The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1918-02-14

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SPIRITLESS SPIRITUALLY LEADERS,
In the Atlantic Monthly for Febru-
airy there appears an article by Joseph
H. Odell, under the caption Of Peter
Sat by the Fireside Warming Him
SELF" which is powerful Indictment
Of the spiritual leaders Of America for
their lack Of leadership in the great
battle of autocracy versus democracy.
Listen to Mr.. Odell:
Thoughtful men and women are
asking what became OF. the spiritual
leaders of America during those thir-
ty-two months when Europe and parts
of Asia were passing through Gehen-
ma? What prelate or bishop or &C.
clesiastical dignitary essayed the work
of spiritual Interpretation What con.
vocation or conference or assembly
spoke so convincingly that the national
conscience must perforce listen?
What book from a clerical study gave
the sanctities of humanity and the
sanctions of law the foremost place in
current thought? What voice from
the altar or pulpit liberated passion
of righteous Indignation and set this
continent afame with holy wrath?
Mr.. Odell, then quotes number Of
German preachers who Endorsed the
war and all it's brutalities, as prac-
ticed by the Huns, and makes these
vigorous comments:
The practical outcome of this spirit
ual vandalism is startling. His i'm
perial majesty, the kaiser, stands
guilty of the. most hideous crimes
ever perpetrated by ruler. Under
the divine right of kings the doings
of the army, the navy, the chancellery,
the foreign office, or the diplomatic
service are the volitions of the one
who wears the crown. Yet with a
trail Uttered with the debris Of wan
ton death and cruelty; with out
ragged women on every roadside with
er German troops passed; with
starved children dying like flies over
half of Europe and Asia; with the
seas dotted from horizon to horizon
with human fotsam and jetsam; with
helpless infancy and decrepit age alike
blown to bits in quiet Kentish towns
and Yorkshire summer resorts; with
the lecherous Turks let loose to wal
low in lust and blood among the Ar
menians; with captured British Off
GERS buried alive in Mesopotamia; with
the entire diplomatic corps of the en-
pire prostituted into bacteria distrib-
utors; with civilian captives reduced to
degraded slavery; with every outrage
that science could invent consecrated
by sanctimonious phraseology-well,
with a roster of CHASTITY and cowardly
crimes probably more in number and
blacker in hue than those of all the
Roman Caesars combined, there has
not been found one single preacher or
prelate in the whole of the German
empire to stand up and rebuke this
blood-sodden kaiser in the name of the
God Of righteousness.
In the following paragraph Mr..
Odell tells the American preachers
what he thinks Jesus would have done
and what they failed to do:
Long established habit, gained in
times of peace, may have caused the
preachers of the gospel to persist in
thinking Of Christ mainly as the heal
err, the comforter, the sympathizer.
Yet even that article of faith, in it's
practical form, has been taken out of
their hands by lay organization
the Red Cross. Of the Christ of the
metaphysical creeds and the Christ of
ecclesiastical polity there is no record
in the gospels to fall back upon. The
uncomfortable query which is being
asked of the ministry concerning it's
prophetic function during the thirty
two months from August, 1914, to
April, 1917, is: tDo you think that
Jesus Of Nazareth would have been
neutral in word and thought while
Germany was raping Belgium, dis
tributing typhus germs through ST.
IBERIA, instigating and guiding Turkey
in the slaughter of the Armenians,
tearing up treaties and rending inter-
national law, assassinating Edith
Covell and Captain Fryatt, shielding
it's soldiers during the Piave fighting
with the bodies of Italian women,
sinking hospital ships, and acting gen
orally on all the highways Of the
world like carefully organized band
of demented fiends? Do you think
he would have remained placidly 81
lent, absorbed in multitudinous
schemes of ecclesiastical procedure?
If not, then why were you so scrupu-
lously neutral, so benignly dumb?"
The sinking of the Tuscania by an
undersea terror, say number of con-
gressmen, will arouse Americans to