mangled carcasses of the fallen, and the writhing agonies of the hundreds and the hundreds more who have been laid on the cold ground, where they are left to languish and to die. There no eye pities them. No sister is there to weep over them. There no gentle hand is present to ease the dying posture, or bind up the wounds which, in the maddening fury of the combat, have been given and received by the children of one common father. There death spreads its pale ensigns over every countenance; and when night comes on, and darkness around them, how many a despairing wretch must take up with the bloody field as the untended bed of his last sufferings, without one friend to bear the message of tenderness to his distant home, without one companion to close his eyes.

causes at work

I avow it. On every side of me I see which go to spread a most delusive coloring over war, and to remove its shocking barbarities to the back ground of our contemplations altogether. I see it in the history which tells me of the superb appearance of the troops, and the brilliancy of their successive charges. I see it in the poetry which lends the magic of its numbers to the narrative of blood, and transports its many admirers, as by its images, and its figures, and its nodding plumes of chivalry, it throws its treacherous embellishments over a scene of legalized slaughter. I see it in the music which represents the progress of the battle; and where, after being inspired by the trumpet-notes of preparation, the whole beauty and tenderness of a drawing-room are seen to bend over the sentimental entertainment; nor do I hear the utterance of a single sigh to interrupt the death-tones of the thickening contest, and the moans of the wounded men as they fade away upon the ear, and sink into lifeless silence. All, all goes to prove what strange and half-sighted creatures we are. Were it not so, war could never have been seen in any other aspect than that of unmingled hatefulness; and I can look to nothing but to the progress of Christian sentiment upon earth to arrest the strong current of its popular and prevailing partiality for war. Then only will an imperious sense of duty lay the check of severe principle on all the subordinate tastes and faculties of our nature. Then will glory be reduced to its right estimate, and the wakeful benevolence of the gospel chasing away every spell, will be turned by the treachery of no delusion whatever from its simple but sublime enterprises for the good of the species. Then the reign of truth and quietness will be ushered into

the world, and war, cruel, atrocious, unrelenting war will be stript of its many and its bewildering fascinations.

But another obstacle to the extinction of war, is a sentiment which seems to be universally gone into, that the rules and promises of the gospel which apply to a single individual, do not apply to a nation of individuals. Just think of the mighty effect it would have on the politics of the world, were this sentiment to be practically deposed from its wonted authority over the counsels and the doings of nations, in their transactions with each other. If forbearance be the virtue of an individual, forbearance is also the virtue of a nation. If it be incumbent on men in honor to prefer each other, it is incumbent on the very largest societies of men, through the constituted organ of their government, to do the same. If it be the glory of a man to defer his anger, and to pass over a transgression, that nation mistakes its glory which is so feelingly alive to the slightest insult, and musters up its threats and its armaments upon the faintest shadow of a provocation. If it be the magnanimity of an injured man to abstain from vengeance, and if by so doing, he heaps coals of fire upon the head of his enemy, then that is the magnanimous nation, which, recoiling from violence and from blood, will do no more than send its Christian embassy, and prefer its mild and impressive remonstrance; and that is the disgraced nation which will refuse the impressiveness of the moral appeal that has been made to it.

It is, then, only by the extension of Christian principle among the people of the earth, that the atrocities of war will at length be swept away from it; and each of us in hastening the commencement of that blissful period in his own sphere, is doing all that in him lies to bring his own heart, and the hearts of others, under the supreme influence of this principle. It is public opinion, which in the long run governs the world; and while I look with confidence to a gradual revolution in the state of public opinion from the omnipotence of gospel truth working its silent but effectual way through the families of mankind, yet I will not deny that much may be done to accelerate the advent of perpetual and universal peace, by a distinct body of men embarking their every talent, and their every acquirement in the prosecution of this as a distinct object. This was the way in which, a few years ago, the British public were gained over to the cause of Africa. This is the way in which some of the other prophecies of the Bible are at this

moment hastening to their accomplishment; and it is this way, I apprehend, that the prophecy of peace may be indebted for its speedier fulfilment to the agency of men selecting this as the assigned field on which their philanthropy shall expatiate. Were each individual member of such a scheme to prosecute his own walk, and come forward with his own peculiar contribution, the fruit of the united labors of all would be one of the finest collections of Christian eloquence, and of enlightened morals, and of sound political philosophy, that ever was presented to the world. I could not fasten on another cause more fitted to call forth such a variety of talent, and to rally around it so many of the generous and accomplished sons of humanity, and to give each of them a devotedness and a power far beyond whatever could be sent into the hearts of enthusiasts by the mere impulse of literary ambition.

