War & Peace Quote by John Strachan

A recruiting pitch dressed as a devotional, Strachan's line turns Christianity into a moral war effort - and does it with the calm confidence of a man who thinks history is on his side. The key move is the word "boldly": faith is framed less as private consolation than as permission to act, to step into conflict with a clear conscience. "Combat" and "enlist" borrow the cadence of military mobilization, recasting spiritual commitment as disciplined service under a chain of command.

The subtext is about legitimacy. By insisting this band is "disinterested", Strachan preemptively denies the obvious suspicion that religious institutions often track with status, empire, and power. He offers an alibi: we are not driven by "human ambition, or human praise". It's a neat rhetorical purification - ambition is relocated onto others, while the church claims the higher ground of "honour" and "salvation". That contrast flatters the listener into thinking they're immune to vanity even as it appeals to it. Joining the elect few who want nothing? That's a prestige offer.

Context matters because Strachan was a leading Anglican cleric in colonial British North America, where religion, governance, and education were tightly entangled. The language of enlistment echoes an imperial culture that valued loyalty, hierarchy, and public duty. "Salvation of men" lands as both spiritual rescue and civilizing mission: a mandate to shape society, not simply to shepherd souls. The sentence works because it fuses urgency with innocence, making confrontation feel like compassion and obedience feel like courage.