unjust, offensive? Napoleon himself, on his death-bed, solemnly declared he had ever acted solely in defence, and went to his last account under the delusion, that he had been only a defensive warrior. Can such a theory ever put an end to war? You mean, that when all men become real, millennial Christians, there will be none to make aggressive wars, and of course no wars in defence.' But it must be long before all men will become such Christians; and meanwhile shall we make no efforts to abolish war?

3. What need of special, associated efforts for peace? Let existing agencies, such as the church, the ministry and the press, do the work, and thus supersede the necessity of peace societies.-Most earnestly do we wish they would; and, whenever they shall, they will take the matter very much out of our hands. As yet, however, they have not done so; and, until they do, shall nothing be done for peace? May we not even attempt to rouse the church? She ought to have arrested the ravages of intemperance, and spread the gospel over the whole earth; but, since she did neither, and gave no promise of doing either very soon, was it a superfluous and reprehensible service for individual volunteers, as they did, to lead the van in those movements, and rouse the church to her long neglected duty on those subjects? If the church will do what is needed in the cause of peace, then let her do it, and thus supersede our efforts; but, until she does this, we certainly ought, as the pioneers of temperance and of missions did, to stimulate her to her duty on this subject, and rally as many as we can in special efforts for the extinction of war.

4. The time has not come for such efforts.-Why not? God has promised (Isa. ii. 1-4) that wars shall cease under the Christian dispensation. Are we not living under this very dispensation? Then ought God's promise of peace now to be in a course of actual fulfilment through all Christendom. The time for God to fulfil any of his promises, is just when men will use the requisite means; and, if the time for peace co-extensive with Christianity has not yet come, in what year of our Lord will it come?

5. Wait till the millennium; when that comes,-never before,— peace will follow as a matter of course.-Very true; and so will repentance and faith follow equally as a matter of course; but how? Is the millennium to come first, and then all mankind to be converted as one of its results; or is the conversion of the whole world to usher in and to constitute the millennium itself? How would you introduce a millennium of repentance? Solely by first filling the world with repentance-with men penitent for their sins. How a millennium of faith? By filling the earth with faith with believers in Jesus. How then a millennium of peace? In the same way; for peace, just like repentance and faith, must come before the millennium, as one of its indispensable harbingers, or along with the millennium, as one of its inseparable concomitants. 6. SPECIAL efforts are not necessary for this purpose; peace will come as the result of the good general influences exerted by Christianity, and civilization, and commerce, and various other agencies already at work. --We are far from undervaluing such agencies or

influences; but they can supersede special efforts in this cause no more than they have in that of temperance, missions, or any similar enterprise. If such efforts were needed to start and sustain those causes, are they not equally so in this cause? Doubtless these good general influences contribute much to the peace of Christendom; but have they heretofore sufficed in every case to hold back the thunder-bolts of war? Commerce, and civilization, and a degenerate Christianity, have been in operation all over Europe for centuries; and yet have they utterly failed to abolish the war-system, or to prevent a rapid succession of the most desolating wars. Shall we then abandon the cause of peace to such agencies? These agencies can become useful mainly by receiving a right direction; and it is ours to concentrate them upon our purpose of abolishing war. As no power of steam or of waterfalls can, until rightly applied, propel machinery of any kind, so would we apply all the good general influences of the age to insure the perpetual peace of Christendom and the world.

7. But there are other causes more important.-If it were so, has this cause no importance? If it has, then let it receive its proper share of support. Only one cause can be the most important of all; but do you contribute to none besides that single one? Why? Because every wheel in the general machinery of benevolence is essential to the grand results ultimately sought; and hence you inquire, not whether this or that wheel is more important than some others, but whether the entire machine, with all its subordinate and complicated parts, is needed for the work to be done; for, if so, then must every part be sustained in its place. We would not, cannot exaggerate the importance of peace; but, to say nothing about the millions of lives, and the myriads of treasure which it would save, nothing of the vices, and crimes, and deluge of miseries for two worlds which it would prevent, it is an important, if not indispensable auxiliary to every cause now in progress for this world's conversion or general improvement. More has been done for such purposes during the last thirty years of general peace, (1845,) than had been done for many centuries before; and the continuance of peace is essential to the full success, if not to the very existence of these great benevolent enterprises. We must have peace, or stop in our work of recovering a world from the ruins of the fall.

