Nelson Chronicle, Colne Observer, and Clitheroe Division News. — 1900-01-19 (Nelson, Lancashire, England)

ROW. Wm. Clifford, M.A., Rural Dean, preached from the test : "Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand men to meet hint that cometh against him with twenty thousand men ? " .  The Rector opened his discourse by presenting the picture of two Christian countries at war with one another in the last year of the nineteenth century. He then spoke of the horrors of war, its untold misery, its agonising fears, of tho souls it hurried into their Maker's presence, and spoke of the wretchedness it made by increased taxation, injury to trade, by the increased cost of the necessaries of life. He drew attention to the way in which they were thrilled by a single murder in times of peace. Yet death by violence in war made no impression. It was a glorious theme. Was it that Christianity was a fallacy, that they were hypocrites % Christianity condemned the wrong, the injustice which might be the very cause of the war, and justified the war. Christianity did not condemn war as the only alternative method of settling national differences when other means had failed. Christianity took the world as it found it. It took up the human race with all its unions and divisions into families and clans. It took the race with its rights and wrongs—rights which most be maintained, and having recognised the division of mankind into nations it, at the same time, allowed every nation its inherent rights, and the right to settle them in one of the ways which national differences could be settled. Nations were confined to two ways, because with nations, unlike individuals, there was no court above them to which they could appeal. Each was a centre unto itself. Until there was a government of nations, things must remain as they were. The identical force which a nation exercised in a war, the court of justice held in reserve. As Christianity had not taken the power from the magistrates, so neither had it demanded disarmament of nations—it justified war—in the absence of any other mode of settling national questions which according to the necessities of mankind, could not otherwise be settled—wars of self-defence, of progress, wars rendered necessary by national redistribution. But while Christianity did not condemn war, it exacted responsibility for'making war, and as to the method in which it was carried on. For some men the discipline of the barracks was the best they could have, and the military life had produced some of the finest and loftiest types of Christian character—General Havelock, General Gordon —types which had reached the very heights of spiritual life, and the soldier was taught not to value his own life above the interests of the community to which he belonged. In actual engagements, the fight was between contending armies, not between individual soldiers. The latter were still held together by the bond of Christian union. There would be nothing uncommon in Britons and Boers kneeling together at the same altar before their Lord and Master, and fighting against one another tomorrow. If to compel men to fight was to compel men to sin, then the soldier's calling would be one in which no Christian character could develop, and in which no Christian could enter. Yet war, with all that could be said to justify it, with all its compensations for its horrors and its inseparable miseries, imposed : a terrible responsibility upon the Government which declared war. *A writer had said were I it not for the Press there would be actually less I war. The Press was largely responsible for the had moral feeling of the country, by pandering to the lower tastes, by publishing vulgar criticisms, and by holding up the enemy to ridicule. It was possible to comment upon the prosecution of a righteous war in is most. unrighteous spirit. It might be our duty to fight the Boers, but we should be content with fighting, them ; it might be our duty to fight the Boers, but it was wrong for us to present them in the contemptible way they had heel] presented in certain prants. War did not kill the soul, and there was more sin in the big cities of Europe than upon the biggest battlefield. The offertories amounted to over £.47, 1:32 being collected at the morning service.