AT the Methodist camp-meeting at Ocean Grove, N.J., about three weeks ago, President McKinley spent a short time one day and made a speech. After he had gone away, Dr. Schell, the general secretary of the Epworth League, in a sermon, says the New York Tribune, “aroused the enthusiasm of his hearers, and the auditorium resounded with the loud ‘amens’ when he said, “When President McKinley spoke about peace with honor, and meeting our duty in the islands of the sea like men, our souls lead within us, for we recognized in him the conquering spirit of the old Roman and the militant aggressive spirit of Christianity…. He spoke as a patriot and a Christian. There are more than one million young men in the Epworth League alone. No Alexander or Cesar ever had an army like that. We aspire to the Tenth Legion for any campaign. President McKinley may plan for peace at home or peace with honor broad. These young men with their blood and breeding will march through sand or jungle and fling themselves at a breastwork with a hardihood and a daring that no veteran of the Old Guard or Wellington’s Iron Brigade could surpass. He has our prayers to-day. He can have our money to-morrow, and the whole million will enlist the day after if we are needed.”
How much of a degree is that removed from the spirit of the times of Constantine?
Another preacher the same day “aroused much enthusiasm” by calling upon all the people of the United States to “stand by the President in his Philippine policy” and declaring that “God has thrown down a thousand isles in the Pacific as jewels, as stepping-stones over which Columbia, with the Stars and Stripes in one hand and the cross of Christ in the other, may pass to the commerce, education, and spiritual salvation of one half of the people of this world.”
Every sentiment of this whole performance is that of a complete union of church and state, of conquest of [564] the cross with sword and cannon, of “spiritual salvation” by carnal weapons in warfare.
One of these days these fanatical religionists will find a politician willing to make capital of their thoughtless enthusiasm, and in this country will behold in speaking acting power in this nation the living image of the papacy of the fourth century and onward. A. T. J.