8. But there is no war at present, none in prospect; and why labor for peace now?-Just because now is the best, the only time to labor with success. Let war come or approach; and no man could then plead for peace without being branded as a traitor to his country. Would you try to reform the drunkard while reeling into the gutter, or wait for the flames to envelope your house, and sweep in a whirlwind over your whole city, before you prepare engines to extinguish the devouring element?

9. Well, we are peaceable enough ourselves; go to warriors and war-makers with your pleas for peace.-So we mean to do; but, if you are so pacific, will you not go with us, and help make them as peaceable as yourselves? We look to the temperate for the pro

motion of temperance, to Christians for the spread of Christianity, and must we not rely in like manner upon the professed friends of peace to carry forward this enterprise?

10. But we do not agree with you in ALL your views.—Very like ; but you agree with us precisely as much as we do with you; and, if you may excuse yourselves because you differ from us, we may excuse ourselves because we differ from you, and thus could nothing ever be done for this cause by any body. We certainly agree in thinking that war ought to be abolished; and no further agreement is necessary for cordial, zealous, efficient co-operation. Then why not unite with us for its actual abolition? You cannot without endorsing what you do not believe? Nobody requires this of you; nor would the most active co-operation make you responsible for any sentiments not your own.

11. But the Jews waged war at God's command.-True; and when he commands us to make war, we too may; but do those wars render the custom harmless, or its continuance desirable?

12. But peace will paralyze the arm of law and good government.— Just the reverse; for, as Cicero says, "laws are silent in the midst of arms." War is a temporary despotism or anarchy; it suspends every law but its own, and makes government itself a mere tool for its bloody purposes. It is the operations of war, not the principles of peace, that crush or cripple government, and introduce the reign of violence, terror and lawless crime. Is war necessary to government? Must nations butcher one another in order to govern themselves? If duelling should cease, would parents lose their authority over their own families? Should the whole war-system come to an end, would not every government still retain its right to control and punish its own subjects? Could it not, if it chose, continue to hang the murderer, to imprison the thief, and employ an armed police for the suppression of mobs, riots, and other popular outbreaks?

13. But, without war, we could neither get nor keep our liberties.— Yes we could; and but for war, how would any nation ever have lost them? War has ever been the chief enslaver of mankind. What gave rise to slavery and the slave-trade? What stabbed the liberties of Greece and Rome? What has proved the ruin of nearly all former republics? War. Our own case is a singular exception, from which no general inference can safely be drawn; and still it may well be doubted whether we do not owe our own freedom to other causes than the sword, and whether it would not in due time have come even in better form without the effusion of blood. Liberty, free institutions, popular rights, are the growth, not of war, but of peace; and one century of universal, unbroken peace, would do more for the world in these respects, than five thousand years of blood have done. Peace is the nurse of freedom, of all its glorious institutions; and, if we wish to diffuse and perpetuate its blessings over the whole earth, we must labor first for universal and permanent peace.

AMERICAN PEACE SOCIETY, BOSTON, MASS.

PEACE AND GOVERNMENT.

BY GEO. C. BECKWITH.

I REGARD Civil government as lawful, expedient and necessary; and for this belief I find ample reasons in the nature of man, in the condition and wants of society, in the past and present indications of providence, in the history of God's dealings with his ancient people, in the explicit, oft-repeated instructions of the Old Testament, and the incidental admissions of the New. Mankind are made for society; society requires government; and a government without penalties, or without the right and power to enforce its penalties, and coerce the obedience of its own subjects, would be not only a nullity in practice, but a contradiction in terms.

