THE FOLLOWING TEXT COMES FROM “MISCELLANIES" BY WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS… 

CHAPTER : THE PRAYER OF THE CHURCH AGAINST THOSE DELIGHTING IN WAR. from page 367…

(A Discourse delivered on the first Sabbath of the year 1847.) 

"SCATTER THOU THE PEOPLE THAT DELIGHT IN WAR.” — Psalm lxviii. 30.

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William R Williams was an American clergyman, born in New York, Oct. 14, 1804. He graduated at Columbia college in 1822, studied law, practised for a year, and after a visit to Europe entered upon the ministry in the Baptist denomination. He was installed pastor of the Amity street Baptist church, at the time of its formation in 1831, and still retains that office (1876), notwithstanding numerous solicitations to accept more conspicuous positions. He has published two volumes of discourses, "Religious Progress" (Boston, 1850) and "Lectures on the Lord's Prayer" (Boston, 1851); Then he published a volume of "Miscellanies" (New York, 1849); and "God's Rescues, or Discourses on Luke xv." (1871).

GUS IS A FIERCE ATHEIST, BUT I HOPE ONE CAN SEE WILLIAMS’ TEXT HAS POLITICAL ANALOGIES TO THE PRESENT DAY… SHOULD WE REPLACE “GOD” WITH THE WILL OF THE “UNITED NATIONS” AND A FEW OTHER CONCEPTS WITH CURRENT ACTORS, WE GET A FASCINATING RESONANCE… GUS HAS HIGHLIGHTED SOME PASSAGES IN BOLD FOR EMPHASIS.

HERE IS WILLIAMS…

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God has set before us as a people a magnificent task. To unite in the bonds of a common piety and freedom the various people from whom our colonists are drawn ; to prove to less free nations in the old world, how with popular freedom may consist popular self-restraint, and how they who rule themselves may be a law-abiding and God-fearing people ; — this is the labor and the prize set before us. But if we become a rapacious and unscrupulous nation, scornful of laws, aggressive and unjust, we travesty our own most solemn professions, we aid the cause of despotism in the Eastern world, and prepare the path and the necessity for the rise of a military despotism among ourselves on these Western shores. God is not mocked by republics more safely than by churches, by statesmen than by religionists. The unjust cannot long be free, the violent are never eventually safe [ZELENSKYY]. 

Thus have we wished to bring out of our text the great lessons it teaches. We have sought to show that war is not in all circumstances unlawful even under the gospel, but that it is, yet, always a calamity, and generally an enormous crime. We have sought to show how delighting in war was sinful, and what the classes were thus guilty. We have seen how, in ancient and modern history, God has governed the world on the principle which the prayer of our text invokes. 

We have sought to shun all needless and controversial details. It is not long since the leaders of the two great and rival parties of the nation united in declaring that the annexation of Texas would involve our Union in a war. The friends of the measure of annexation denied this. The province was annexed. The war has ensued. 

Is it our duty to raise the cry in such circumstances, "Our country, right or wrong?" In the days of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, Blake, a religious man, the brave English admiral who first began the long course of England's naval triumphs, did not in all things fully sympathize with the ruling powers at home. But he was accustomed to say that the seaman must leave the powers at home to settle the affairs of the nation — it was his business to see that foreigners did not wrong the country abroad. Now, if the wars abroad were not unjust (and such they were not), we suppose the principle that good and brave man announced as his rule not an untenable one. But to a distinguished naval warrior of our own country is assigned a sentiment more sweeping, often quoted and highly lauded, "Our country, right or wrong." Now, there may be questions as to right and wrong in the policy and course of a country, where good men and able are nearly equally divided. A man in doubt, after his own best efforts to decide the question, may, perhaps, safely leave such difficult and intricate questions to others, and do the work of his station. But a man, who, after the first investigation, believes clearly his country engaged in a wrong course, may and should, by all proper means, protest against the wrong-doing, not only for his own sake, and to clear his own soul, but for the benefit of his country. God's right over man is older than that of the country or the family even. If this principle on which we comment were true in morals and patriotism — if our country, irrespective of the justice of her claims, should be sustained — then in those countries whose government is despotic, and where the king says virtually, like the royal Bourbon, "I am the State“ — this maxim, "the country right or wrong," is tantamount to saying, Let the will of the prince, whether vicious or good, be my supreme law. And if that will not only justifies but demands my obedience as a patriot — if to be true to her and her government, I must close my eyes and leave conscience in abeyance — then the elders of Jezreel [A PLAIN IN ISRAEL] were blameless before God for obeying the signet of Ahab [ISRAELI KING INDULGING IN IDOLATRY] and the letter of Jezebel, and shedding the innocent blood of Naboth [A MAN OF INTEGRITY] to obtain the confiscation of his vineyard [PALESTINE]. Then John was a traitor for not leaving uncensured the domestic relations of his sovereign Herod. Then the inhabitants of Madagascar are bound, by our laws of patriotism, since such is their queen's will, to persecute in our days Christians to the death. 

