Who can fail to be...
Illustration
Who can fail to be thrilled with the vision of a future age when "death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more"? However, Christians have sometimes worked toward a fulfillment of that vision in the wrong ways.
Propaganda efforts to involve the United States in "The Great War" generated the motto "A War to End All Wars." America's entrance into the conflict was supported by many pastors, but none so memorable as Newell Dwight Hillis, minister of the Plymouth Congregational Church of Brooklyn.
Dr. Hillis had become involved in lawsuits over bad investments, and he tearfully confessed his financial and ethical errors from the pulpit. Then by plunging into patriotic efforts he was able to repair his damaged reputation. After traveling in Europe, Dr. Hillis presented 400 impassioned lectures, in 162 American cities, denouncing German atrocities.
Hillis described Germans drinking human blood out of their enemies' skulls. He reported that the Kaiser granted his soldiers official permission to commit any crime they might desire. He told of syphilitic German soldiers raping Belgian and French women and then cutting off their breasts as a warning to the next German soldiers.
Hillis' gripping stories were printed in Christian Work and The Christian Century and used by numerous ministers in their sermons.
Whatever motive Dr. Hillis may have had in his support of the "War to End All Wars," his tours were financed by the American Bankers Association, and his "true" tales of German atrocities were pure fiction.
-- Bristow
Propaganda efforts to involve the United States in "The Great War" generated the motto "A War to End All Wars." America's entrance into the conflict was supported by many pastors, but none so memorable as Newell Dwight Hillis, minister of the Plymouth Congregational Church of Brooklyn.
Dr. Hillis had become involved in lawsuits over bad investments, and he tearfully confessed his financial and ethical errors from the pulpit. Then by plunging into patriotic efforts he was able to repair his damaged reputation. After traveling in Europe, Dr. Hillis presented 400 impassioned lectures, in 162 American cities, denouncing German atrocities.
Hillis described Germans drinking human blood out of their enemies' skulls. He reported that the Kaiser granted his soldiers official permission to commit any crime they might desire. He told of syphilitic German soldiers raping Belgian and French women and then cutting off their breasts as a warning to the next German soldiers.
Hillis' gripping stories were printed in Christian Work and The Christian Century and used by numerous ministers in their sermons.
Whatever motive Dr. Hillis may have had in his support of the "War to End All Wars," his tours were financed by the American Bankers Association, and his "true" tales of German atrocities were pure fiction.
-- Bristow
