6 TZbe Conservative.
THE WELCOME.
Written for TIIK CONSKIIVATIVK
Pipe loud nnd shrill nnd strong ,
Shout murrily and long.
The boys Inivu count
From ilclds of fifo nnd drum
Bc > 3 s when they left us. Now
Hurous with laureled blow.
Cheer for the ills they've past ,
Cheer that they are at last
Safe home again ,
No longer boys but men.
Brin { ; wreathes of green to crown
The soldiers brave and brown.
But hark ! Pipe s-oft nnd low ,
Sweetly your Imgles blow ,
For them who fell
Let us make haste to toll ,
How they who are at rest
Our bravest were and best.
Blow not too loudly then ,
Some shall not come again.
And some there bo
Whose dead lie o'er the sea ;
With joy our eyes are wet ,
Yet can we not forget.
ISA HKij RICH EV.
AKIlAlt AND UKV. WAYrANJ > 1IOYT.
EDITOII CONSERVATIVE :
It may bo hard for some people to un-
derstaiicl the attitude of the clergy today
( I mean the orthodox clergy ) in applaud
ing the forcible conquest of a people
who want to be free , on the ground that
we are under bonds , as official custod
ians of the Gospel , to make them pious ,
exemplary Christians. But it will all be
clear enough if we take a brief glance at
the history of Christian propaganda.
Their position is a matter of precedents ,
nnd these form slowly but securely , like
a coral reef.
Take the church , for instance , in the
days of its primitive simplicity , when it
depended for guidance nnd interpreta
tiou. on the writings of the early fathers ,
those who had been more closely in
touch with the views and methods of
the apostles , who received their lessons
from the Master himself. These mild ,
devout teachers wrote and preached
against warfare of every kind , contend
ing most fervently that no man could
make a business of killing his fellow
men and be a worthy servant of Christ
Clement of Alexandria , Tertulliau , Ori-
gen , Lactantias and Basil all claimed
that warefare was unlawful for those
who had been converted.
It was in loyalty to this creed of the
early clmrch that Christianity found its
first soldier martyr. This was Maxi-
milianus , who went to death in the reign
of Diocletian for refusing to fight be
cause ho was a Christian. By degrees ,
however , the church authorities relaxed
this Quakerish requirement , possibly out
of deference to the fact that no man
could live respectably in those turbulent
times without doing some fighting un
less ho shut the world behind him and
took to the desert , like Origen. At last
( hero we quote Mr. Lecky's "History of
Morals" ) i "when a cross was said to
have appeared miraculously to Constan-
tiue , with an inscription announcingtho
victory of the Milvian bridge ; when the
same holy sign , adorned with the sacred
monogram , was carried in the fore front
of the Roman armies ; when the nails of
the cross which Helena had brought
from Jerusalem were converted by the
emperor into a helmet , and into bits for
his war horse , it was evident that a
grent chnngo was passing over the once
pacific spirit of the church. "
To Constantine , then , the first Chris
tian emperor , we stand indebted for the
real birth of the church militant , the
doctrine of injecting Christianity with
the spear and battle ax. But this belli
cose hero was a very modest retail dealer
in the doctrine , compared with the pre
lates and troopers who followed him.
Finding that they couldn't repress the
tendency of new converts to run the un
believers through with swords and pikes ,
they made a virtue of necessity and
blessed the deed and the doer. Those
hordes of northern barbarians , taught
to believe from the cradle that they
could only enter Walhalla by going elab
orately stained with the blood of their
enemies , would have a very proper con
tempt , of course , for the Christian faith
if it didn't cater to that venerable tradi
tion. So they had to be humored in this
matter of slaughter. Then , in the
feudal days , when they had war for
breakfast , lunch and dinner , the worthy
bishops and abbots could never secure
fnt benefices from the professional war
rior chieftains unless they signed a
promissory note to fight , they and their
relations , on demand. So the church of
course , had to make reasonable allow
ance for their embarrassing position.
