THE Rev. Dr. Charles Bridgman, of this city, has given us the assurance, that as regards the Cuban crisis, “It is God and not the devil who now calls the hosts to battle.” Just how he has learned this we are not informed; but, being the word of a clergyman, it is supposed to be accepted as a fact without any great amount of accompanying proof.
Dr. Bridgman is chaplain of the eighth New York regiment, and his sermon last Sunday, the 17th, was preached to the regiment especially, that being the occasion of their annual church service. The opening hymn was—
“The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams afar;
Who follows in his train?”
And the discourse which followed was calculated to impress the soldiers with the idea that they were following “in his train” by going forth to engage in carnal warfare with the Spaniards. This mixing of the spiritual with the carnal, earthly, and sensual is the fatal defect in the conceptions of Christianity which prevail to-day. The Son of God never went forth to carnal warfare, and none who do so to-day can be following in his train.
Notwithstanding the Rev. Mr. Bridgman’s assurance, we are not satisfied that the business of making war has in this instance passed out of the hands of the devil into those of the Lord. Christianity opposes evil with good—not with evil.