Bethink Yourselves!

MP3 Audio CD. Bethink Yourselves!

"BETHINK YOURSELVES!"

"This is your hour, and the power of darkness."--Luke xxii. 53.




I


Again war. Again sufferings, necessary to nobody, utterly uncalled for;
again fraud; again the universal stupefaction and brutalization of men.

Men who are separated from each other by thousands of miles, hundreds of
thousands of such men (on the one hand--Buddhists, whose law forbids the
killing, not only of men, but of animals; on the other hand--Christians,
professing the law of brotherhood and love) like wild beasts on land and
on sea are seeking out each other, in order to kill, torture, and
mutilate each other in the most cruel way. What can this be? Is it a
dream or a reality? Something is taking place which should not, cannot
be; one longs to believe that it is a dream and to awake from it. But no,
it is not a dream, it is a dreadful reality!

One could yet understand how a poor, uneducated, defrauded Japanese, torn
from his field and taught that Buddhism consists not in compassion to all
that lives, but in sacrifices to idols, and how a similar poor illiterate
fellow from the neighborhood of Toula or Nijni Novgorod, who has been
taught that Christianity consists in worshipping Christ, the Madonna,
Saints, and their ikons--one could understand how these unfortunate men,
brought by the violence and deceit of centuries to recognize the greatest
crime in the world--the murder of one's brethren--as a virtuous act, can
commit these dreadful deeds, without regarding themselves as being guilty
in so doing.

But how can so-called enlightened men preach war, support it, participate
in it, and, worst of all, without suffering the dangers of war
themselves, incite others to it, sending their unfortunate de