Gerrit Smith, undated

I am free to admit that a few men connected with the army and navy have amiable and beautiful traits of character; that a few of them are the subjects of strong religious emotion. Such were Colonel Gardiner, Captain Vicars, and General Havelock. But that even Havelock, “whose praise is in all the churches,” was a Christian, I am compelled to doubt. I will not doubt that he deeply loved and devoutly worshipped his own ideal of Jesus Christ, that his orthodoxy was valiant for the “doctrine,” that he was full of zeal for his Baptist church, and that he abounded in prayers for all men. But in that enlightened and better day when the true religion shall be seen to be, not a sentiment to weep and joy over, nor a doctrine to quarrel for, but a principle to be governed by in all our relations, and a life to be lived out everywhere and always, not the fervors which are kindled by fancies of God, but that acknowledgment of him which is made practical, and is proved by justice to man; then the Havelock type of piety, which is so bewitching in an age of war religion, will be reckoned of little worth. Havelock was an unjust man, as is every one who identifies himself with war, and holds himself to do the devilism it bids. This unreserved submission to human authority is of itself sufficient to prove that the warrior cannot be a just man, and that war and Christianity are incompatible with each other. Havelock was among the foremost murderers of the Affghans, the poor Affghans, against whom the British waged a war as surpassingly cruel as it was utterly causeless. His own pen describes its revolting horrors.

Havelock was self-deceived. His religion was a superstition; for it was the current misrepresentation of Christianity. When he says that in a certain battle he “felt that the Lord Jesus Christ was at his (my) side,” he was misled by a fancy scarcely less wild and wicked than slave-holding piety; and instead of sharing his delusion, we are deeply to pity and as deeply to loathe it. That Havelock was more an ambitious soldier than a follower of Christ, is told out of his own heart when he says in a letter: “One of the prayers, oft repeated throughout my life since my school days, has been answered, and I have lived to command in a successful action.”

SOURCE: Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A Biography, p. 254-5