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FEASIBILITY OF A COURT OF NATIONS.

The friends of this cause place before the world a distinct plan We for the establishment and preservation of universal peace. propose that five or six of the great nations of the earth, elect each an able lawyer or statesman, to meet as a "CONGRESS OF NATIONS" somewhere in Europe, and spend a few years in digesting a code of international law. We now refer to Vattel, or Montesquieu, or Grotius; but these men have no other authority than as great writers. We want an admitted, authoritative and detailed code for the regulation of nations in their intercourse with each other. Such a code once formed and ratified by the few high powers of earth, would be, what as yet does not exist, a system of international law.

The decision of disputes according to this code would belong to a permanent body of judges, elected like the members of the Congress, and forming a "COURT OF NATIONS." These might either meet as occasion required, or sit statedly. What an august tribunal! How would our own CLAY shine there by the side of Brougham and Guizot! How much more probably would justice be obtained there by a wronged nation, than if the decision were made to result from a pitched battle!

The

I see no objection to the plan, as an abstract question of debate; none as to its practical workings. We have much history, much The Amphictyonic Counexperience to encourage the attempt. cil preserved peace to the states of Greece. The Germanic Diet was a court of nations to more than thirty free states and cities. The Cantons of Switzerland, though differing in language, religion and intelligence, live peaceably under a similar compact. united provinces of Holland maintained entire peace by such an arrangement for two hundred years. These United States, free and sovereign, have agreed to settle their disputes before a Supreme Court, and have forever renounced the right to go to war with each other. Who then will say that a plan which has worked well in so many instances, may not be successful on a larger scale?

The plan of referring disputes between nations to the arbitration of a neutral power, is found to produce the happiest results, and is very often tried. Yet how inferior to this plan! The monarch who arbitrates, may not have time or inclination to examine details. Or he may have selfish inducements to lean to one side. And at best he has not, as our court would have, an admitted code to govern his decision.

I love to anticipate the formation of a court of nations. Round such a tribunal would shine a splendor, resembling, more than aught earth ever saw before, the glory of the throne of God! There would sit a bench of peace-makers, dispensing tranquillity, confidence and safety, not to cities only, or to nations, but to the

world! From them would go forth, under God, unnumbered blessings to the whole family of man. Before them, petty despots, and blood-thirsty aspirants, would be crushed in their beginnings. 'Earth would no more be stained with the blood of the brave. The horrors of the conscription and the press-gang would cease. Commerce would spread her free and fearless sails on every sea, and navies would dwindle to a mere police.

What can be said why such a court should not be established? I know of only this-such a court could not enforce its decisions. But this is not so. What enforces law in Kentucky? Not an army, but public opinion. No military force can coerce a nation or community contrary to public opinion. This is a new element in political economy not known in former ages, but now omnipotent. No king can now wage a war if public opinion be against him. When we get our court of nations, public opinion as to war will be right, and the spirit that creates the tribunal, will carry out its decisions. We have laws now which lie dormant-a dead letter-just because public opinion is against them now. But when the people are earnest in favor of a law, they want no army to dragoon them into obedience.

Total non-intercourse with a refractory nation would soon reduce it to submission. Civilization now makes all nations dependent on each other for absolute necessaries. But what nation would refuse the reparation which such a court ordered? None would be so mad. No award would tax it so heavily as a year's war. Public opinion, once formed on peace principles, would render war as impossible as it is unnecessary. The case would be the same as in regard to duelling and profane swearing, which authority never could abolish, but which are being abolished by public opinion. It is far from being difficult to affect public opinion. See the effects of a few abolitionists constantly declaiming against slavery. A hundred such cases may be named. We have only to argue and exhort a few years, and earth will enjoy the incalculable blessings of a COURT OF NATIONS.

FRANKLIN. We daily make great improvements in natural philosophy, there is one I wish to see in moral,-the discovery of a plan that would induce and oblige nations to settle their disputes without first cutting one another's throats. When will human nature be sufficiently improved to see the advantage of this?