They held the benefices and fought any
thing and everything that came along.
Now we have reached the seventh
century and find the church in beautiful
pugilistic trim , ready to fight to a finish
at the drop of the hat. Then it was that
the Christian army was confronted with
the spectre of the Crescent , bearing with
it a menace more awful and implacable
than anything that had gone before.
Christendom was in panic at the fanati
cal avalanche of religious fighters that
burst from Arabia. As Mr. Lecky puts
it , "the transition from the almost
Quaker tenets of the primitive church to
the fierce , military Christianity of the
crusades was chiefly duo to the terrors
and example of Mohauimedism. "
To the Moors , then , the Christian
world stands indebted for that triple-
extract of ferocity which has so proudly
led the church militant in all its cam
paigns of propaganda by the sword.
Naturally , therefore , wo must look to
these Mohammedan missionaries for the
most reliable , exhaustive styles of
spreading the Gospel by force of arms.
If they furnished the original fashions ,
which the church militant approved and
adopted , and which have never been
officially changed , we can best show
how tenaciously these old fashions have
clung , by placing one of these impres
sive slaughter war cries of the Moham
medans side by side with a church mili
tant war cry of 1899. Let us contrast ,
therefore the holy platform of the cele
brated Akbar , who lived in 089 A. D.
( and holds the record for long and short
range massacre of the "Christian dogs" ) ,
with the latter-day pious platform of the
Rev. Wayland Hoyt , a prominent orth
odox divine of the Quaker City. Akbar
announced his platform as ho stood on
the shores of the Atlantic , after a highly
dramatic and gory raid through north
ern Africa , while the Rev. Mr. Hoyt
fired his broadside from the frowning
ramparts of a Baptist pulpit.
Here they are :
Akbar , Mohnmnu'dnn , Hoyt , Christian ,
A. D. 080. A. D. 1SOO.
"Great God I If my "Christ is the solution
c o u r s o were not for the diiHoulty re
stopped by this sea , I garding expansion. The
would still go OH to only thing we can do is
the unknown regions to thrash the Philippine
of the West , pronch- natives until they un
ing the unity of Thy derstand who wo are.
holy name , and put I believe every bullet
ting to the sword all sent , every cannon shot ,
rebellious nations means righteousness.
who worshiped any When w e have con
other gods but Thee. ' ' quered anarchy , then is
the time to send the
Christ there. "
It will be observed that the only dif
ference between the two war cries , both
very warm in religious fervor , is what
might be called a question of taste.
Akbar , out of deference to the solemnity
of the great issue , proposed to preach
the unity of God before ho introduced
the slaughter a sort of advance notice
of trouble while the method of the Rev.
Mr. Hoyt , as he very plainly states it. is
to first shoot away a condition of an
archy , and "then send the Christ there. "
Some sensitive people might be inclined
to think that the Akbar process would
be fairer and more acceptable to th vic
tims than the process of the Rev. Mr.
Hoyt. But this , as already said , is en
tirely a matter of taste. If the heathen
dog has to die anyhow , perhaps it would
not relieve his embarrassment much to
know the reason why. All things con
sidered , possibly Mr. Hoyt's method is
more direct as it certainly is more eco
nomical for the more heathen who are
lulled before the "anarchy is conquered"
the fewer Bibles and tracts will be
needed for the survivors. On the whole ,
it is hard to escape the conviction that
we have shown a vast improvement in
forcible , rapid-fire propaganda methods ,
between the crude time of Akbar and
the progressive ago of the Rev. Way-
land Hoyt. S. P. BUTLEK.
Cincinnati , May 18.
There is still no one in Nebraska
clothed with powers for dealing with
epidemic diseases. General Wood's
Santiago stories show what can be done
in that line by the application of auth
ority ; in the rotten town of Holguin he
found 8000 cases of smallpox , and re
duced them CO per cent in less than a
month.
