa.
! We might not have built up pre-
cisely the same sort of civilization
that we have if we had always fol-
lowed the precepts of Jesus Christ.