Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1849,
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THE BIBLE AGAINST WAR
BY
REV. AMOS DRESSER[1]
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�Blessed are the peacemakers.� � Matthew 5:3.
�There never has been, nor ever will be any such thing
as a good war or a bad peace.� � Benjamin Franklin.
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OBERLIN,
PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR
MDCCCXLIX
TRANSCRIBED AND EDITED BY
WWW.nonresistance.info
2006
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1849,
BY AMOS DRESSER,
In the Clerk�s Office of the District Court of Ohio.
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JAMES M. FITCH, PRINTER,
OBERLIN, OHIO
Normally, I prefer to bring archaic language up to date, but I have elected to leave this volume almost as it was published, only correcting inconsistent punctuation, tense, language, and number, and removing some of the italics.
You may want to refer to the other Oberlin historical documents on the nonresistance.info website, particularly the Constitution of the Oberlin Nonresistance Society.� I wonder if Dresser took part in drafting it, considering that this book includes specific rebuttals to Professor Finney, President Mahan, and the ideals of the Oberlin Peace Society.
This transcription is under no copyright protection.� It is my gift to you.� You may freely copy, print, and transmit it, but please do not change or sell it.� Also, please point out any errors I have made so that I can fix them.�
Tom Lock
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In my labors in the cause of peace for the few past years, I have found all, without exception, opposed to war.� All are ready to denounce it as a great evil and curse to mankind.� Many, very many, fully adopt the language of Professor Finney[2], and say, �War is one of the most heinous and horrible forms of sin unless it be evidently demanded by and prosecuted in obedience to the moral law.� Observe, war to be in any case a virtue, or to be less than a crime of infinite magnitude, must not only be honestly believed by those who engage in it to be demanded by the law of benevolence, but it must also be engaged in by them with an eye single to the glory of God and the highest good of being.� That war has been in some instances demanded by the spirit of the moral law there can be no reasonable doubt since God has sometimes commanded them.�
Surely no one acquainted with war could suppose that it could be carried on benevolently unless there was proof positive that God had commanded it.� This led me to carefully examine the Bible to see if indeed God did approve of what universal conscience condemns, if indeed God required man to do that which he instinctively shrinks from with abhorrence.� The result of my investigations I now present to the public, and they must judge of their worth.
The Bible is quoted to justify defensive war.� But if it justifies war at all, it justifies offensive and aggressive war, such as none in our day approve.� Yet most feel that self-defense is a privilege and duty; that great as is the evil of war, it is nevertheless right to fight sometimes.� But, �if it can be proved that defensive wars are allowable, it would be altogether useless to pursue the inquiry any further, because, under the name and pretext of defensive war, national contests of every description would be carried on.� Every belligerent nation, with scarcely a single exception, scornfully rejects the imputation of being the original aggressor, and professes to prosecute its warlike measures for purposes of self-protection.� And so long as we admit that defensive wars are allowable on Christian principles, we grant, for all practical purposes, everything that the advocates of war wish.� The true doctrine is that human life, both in its individual and corporate state, as one and as many, IS INVIOLABLE; that it cannot be taken away for any purpose whatever, except by explicit divine permission; and that war, in every shape, and for every purpose, is wrong, absolutely wrong, wholly wrong.� Any doctrine short of this will fall altogether powerless and useless upon the broad surface of the world�s crimes and miseries; it will dim the light of no sword; it will wipe the tear of no widow or orphan.� � Professor Upham.[3]
�Even the revelations of commerce prohibit war; and shall the religion of the Ledger outweigh the religion of Jesus Christ?� If that religion will admit any defensive war, our hopes are extinguished forever; for the last words of the author of it were, �it is finished.�� Nothing can be added, and nothing taken away.� Let the human race come to this sacred volume for their guidance, and read its prohibitions against all war.� It may be imputed to fanaticism and ultra-ism, but it has come to this: that if the gospel forbids all war, then there never was, and there never will be, a period when its demands were more imperative than now.� The greatest prerogative conferred upon us this side of heaven is to dwell together in love, and have God dwelling with us.� In view of this, the apostle exclaimed, �That neither principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, could separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus or Lord.�
�The highest demonstration of Christianity which a man can give is to forgive his enemies.� Thus war makes it a capital crime to exercise the capital virtue of Christianity!
