St. Paul daily globe., 1895-12-23
NEW YORK CLERGYMEN PREACH
AGAINST THE SPIRIT OF
CONFLICT.
PROTEST OF PARKHURsT.
NEWSPAPERS THAT FAN THE
FLAMES OF ANIMOsITY BE-
TWEEN NATIONS.
DIsHoNoR OF CHRISTIANITY.
Mutterings of War At u Time
All Should BE Celebrating
the Christmas Tide.

q NEW YORK, Dec. 22.-Ministers in
nearly all Of the churches in the city
madereferences in their sermons today
to the Venezuela boundary dispute and
the possibility of war between the
United States and England. DR.. Park
hurst, in the course of his sermon in
the Madison Square Presbyterian
church, said:
'It almost seems as If there were
Providence in the way in which these
Christmas days sinchronize the year
with events that are just now filling
our hearts with disturbances and
throwing an uncomfortable shadow
across the track of the near future.
Now, we do not care to beat about the
bush in this matter, but prefer to go
straight to the mark by saying that if
Christendom wants to make the reli-
gion of Jesus with it's Bethlehem, its
angelic choir and it's anthem of Peace
on earth a laughing story to the un-
godly and contempt to the heather,
the best thing it can do will be to set
the two foremost Christian nations OF
the earth to work blowing up on an
others cities and blowing out one an
others brains. Unless we utterly mis-
conceive the sentiments of the Chris
tianized masses, both here and on the
other side of the water, such an issue
will be morally impossible. There will
be no conflicts that will go beyond the
point of messages and pronunciamen-
toS on either side if the church of the
Bethlehem Christ comes out and re-
cords it's veto. Christianity, both here
and in England, is too thoroughly an
integral part of national life for armies
and navies to clash in warfare at the
same moment that the churches of the
two countries are laundering peace.
IT WILL NOT BE.
'"This is not the place to enter into
philosophical or historical exposition
Of the Monroe doctrine; only it is safe
to say that this nation is not going to
be drawn into an international con-
f1ict or arms-to the dishonor of Chris
tianity, the encouragement of civil.
zation, the destruction of life and
treasure and the decentralization of our
entire organic life-in behalf of doc
trine such that probably 80 per cent Of
congregation as well informed as this
would not be able to state intelligibly
and the other 10 per cent who can state
it disagreeing among themselves as to
whether the doctrine is applicable to
the present situation.
I'VE are not speaking disparagingly
of loyalty to country or patriotic re-
gard for our country's rights. But
patriotic passions are incensed and can
easily be fired to the point where right
eousness is ignored and reason and
balanced consideration tabooed; and
that is the mischief of inflammatory
sheets that make q paying newspaper
business of tanning the flames of in
ternational animosity. l wish for two
weeks that it could be states prison
oHense to print newspaper head lines
with anything. larger than small caps.
If the nations would first take up the
business that belong to them first, and
If England and the United States would
join hands in the rather more gospel
enterprise of rescuing pillaged and out
ragged Armenians from the dirty, bloody
grip of the Turk, these two brothered
nations would soon find themselves in
good Christian condition of spirit, prob
ably to settle that little question of
civil engine ering down in Venezuela in
way that would save both parties not
only their pride and their heads, but
their Christian repute.'
WICKEDNESS OF WAR.
Rev. Charles H. Eaton, pastor of the
Church of the Divine Paternity, preach
ed a sermon on the wickedness of war.
1t was deplorable, he said, that the
day on which Christians were to cele-
brate the birth of Christ and proclaim
from every pulpit the doctrines of
peace, the nation should be eagerly
waiting the ultimatum of statesmen
and mutterings of war should fill the
land. 1t was more deplorable still that
the two most advanced Christian ma
uons, the two which had done most
to do away with the possibilities of
war, were now apparently ready to
throw away arbitration and substitute
conflict. Without going into the mer-
its of the dispute he would say that
the principle involved in the Monroe
doctrine was such that even statesmen
had but an obscure knowledge of it,
and without proposing to usurp any
of the functions of the statesmen now
considering the dispute, he would say
that there was no higher power to de-
termine the necessities of war than re-
lfgion. He, as a minister of the Cos
pei, raised his voice in emphatic pro-
test against war as means of set
ting a dispute until all other means
had been exhausted for bringing about
an amicable settlement. He believed
the people would visit upon the head
Of any statesman or leader, who dar-
ed to bring about war without first
trying to arbitrate, a swift and terri
BILE vengeance. God forbid, he said,
that nation should shrink from war
for fear of depreciating the value of
stocks and securities, but God forbid,
on the other hand, that the nation
should plunge into war unnecessarily,
without first having tried every other
means to bring about settlement.
CRUEL AND WRONG.
In the course of his sermon on "Civ-
ilizat.on's Debt to Christianity" Rev.
DR.. Madison c. Peters, of the Bloom
ingdale Reformed church, said:
War is cruel, hateful, wrong. War
is hell. The political demagogues who
at this Christmas-t;de are shouting for
war will be branded by the second
sober thought of the American people
as the criminals of the nineteenth CEN
tury. When these men had an oppor-