I also believe all war to be inconsistent with the gospel. Their spirit, their aims, their principles, the qualities they require, the deeds they enjoin, all their distinctive peculiarities are clearly antagonistic and incompatible. The gospel enforces the Decalogue anew; war is a temporary repeal of all its commands. The gospel enjoins love, not hatred; forgiveness, not revenge; universal beneficence, not indiscriminate, wholesale mischief; prayer for our enemies, not against them; doing them good instead of evil; not returning evil for evil, but overcoming it only with good. It condemns ALL THAT CONSTITUTES WAR. Thou shalt not kill; love thy neighbor as thyself; whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them; do good unto all men; follow peace with all men; love your enemies; do good to them that hate you; if thine enemy hunger, feed him; whosoever smiteth thee on one cheek, turn to him the other also; resist not evil, but overcome evil with good. If such passages as these do not condemn all the moral elements of war, I can imagine no language that would. Every form of this custom is a direct violation of such precepts. It can exist only by the very feelings and deeds here prohibited in the plainest terms possible. Who ever heard of a war that killed nobody, that overcame evil with good, that turned the other cheek to the smiter, that did good unto all men, and was carried on in the spirit of love, forgiveness, and universal beneficence?

The thing is plainly impossible; and hence all war must be utterly unchristian, unless the New Testament permits it as an exception, and thus exempts government in this case from all obligation to obey such precepts as I have just quoted. Here is the only alternative; for, since every species of war confessedly does what the Bible forbids, it can be justified only on the ground of an express exception like that of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, or the Jewish rulers taking life as a punishment for crime. Both these contradicted the prohibition, thou shalt not kill, and were justifiable only because the same Lawgiver of Sinai prescribed them as ex

P. T. NO. XLIX

ceptions. Can you find in the New Testament a similar justification of war? Does Christ or his Apostles exempt nations, in their intercourse with each other, from obligation to obey the general precepts of his gospel, and expressly permit them, in palpable contradiction of those precepts, to wage war in any case? If so, show us the chapter and verse of such permission.

This theory of exceptions is indispensable to the vindication of civil government as an ordinance of God. It is quite in vain to think of reconciling any of its penalties with the letter or the real import of such passages as I have already quoted. They are clearly antipodal. A government, when punishing offenders either with death, imprisonment or fine, surely does not turn the other cheek to the smiter, nor overcome evil with good, nor forgive the transgressor, and give place unto wrath, that is, stand aside, and let God alone inflict vengeance. It takes his place, a temporary substitute for his government; and, armed with the sword as "the minister of God," it comes forth "a revenger to execute wrath (punishment) upon him that doeth evil." A thief or a murderer does an evil to individuals or society, perhaps to both; and gov ernment in turn inflicts upon him another evil in the form of a penalty for his crime. Neither the nature nor the degree of this penalty can alter the case; for, whether severe or mild, a halter or a prison, a pecuniary fine, or simple disgrace, you return one evil for another; not perhaps the same, yet still an evil, not a blessing or a pleasure. It is retribution. You do not forgive; you punish. The offender has done an evil, and you make him suffer for it. This I call retribution. It may be righteous, and even merciful; still it is retribution or retaliation, one evil returned in punishment for another. I take this to be the central idea of all punishment. It is plainly absurd to speak of forgiving any one that is punished. Forgiveness and punishment are antagonistic, incompatible ideas. A murderer pardoned, yet hung! A sinner forgiven, and then sent to hell!! The forgiveness of an offender is the remission of his punishment, and his restoration to the favor he has forfeited; and hence all penal acts are in plain, palpable contradiction of those precepts which require us to forgive, or to overcome evil with good, and can be justified only as exceptions made by the same authority that enjoined the latter. In his epistle to the Romans, Paul puts this exception by the side of the rule; for, after bidding us not avenge ourselves, but give place for God to repay vengeance, while we overcome evil only with good, he proceeds immediately to represent civil government as "the ordinance of God, a terror to evil works, bearing not the sword in vain; as the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." (Rom. xii. 17, 21, and xiii. 1-7.) Thus does Paul expressly allow to government what he had repeatedly forbidden to individuals; and the former is consistent with the latter only as a special exception to a general rule. Peter also speaks (1 Pet. ii. 13-17) of governors as sent by God for the punishment of evil doers; and the New Testament, like the Old, distinctly recognizes the right of government to punish and coerce its own subjects.