�The whole world is looking to Christianity for the blessings of peace.� The down-trodden millions who have been crushed under the burdens of the grim Moloch of war, and are lifting up their lean, shriveled hands, and crying for bread, are looking to us Christians, imploringly, to stay the awful devastations of war; that they may have opportunity to rise again to the dignity of manhood.� And it is for us to remember, that if we perforate the great law of love, which is to cement and bind together in harmony all races of men, even with so much as a bodkin, we make a hole large enough to admit all the fiends of the pit and deluge with blood the whole face of this beautiful green earth.� � Elihu Burritt.[4]
�But can it be that those who justify war understand what war is?� Give a glance at its awful havoc of human life.� It has destroyed at Durham, 15,000; at Agincourt, 20,000; at Bautzen and Lepanto, 25,000; at Austerlitz, Jena, and Lutzen, 30,000 each; At Eylau 60,000; at Waterloo and Quatre Bras, in one engagement, in fact, 70,000; at Borodino, 80,000; at Fontenoy, 100,000; at Yarmouth, 150,000; at Chalons, 300,000 of Attila�s army alone.� Julius Caesar, in one engagement, slew 363,000; in another, 400,000; in a third, 430,000.� Genghis Khan, in one district, butchered 1,600,000, and, in his long reign of more than forty years, sacrificed some 32,000,000 lives!� Grecian wars are supposed to have destroyed 15,000,000; Jewish wars, 25,000,000; the wars of the twelve Caesars, 30,000,000 in all; the wars of the Roman Empire, of the Saracens and the Turks, 60,000,000 each; the wars of the Tartars, 80,000,000; those of Africa, 100,000,000; during the whole history of war, no less according to Dr. Dick, than 14,000,000,000, or, according to Burke, 35,000,000,000!!� � Peace Manual, p. 33.[5]
Thus at the lowest estimate war has devoured more than fourteen times as many as all the inhabitants on the globe!� Shall the enemy devour forever?� And then what havoc of virtue and all that makes life dear!� Take a single paragraph in the description of the sacking of Magdeburg:[6] �Neither the innocence of childhood, nor the helplessness of old age � neither youth, sex, rank, nor beauty � could disarm the fury of the conquerors.� Wives were dishonored in the arms of their husbands, daughters at the feet of their parents; and the defenseless sex exposed to the double sacrifice of virtue and life.� No condition, however obscure, or however sacred, could afford protection from the rapacity of the enemy.� Fifty-three women were found beheaded in a single church.� The Croats amused themselves by throwing children into the flames, Pappenheim�s Walloons with stabbing infants at their mothers� breasts.� Some officers of the League, horror-struck at this dreadful scene, ventured to remind Tilly that he had it in his power to stop the carnage.� �Return in an hour,� was his answer, �and I shall see what is to be done; the soldier must have some recompense for his danger and toils.� � Peace Manual, pp. 29,30.
�Stabbing infants, and throwing children into the flames� is the soldier�s amusement!� �The soldier must have some recompense for his danger and toils!�
Or come nearer home and take a mere glimpse of some of the refinements of our late war with Mexico.� Says a spectator, �As at Matemoras, MURDER, ROBBERY, and RAPE were committed in the broad light of day.
�On arriving at Mier, we learned from indisputable authority that outrages of the most disgraceful character had been committed against the citizens: stealing, or rather robbing, insulting the women, breaking into houses, and other feats of a similar character!� We have heard of them at almost every rancho up to this place.
�The women have been repeatedly violated (almost an every-day affair), houses are broken open, and insults of every kind have been offered to those whom we are bound by honor to protect.� � Facts for the people, pp. 109-111.[7]
These are but a part of the usual and necessary concomitants of war.� Are they what God approves?
Yet no doubt many will be slow to believe that the wars of Joshua, David, & Co. were not carried on with the perfect approbation of heaven.� I can heartily sympathize with such, for the idea that they were thus carried on has been instilled into my own mind from my youth, and there are many passages that seem to favor that idea; but careful, faithful research has fully convinced me that the Bible does not teach that doctrine.� I know not that what I have written will produce the same convictions in the minds of others.� All I wish is to have each for himself diligently �search the scriptures,� and if I can even awaken new zeal in the performance of this too much neglected duty and privilege, I shall feel myself amply rewarded for my labor.� I have tried to arrange various passages so as to assist in this delightful work, and my prayer is that the Holy Spirit may accompany their perusal, and give the same satisfaction to the soul of the reader that it has to the compiler.� I am conscious of the many imperfections of the work, still I can but hope it may help to hasten the day when �Righteousness and Peace shall kiss each other,� and nations shall learn war no more.� That that day is approaching none can doubt who has carefully observed the signs of the times.� All who have studied the wonderful events of the past year, in the light of God�s precious promises, can heartily say,
�There�s a good time coming,
A good time coming:
War in all men�s eyes shall be
A monster of iniquity
In the good time coming.
Nations shall not quarrel then
To prove which is the stronger;
Nor slaughter men for glory�s sake �
Wait a little longer.
The reformation has begun �
Wait a little longer.�[8]
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[1] Amos Dresser (1812-1904) was a missionary, abolitionist, lecturer, and pastor, and one of the �Lane Rebels� who studied at Oberlin College.
[2] Charles Finney (1792-1875), a professor and president of Oberlin College, is often called "America's foremost revivalist."
[3] Thomas Cogswell Upham (1799-1872) was a philosopher, educator, and professor at Bowdoin College in Maine.
[4] Elihu Burritt (1810-1879) was an American philanthropist, linguist, and social activist.
[5] Beckwith, George C.� The Peace Manual: or, War and its Remedies.� Boston: American Peace Society, 1847.
[6] Count Tilly, a Bavarian, commanded the army of the Catholic League during the first half of The Thirty Years War.� On May 20, 1631, he and Count Pappenheim stormed the prominent German city of Magdeburg, burned it to the ground, and killed 25,000 (85% of the population).
[7] Moody, Loring.� Facts for the people, showing the relation of the United States government to slavery, embracing a history of the Mexican War, its origin and objects.� Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1847.
[8] There�s a Good Time Coming, a poem by Charles Mackay.