le times; that it is
not a practical scheme of conduct. As you please; I have not undertaken
to say what it is not, but what it partly is. I am no Christian, though
I think that Christ probably knew what was good for man about as well
as Dr. Gatling or the United States Ordnance Office. It is not for me to
defend Christianity; Christ did not. Nevertheless, I can not forbear the
wish that I were a preacher, in order sincerely to affirm that the awful
burdens borne by modern nations are obvious judgments of Heaven for
disobedience to the Prince of Peace. What a striking theme to kindle
fires upon the heights of imagination--to fill the secret sources of
eloquence--to stir the very stones in the temple of truth! What a
noble subject for the pious gentlemen who serve (with rank, pay and
allowances) as chaplains in the Army and the Navy, or the civilian
divines who offer prayer at the launching of an ironclad!

IV.

A matter of missionaries commonly is to the fore as a cause of quarrel
among nations which have the hardihood to prefer their own religions
to ours. Missionaries constitute, in truth, a perpetual menace to the
national peace. I dare say the most of them are conscientious men and
women of a certain order of intellect. They believe, and from the way
that they interpret their sacred book have some reason to believe, that
in meddling uninvited with the spiritual affairs of others they perform
a work acceptable to God--their God. They think they discern a moral
difference between "approaching" a man of another religion about the
state of his soul and approaching him on the condition of his linen
or the character of his wife. I think there is no difference. I have
observed that the person who volunteers an interest in my spiritual
welfare is the same person from whom I must expect an impudent concern
about my temporal affairs. The missionary is one who goes about throwing
open the shutters of other men's bosoms in order to project upon the
blank walls a shadow of himself.

No ruler nor government of sense would willingly permit foreigners to
sap the foundation of the national religion. No ruler nor government
ever does permit it except under the stress of compulsion. It is through
the people's religion that a wise government governs wisely--even in our
own country we make only a transparent pretense of officially ignoring
Christianity, and a pretense only because we have so many kinds of
Christians, all jealou