Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill PACIFISM IN TEEMS OF EELIGION THERE is the ground of religious belief. Many pacifists are the enemies of war because they believe that Jesus was the enemy of war. If this be true that Jesus was the enemy of war of every kind then none but Jews, atheists, agnostics and secularists, would be in this war or ought to be in this war; for the bulk of the American people accept the teachings of Jesus as of ultimate authority. We must not allow to go unchallenged the implied claim of the pacifists that they are the only people who recognize and yield obedience to the authority of Jesus. But is it true that Jesus declared himself in opposition to war and forbade his followers to fight ? We know he forbade revenge, vindictiveness, bitterness, hatred, retaliation, reprisal. Even if he had never uttered a word in condemnation of these we would know that he was dead against them. We would know it from his own behaviour; from the example he set the world of gentleness, meekness, generosity, charity, and compassion. But was he against war of every sort regardless of the purpose with which men and nations fight ? If we take him literally and not as the oriental mind took him — and we must remember that Jesus had to do with the oriental mind, which was fed on imagery — then we must admit that he was dead against war. " Resist not evil. If a man smite thee on the one cheek turn to him the other also. If a man compel thee to go with him a mile, go with him twain. Love your enemy, etc." These and other like sayings of his do sound as if he did not intend his followers to fight for any cause whatsoever. If I am to take them literally and obey them implicitly, then no rights of mine are so sacred as to justify my vindication of them by force; and no wrongs of which I may become th...