Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1899-12-11
RETROGRESSION.
Xxx

dedicated to the Christian Civilization of
the 18th Century,
He'll unbarred by white mems hands
And the fiends or war set free,
In the eager hunt to shatter Gods work
To slaughter on land, TO slaughter on sea.
In the hand of Peace we place the torch,
We force the sword in the hands of Love,
We sunder apart the communal chain
That the hand of Deity fashioned and
wove
Tales of enlightenment are all lie
Fair tales writ in the shifting sands
We stand in our native air once more
With the club and knife and blood stained
hands.
And what shall we pay for this?
Widows means, both here and there,
Ragged orphans there and here,
Blackened ruins and unturned soil
Millions of treasure extorted and wrung
From the fevered sweat of rebeliious3 toll.
We step from the light to the dark of the
To glut in the flow of blood
We crush down Christ and the voice of
Right,
We ride on the crest of raging food.
And cry with the vultures that circle
around,
The voice of the prophet is all lie
Though faith long chung TO his cheering
WORDS,
That man would cease to butcher man,
That shares would be beaten from use
less swords,
And the hand of God would reign supreme,
And the sounds of war would cease
Instead, the notes of an anthem grand,
OF peace-of peace-of eternal peace.
But the brutes we are and the brutes
with a thirst for crime and sin.
For the civilized visage is but mask
That hides the savage within.
The present condition of the worlds aft
fairs, wherein two great nations are en-
gagged in the butchery of weaker people,
is mournful commentary upon our eight
cen hundred years of Christianity. This
deplorable condition. is heightened when
one reflects that some of the most blatant
voices that Shrek for blood and wholesale
murder arises from the pulpit. The calam-
tiles in the Philippines are justified by a
great yet bigoted class of the clergy as be-
ing the work of God. The ministry of
England Justify the present crime in South
Africa as the work of God. These clergy
men, who should be foremost in the de-
nuncation of murder, paint God as red
handed brutal and impotent, unless He is
supported by the powerful auxiliaries of
cannon, powder dynamite, lyddite and 9TH
err agencies born of the internal regions.
Count Tolstoi, by convincing argument,
based upon Scripture, conclusively demon
strates that murder is never justifiable-
no matter under what circumstances COM
mitted-not even in the form of war.
In the course of his argument he says,
'"This war doctrine is a huge lie, vile de-
ceptfon by men accustomed to live by
the sweat and blood of their fellow men, "
yet the monstrous crime against civiliZa-
ton is defended-aIrd defended from the
pulpit, in opposition to every teaching of
Jesus Christ The outlook grows blacker
as time advances, and it may be but few
months until we see all Christianity-at
least the greatest opponents of 1t among
the nations of Europe-stripped for battle
Amid the horrible carnage and blood we
will be told it is the work of God-God,
with sword in hand If all this be true
that God is the instigator of wholesale
murder-the human race is now entering
into another period of darkness not equal
led by the gloom Of the medieval ages.
BARON JONES.