The Gospel According to War

Who says we are not a Christian nation
Who turn sal-nitro to Salvation
And save men from the fiery gulf p’
Shool by ground charcoal & sulpher?
The critic proves hot little he knows
Slow to convert the Philipines
Or with what cogency the “Maximus”
? ?? urge religious axioms.

There’s nothing equals war and ravage
To bring conviction to the savage
And make his stiff knees quake and wimble
Where saints display their sacred symbol.
Before them the inveterate pagan
Falls prostrate like the ?? Dagan
Before the Ark of those good Hebrew
Who taught the cult of slash and free bruise
The dagger is a pointed teacher
And Gideon’s sword a “painful preacher.”

For potency the shrapnel shall I call
An argument most evangelical,
That better than a hundred fevers
Shows the next world to unbelievers.
Great aid to faith is commanding
By saints their means of grace parading
Opening the way by bloody purchase
To plant the carmens[??] of the Churches.
Wherein needs little change to vary
From “militant” to military.
The gospel preached by Mauser rigles,
Is not to be put off by trifles,
The bayonet is so persuasive
‘Twil reach the heart however base, if
Pressed home with forces[?] by emissaries
Of our sword-bearing Missionaries.
And who can say what blessed unction
May flow from out the soldiers’ function
To make the blood of human slaughter
A fountain of baptismal water?

Go to, you have not caught the features
Of our bombarding-gospel preachers
Who open up the way to Zion
With fire and steel and lead and iron!
The martial heaven approves their forces;
Its stars fought Sisera in their courses.
It turned on Amorites arming under
Its batteries of hail and thunder;
And in the day of good old Noah
Drowned all creation in a shower.
Poor skeptic growler, ever harping
On the same string, forbear your carping;
Come join our ranks and aim as we then,
To shell, and shoot, and save, the heathen!