that can be
alleged is when a soldier is ordered to do something which involves
apostasy from his faith, though even here it would be difficult to show,
in the light of pure reason, that this is a graver thing than to kill
innocent men in an unrighteous cause. In the Early Church there were
some soldier martyrs who suffered death because they believed it
inconsistent with their faith to bear arms, or because they were asked
to do some acts which savoured of idolatry. The story of the Thebaean
legion which was said to have been martyred under Diocletian rests on no
trustworthy authority, but it illustrates the feeling of the Church on
the subject. Josephus tells how Jewish soldiers refused in spite of all
punishments to bring earth with the other soldiers for the reparation of
the Temple of Belus at Babylon. Conflicts between military duty and
religious duty must have not unfrequently arisen during the religious
wars of the sixteenth century, and in our own century and in our own
army there have been instances of soldiers refusing through religious
motives to escort or protect idolatrous processions in India, or to
present arms in Catholic countries when the Host was passing. Quaker
opinions about war are absolutely inconsistent with the compulsory
service which prevails in nearly all European countries, and religious
scruples about conscription have been among the motives that have
brought the Russian Raskolniks into collision with the civil power.

One of the most serious instances of the collision of duties in our time
is furnished by the great Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. From the days of Clive,
Sepoy soldiers have served under the British flag with an admirable
fidelity, and the Mutiny of Vellore in 1806, which was the one
exception, was due, like that of 1857, to a belief that the British
Government were interfering with their faith. Few things in the history
of the great Mutiny are so touching as the profound belief of the
English commanders of the Sepoy regiments in the unalterable loyalty of
their soldiers. Many of them lost their lives through this belief,
refusing even to the last moment and in spite of all evidence to abandon
it. They were deceived, and, in the fierce outburst of indignation that
followed, the conduct of the Sepoy soldiers was branded as the blackest
and the most unprovoked treachery.

Yet assuredly no charge was less true. Agitators for their own selfish
purposes had indeed acted upon the troops,