If, as some wish, all discussion were treasonable, soon as a war had been provoked, no matter how regularly and how justly, or how irregularly and how unjustly ; and if thence- forward to discuss its origin and character were unlawful, it were virtually a proclamation of martial law over the land   — it were the enunciation by political power of a pontifical interdict upon the nation's conscience, forbidding, as did the rash edict of Darius the Mede, all prayer to God, as a Judge, till the quarrel were ended. The patriotism of Daniel was best shown, by refusing calmly to abide any such interdict, usurping on the rights alike of conscience, and of the Lord of conscience. No, our country — be her sovereign one or her rulers many, be she a democracy or a despotism— our country and its government may never dispense us from our primary allegiance to God's eternal and immutable law of right. No, as we love God and fear his anger, let right stand ever before either country or home. God and right are to the truly religious man, the patriot of scriptural principles, dearer than his country. So Jeremiah loved his country, and sacrificed popularity and peril led life, in counselling Zedekiah [LAST KING OF ISRAEL] and his nobles against a war that began by the breaking of a solemn treaty. Or rather, the enlightened believer knows that his country can be safe but as brought right ; and loves her true and permanent interests too well, to wish her transient, and deceptive, and ruinous success, in a course of wrong-doing. 

Much is said of the destinies of the Anglo-Saxon race, and of their irresistible development. May our God make that development in science and art, in integrity and influence, more than its loudest eulogist has dared to promise. But a slight glance at the past history of the world suffices to discover, that in races as in individuals, pride goeth before destruction, and is the first symptom of internal decay in the power of which it vaunts. The core and pith of a nation’s manhood soon becomes rotten, when the outer rind and enamel of its conscience and self-control and honesty scales off. And when men claim, in the development of their talents and might, to go beyond God's ordinary law of morals, God is accustomed to transcend His ordinary laws of Providence for their punishment. The antediluvian and gigantic races of the old world arrogated to themselves to transcend vulgar laws of justice and religion; and God, to meet with condign retribution their hardihood, gave to Nature to develop laws and powers before unknown. The cisterns of heaven and the fountains of the great deep were allowed to break their old statutes, and spurn their original restraints, and the deluge came to assert the supremacy of Right over Might. Monstrosities of crime provoke miracles of vengeance [GLOBAL WARMING]. These may come from quarters remote and opposite to those whence danger alone was dreaded. But come when it may or whence it may, it must come ultimately, and come the heavier from the delay in its movements and the distance it has traversed an avalanche that has gathered in mass every moment it lingered, and every fathom it travelled of the wide interval. 

The man or the people would be far out of their course, who should claim a development that had outgrown the Decalogue as God's own voice proclaimed it on Sinai, and who should boast of a patent to possess the earth by virtue of a physical and mental superiority that reverses, in their case, the eighth and tenth commandments, and converts the prohibition into a charter, which says, in effect, to them, "Thou shalt covet (because of his inferior numbers and culture, his lower grade of piety and powers) thy neighbor's possessions;" and " Thou shalt steal (because of his wretched misgovernment) thy neighbor's land." Jehovah never recognized the right, either of an infallible pontiff or of a sovereign people, to proclaim a dispensation from the obligations of his immutable statutes, by the development of their powers or because of their national greatness. 

There is no successful warring against the Lord of Hosts [PUTIN]. His will is Fate, his might the quiet irresistibility of Omnipotence. Neither nations nor individuals can contend with Him. And now, dismissing all questions of social interest, let us individually inquire, whether we are serving or rebelling against Him ? Look round the scarred and ruinous earth : look up to heaven spoiled of Lucifer and the host whom he trailed after him, partners of his revolt and fall. Look to the hell where he writhes. See his conflicts with Christ in the days of His incarnation. See the Church of God often assailed, but the gates of hell not prevailing. Look to sinners on their death-beds. Look into your own consciences, in your more sober and wiser hours, and see, my fellow-sinners, if it be safe to war and to delight in warring against a Holy and Almighty God ? Then think of the treachery and ingratitude of fighting a friend, a Deliverer, and see what reasons you can find for beginning another year with a continued quarrel against the Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour, who bought you with His own blood? If you war against the redeeming cross [RUSSIA], will not, must not the Last Judgment scatter your hopes for ever, and hurl your souls into endless perdition ? [WW3/NUCLEAR WAR]...

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         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.