"Well, take such a question as war," replied Mr. Lethbridge. "John Wesley killed the very possibility of war."
"I wish I could see it," I could not help exclaiming.
"It is plain enough," he replied. "Methodism and war cannot go together. The love of peace has entered into the very essence of people's lives. Is not that something to be thankful for?"
"I am not so sure," replied Isabella Lethbridge. "May not war be a very good thing?"
"A good thing!" cried her father—"a good thing! Why, it's hellish! I would rather see a son of mine dead than a soldier! And that is the feeling Methodism has created throughout the county. You scarcely ever find a conscientious Methodist becoming a soldier. A soldier in this county is looked upon as a kind of legalized murderer."
"Surely," I said, "it is not so bad as that?"
"It amounts to that," was his reply. "For my own part, I have an utter abhorrence of anything which savors of militarism, and I know it is because of the impressions I received as a boy."
"But supposing war were to break out?" I said.
"War break out!" he interrupted. "How can it break out, unless some of our so-called statesmen make asses of themselves? No one wants war."
"No," I said—"that is, as far as the general feeling in the country is concerned; but supposing war were thrust upon us?"