JEFFERSON.-Wonderful has been the progress of human improvement in other respects. Let us hope then that the law of nature will in time influence the proceedings of nations as well as individuals; that we shall at length be sensible, that war is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong, and multiplies instead of indemnifying losses.

AMERICAN PEACE SOCIETY, BOSTON, MASS.

WAR A DESTROYER OF SOULS.

THE soul is man's great interest; and its ruin involves the heaviest loss, and the deepest guilt. It mars forever the noblest work of God; it defeats the main object of man's creation; it thwarts the leading design of providence; it poisons the purest, sweetest joys of this life; it blasts the bright and cheering hopes of heaven; it entails the unutterable woes of hell, and pours upon the universe a stream of unholy, baleful influences that are destined never to cease.

I cannot now dwell on these topics of vast and thrilling interest; but would you faintly conceive how much is lost by the ruin of a single soul? Ask not the worldling; he has no conception of its value, no arithmetic for calculations like these. Ask Him who made the soul for his own high, immortal service; Him who came down from the bosom of his Father, and took upon himself the form of a servant, to redeem the soul by his own blood on the cross; or the Holy Spirit, who is now at work amid the ruins of the fall to renew the soul, and thus render it meet for the pure, exalted, endless joys of heaven. Go, ask the saint, as he bows, and sings, and rejoices with joy unspeakable before the throne of God and the Lamb; or the lost sinner, as he writhes in the agonies of that world where the worm dieth not, and the fire is never to be quenched, but sendeth up the smoke of its torment forever and ever. Push your thoughts as far into a coming eternity as you can; and, when myriads after myriads of ages beyond your utmost power to conceive, shall have passed away, pause there, and ask the glorified spirits of heaven, ask the hopeless sufferers in hell, ask the omniscient God himself, to tell you how much is lost, forever lost, by the ruin of but one soul created in the image of its Maker, and bound to a blissful or a miserable immortality!

Alas! that the world should be so full of influences fatal or dangerous to the soul! Business and pleasure, avarice and ambition, intemperance and licentiousness, infidelity, atheism and paganism, a thousand forms of error and sin are every where conspiring to put in jeopardy the immortal interests of mankind; but, passing over all the rest, let us now inquire IN HOW MANY WAYS

THE CUSTOM OF WAR RUINS THE SOUL.

It turns the attention of men away from their spiritual concerns. A war in actual progress becomes of course the standing theme in halls of legislation; it fills every newspaper, and forms the leading topic of conversation through the community; it obtrudes itself into the family and the social circle, into the field, the shop and the counting-room. The whole land is full of it; the public mind is saturated with it; and such an absorption of high and low,

P. T. NO. LI.

old and young, saints and sinners, on any other subject than that of vital godliness, cannot fail to obstruct their salvation. Such a result is inevitable; and all history proves it so. If the rage of eager, gainful speculation, or a tale of village slander, or the strife of a warmly contested election, or even contention about the settlement of a pastor, or the location of a church, will sometimes blast in its very bud the most promising revival of religion, how fatal must a state of national warfare be! Engrossed with the intense, all-pervading excitement, the mass of society find no time, and feel no disposition to seek the "one thing needful."

But war, also, disqualifies men for a saving reception of the gospel. For this there must be a kind and a degree of moral preparation quite incompatible with a state of actual warfare. Of what use to sow grain upon a rock, or amid thorns and thistles? Metals must be melted before you can cast them; you must heat iron nearly to the point of fusion, before you can weld it; and upon a community of minds impregnated with war-passions, the strongest truths of God's word would fall powerless as moon-beams on a mountain of ice. Wherever the war-spirit prevails, there would you labor in vain for the conversion of sinners, or the sanctification of Christians. So will you find it alike on a large and a small scale. Let a family or a neighborhood be filled week after week with such a spirit, with jealousy and anger, with hatred, wrath and revenge, the grand moral elements of war;-and could the gospel reach them in such a state of mind with its redeeming influences? Should any church be pervaded with the mildest form of the warspirit, alienating its members from each other, distracting their councils, and holding them back from prayer and effort for the salvation of men, could they in such circumstances expect a revival of religion to commence or continue?

