“And from Lachish Joshua passed unto Eglon, and all Israel with him; and they encamped against it, and fought against it. And they took it on that day, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein he utterly destroyed that day” (Josh. x, 34, 35).
Thus city after city falls, and nation after nation is vanquished, until thirty-one kingdoms have been destroyed. And still there “remaineth much land to be possessed,” and many millions more of unoffending people to be slain to please this God of War.
Christ came, heralded as the “Prince of Peace.” But he “came not to send peace but a sword”—a sword his own arm was too weak to wield, but which his followers have used with dire effect. Expunge from the history of Christendom the record of its thousand wars and little will remain. From the time that Constantine inscribed the emblem of the cross upon his banner to the present hour, the church of Christ has been upheld by the sword. Five million troops maintain its political supremacy in Europe to-day. To “express our national acknowledgment of Almighty God as the source of all authority in civil government; of the Lord Jesus Christ as the ruler of nations, and of his revealed will as of supreme authority;” in short, to make this a “Christian nation,” as Bible moralists demand, means a standing army in this country of five hundred thousand men.
The Bible has inspired more wars in Christendom than all else combined. It is a fountain of blood, and the crimson rivers that have flowed from it would float the navies of the world.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
HUMAN SACRIFICES—CANNIBALISM—WITCHCRAFT.
Human Sacrifices.
I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions human sacrifices.