Christian Sentiments? (1861)

Source: The Polynesian. Honolulu: Saturday, June 1, 1861

The California Christian Advocate, speaking of the state of the Union, says:

"We have never counseled war. We have hoped and prayed for peace, but we have loved our country and determined to stand by the government in every emergency. We now repeat what we have before published, that if it were better that a million lives should be scarified than that government should fall by the hands of traitors."

The italics are ours:

The Advocate never counsels war; no-that would be wicked and unchristian. But it instills in the minds of its tens of thousands of readers that " it were better that a million of lives should be scarified" rather than abate one iota of-what?-moral principles or civil rights? No, neither; but of political pretensions. While such pious aspirations are uttered by so religious a journal as the Advocate in the far West, Mr. Sickles, M.C., in the far East, of whom the world heard for much a couple of years ago, second the motion and thinks that the whole South ought to be wiped off the face of the earth. Extremes meet.