Let

Let one take up the question of war in its principle, and make the full weight of his moral severity rest upon it, and upon all its abominations. Let another take up the question of war in its consequences, and bring his every power of graphical description to the task of presenting an awakened public with an impressive detail of its cruelties and its horrors. Let another neutralize the poetry of war, and dismantle it of all those bewitching splendors, which the hand of misguided genius has thrown over it. another teach the world a truer, and more magnanimous path to national glory, than any country of the world has yet walked in. Let another tell with irresistible argument, how the Christian ethics of a nation is at one with the Christian ethics of its humblest individual. Let another pour the light of modern speculation into the mysteries of trade, and prove that not a single war has been undertaken for any of its objects, where the millions and the millions more which were lavished on the cause, have not all been cheated away from us by the phantom of an imaginary inThis may look to many like the Utopianism of a romantic anticipation; but I shall never despair of the cause of truth addressed to a Christian public, when the clear light of principle can be brought to every one of its positions, and when its practical and conclusive establishment forms one of the most distinct of Heaven's prophecies" that men shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; and that nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

terest.

No. XIX.

THE CHIEF EVIL OF WAR.

BY W. E. CHANNING, D. D.

What is

Other

LET us, then, consider the chief evil of war. it? What induces us to place war at the head of human calamities? In replying to these questions, I shall not direct you to the physical sufferings of war, however terrible. Death in its worst forms; the overthrow of proud cities; the devastation of fruitful fields; the empoverishing of nations; famine; pestilence; these form the train of victorious war. But these are not the distinguishing evils of war. causes are wasting human life and joy. Cities are overthrown by earthquakes as well as by armies, and more frequently swept by accidental conflagrations than by the flames of war. Hostile bands ravage the fields; but how much oftener do whirlwinds, storms, hurricanes rush over land and sea, prostrating harvests, and destroying the labors of years on a scale so vast as to reduce human devastations to a narrow extent. The truth is, that man is surrounded with mighty powers of nature which he cannot comprehend or withstand; and, amidst their beneficent operations, all of them inflict much suffering.. What distinguishes war is, not that man is slain, but that he is slain, spoiled, crushed by the cruelty, the injustice, the treachery, the murderous hand of man. The evil is moral evil. War is the concentration of all human crimes. Here is its distinguishing, accursed brand. Under its standard gather violence, malignity, rage, fraud, perfidy, rapacity and lust. If it only slew man, it would do little. It turns man into a beast of prey. Here is the evil of war, that man, made to be the brother, becomes the deadly foe of his kind; that man, whose duty it is to mitigate suffering, makes the infliction of suffering his study and end; that man, whose office it is to avert and heal the wounds which come from nature's powers, makes researches into nature's laws, and arms himself with her most awful forces, that he may become the destroyer of his race. Nor is this all. There is also found in war a cold-hearted indifference to human miseries and wrongs, perhaps more shocking than the bad passions it calls forth. To my mind, this contempt of human nature is singularly offensive. To hate, expresses something like respect. But

P. T. NO. XIX.

in war, man treats his brother as nothing worth; sweeps away human multitudes as insects; tramples them down as grass; mocks at their rights; and does not deign a thought to their woes.

These remarks show us the great evil of war. It is moral evil. The field of battle is a theatre, got up at immense cost, for the exhibition of crime on a grand scale. There

the hell within the human breast blazes out fiercely and without disguise. A more fearful hell in any region of the universe cannot well be conceived. There the fiends hold their revels, and spread their fury.

Suppose two multitudes of men, each composed of thousands, meeting from different countries, but meeting not to destroy but to consult and labor for the good of the race; and suppose them, in the midst of their deliberations, to be smitten suddenly by some mysterious visitation of God, and their labors to be terminated by immediate death. We should be awe-struck by this strange, sudden, wide-spread ruin. But reflection would teach us, that this simultaneous extinction of life in so many of our race, was but an anticipation or peculiar fulfilment of the sentence passed on all mankind; and a tender reverence would spring up, as we should think of so many generous men coming together from so many different regions, in the spirit of human brotherhood, to be wrapt in one pall, to sleep in one grave. We should erect a monument on the solemn spot; but chiefly to commemorate the holy purpose which had gathered them from their scattered abodes; and we should write on it, "To the memory of a glorious company, suddenly taken from God's ministry on earth, to enter again, a blessed brotherhood, on a higher ministry in heaven." Here you have death sweeping away hosts in a moment; but how different from death in a field of battle, where man meets man as a foe, where the countenance flashes rage, and the arm is nerved for slaughter, where brother hews down brother, and where thousands are sent unprepared, in the moment of crime, to give their account. When nature's laws, fulfilling the mysterious will of God, inflict death on the good, we bow, we adore, we give thanks. How different is death from the murderous hand of man!

Allow me to make another supposition, which may bring out still more strongly the truth on which I now insist, that the great evil of war is inward, moral; that its physical woes, terrible as they may be, are light by the side of this.