But war throws millions of minds into a state even worse than this. It fills whole empires with animosity, malevolence, revenge. It makes the public heart a cauldron of seething, boiling passions. It blinds the mind to God's truth; it sears or perverts the conscience; it hardens or exasperates the heart; it renders the whole soul well nigh impenetrable for the time to any arrows even from the quiver of the Almighty. Can you bring the truth of God into saving contact with minds thus affected? Can you, with any hope of success, preach the gospel to an army on tiptoe for battle, or to a community roused and convulsed with the fierce, vindictive passions of war? As well might you sow grain upon the rapids of Niagara, into the burning crater of Etna, and hope for a harvest. Breathe the genuine war-spirit into every bosom on earth; and from that moment must the work of conversion and sanctification cease every where.

But war, moreover, prevents the use of means for the salvation of men. The three millions of standing warriors now (1845) in Christendom, it deprives even in peace of nearly all religious privileges, and thus exposes them to almost certain perdition. No class of men, not even seamen, are so poorly provided with the means of grace. Next to nothing is done for their salvation. There is no

pastor, no missionary among them to care for their souls; and, if there were, his labors, subject to the dictation of an ungodly commander, would probably be, like those of Baxter himself even in a Puritan camp, well nigh useless. No Sabbath dawns upon them; no sanctuary opens its doors to them; no Sabbath-school, no prayer-meeting, no family altar, scarce a Bible or a tract can be found among the mass of men trained to the work of human butchery for a livelihood.

So it must be. Look at the very nature of war; and tell us what can be done for the souls of men cast in its own mould, imbued with its spirit, and steeped in its vices and crimes. Review the history of war; and tell us what has been done or attempted for the salvation of warriors. Among the millions that fought, and the millions that fell, during the late wars of Europe, did one in ten or a hundred enjoy the ordinary means of grace?

I grant that much more is now done in a few Christian countries for the spiritual benefit of warriors; but how very little, and with results how meagre and miserable! We hear indeed of chaplains in the army and the navy; but what do they do for their spiritual charge? What can they do? Suppose a minister of Christ were employed in a brothel or a grog-shop to pray and preach in a way to sanction the deeds done there, would he be likely by such a course to reclaim the frequenters of those gate-ways to hell, and train them up for heaven? I mean no personal disrespect; but I am constrained to regard the whole business of war-chaplaincies as a piece of solemn mockery, an attempt to blend Christ with Belial, to make Christianity bow in homage before the altar of Moloch.

I could easily quote facts to prove the general futility of such chaplaincies. On this point I have myself heard from eye-witnesses, statements which would startle the Christian community; but I will give only a few extracts from the report of a Mr. Smith in 1828, then a Christian minister, but once a naval officer, "on the religious state of the British navy." Devoting himself to the religious welfare of seamen, he went, by permission of the lieutenant, on board a man-of-war, to distribute some religious tracts, but was rudely expelled by the captain. "I begged," says he, "to speak with the captain, and said, I presume, sir, you have been misinformed; I am not aware of having done any thing to incur your displeasure. Yes, sir, you have by dispersing religious tracts.'You are mistaken, sir; I have not given one. Then you had no business to go below.'-I asked permission of your commanding officer, sir. I am myself commanding officer of this ship, sir.'-I know you are; but when you were not on quarter-deck, I conceived your first lieutenant acted for you.-'I will not have my men visited by any one without my permission.'-Sir, I could do them no possible injury; I am a minister of the gospel, and wish to do them all the good I can. I have myself been in the navy, and therefore know well the rules of the service, and should be the last to disobey, or lead others to act contrary to the due subordination and routine of the profession.-'Still you had no right down below in my ship.'-Why, sir, I found many of the vilest unmarried