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the spirit of war, saying to those who would have him profit by the dissensions of his neighbors, "Blessed are the peace-makers."

The history of the trial by battle will illustrate the chances of war, and the consequent folly and wickedness of submitting any question to its arbitrament. But we are aware that this monstrous and impious usage is still openly avowed as a proper mode of determining justice between nations. At this moment, when the noon-day sun of civilization seems to the contented souls of many to be standing still in the heavens as upon Gibeon, the relations between nations are governed by the same rules of barbarous, brutal force, which once prevailed between individuals. The dark ages have not passed away; Erebus and black Night, born of Chaos, still brood over the earth; nor shall we hail the clear day, until the mighty hearts of the nations shall be touched, as those of children, and the whole earth, individuals and nations alike, shall acknowledge one and the same rule of Right.

Who has told you, fond man! to regard that as a glory when performed by a nation, which is condemned as a crime and a barbarism, when committed by an individual? In what vain conceit of wisdom and virtue, do you find this incongruous morality? Where is it declared that God, who is no respecter of persons, is a respecter of multitudes? Man is immortal; but States are mortal. He has a higher destiny than States. Shall States be less amenable to the great moral laws? Each individual is an atom of the mass. Must not the mass be like the individuals of which it is composed? Shall the mass do what individuals may not do? No; the same moral laws which govern individuals, govern masses. The Rule of Right, which binds the single individual, binds two or three when gathered together-binds conventions and congre. gations of men-binds villages, towns and cities-binds states, nations and empires-clasps the whole human family in its sevenfold embrace; nay more, it binds the angels of heaven, the Seraphim, full of love, the Cherubim, full of knowledge.

We are struck with horror at the report of a single murder; we seek the murderer, and the law puts forth all its energies to secure his punishment. Viewed in the clear light of truth, what are war and battle but organized murder; murder of malice afore-thought; in cold blood; through the operation of an extensive machinery of crime; with innumerable hands; at incalculable cost of money;. through subtle contrivances of cunning and skill; or by the savage, brutal assault? Was not the Scythian right, when he said to Alexander, "Thou boastest, that the only design of thy marches is to extirpate robbers; thou thyself art the greatest robber in the world?"

When shall the St. Louis of the nations arise-the Christian ruler or Christian people, who shall proclaim to the whole earth, that henceforward the great trial by battle shall cease forever; that it is the duty and policy of nations to establish love between each other; and in all respects, at all times, towards all persons, as well their own people, as the people of other lands, to be governed by the sacred rules of right, as between man and man? May God speed the coming of that day!

THE TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS:

OR THE

INFLUENCES WHICH UPHOLD THE CUSTOM OF WAR.*

BY CHARLES SUMNER.

I PROPOSE to inquire what are the true objects of national ambition-what is truly national glory, national honor-WHAT IS THE TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS. IN OUR AGE THERE CAN BE NO PEACE THAT IS NOT HONORABLE; THERE CAN BE NO WAR THAT IS NOT DISHONORABLE. The true honor of a nation is to be found only in deeds of justice, and in the happiness of its people, all of which are inconsistent with war. In the clear eye of Christian judgment, vain are its victories, infamous are its spoils. He is the true benefactor, and alone worthy of honor, who brings comfort where before was wretchedness; who dries the tear of sorrow; who pours oil into the wounds of the unfortunate; who feeds the hungry, and clothes the naked; who unlooses the fetters of the slave; who, by words or actions, inspires a love for God and for man. This is the Christian hero; this is the man of honor in a Christian land. Well may old Sir Thomas Browne exclaim, "the world does not know its greatest men;" for thus far it has chiefly discerned the violent brood of battle, the armed men springing up from the dragon's teeth sown by Hate, and cared little for the truly good men, children of Love, Cromwells guiltless of their country's blood, whose steps on earth have been as noiseless as an angel's wing.

It is not to be disguised, that these views differ from the generally received opinions of the world down to this day. The voice of man has been given mostly to the praise of military chieftains, and the honors of victory have been chanted even by the lips of woman. The mother, while rocking her infant on her knees, has stamped on his tender mind, at that age more impressible than wax, the images of war; she has nursed his slumbers with its melodies; she has pleased his waking hours with its stories; and selected for his playthings the plume and the sword. The child is father to the man; and who can weigh the influence of these early impressions on the opinions of later years? The mind which trains the child is like the hand which commands the end of a long lever; a gentle effort at that time suffices to heave the enormous weight of succeeding years. As the boy advances to youth, he is fed, like Achilles, not only on honey and milk, but on bear's flesh and lion's marrow. He draws the nutriment of his soul from a literature, whose beautiful fields have been moistened by human blood.

And when the youth becomes a man, his country invites his

* Taken mainly from the fourth topic in Mr. S.'s Oration before the City Authorities of Boston, July 4, 1845.—G, C. B.

services in war, and holds before his bewildered imagination the highest prizes of honor. For him is the pen of the historian, and the verse of the poet. His soul swells at the thought, that he also is a soldier; that his name shall be entered on the list of those who have borne arms in the cause of their country; and, perhaps, he dreams, that he too may sleep, like the Great Captain of Spain, with a hundred trophies over his grave. But the contagion spreads among us beyond those bands on whom is imposed the positive obligation of law. Respectable citizens volunteer to look like soldiers, and to affect in dress, in arms and deportment, what is called "the pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war." We all breathe the malaria of war, and the literature of every age and country is steeped in its spirit. The world has supped so full with battles, that all its inner modes of thought, and many of its rules of conduct, seem to be incarnadined with blood, as the bones of swine fed on inadder, are said to become red.

But I pass from this most fruitful theme, and hasten to other topics. I propose to consider very briefly some of those prejudices and influences which are most powerful in keeping alive the delusion of war.

1. One of these is the prejudice to a certain extent in its favor founded on the belief in its necessity. The consciences of all good men condemn it as a crime, a sin; even the soldier confesses that it is to be resorted to only in the last necessity. But a benevolent and omnipotent God cannot render it necessary to commit a crime. When war is called a necessity, it is meant, of course, that its object cannot be gained in any other way; but I think it demonstrable, that the professed object of war, which is justice between nations, is in no respect promoted by war; that force is not justice, nor in any way conducive to justice; that the eagles of victory can be the emblems only of successful force, not of established right. Justice can be obtained only by the exercise of the reason and judgment; but these are silent in the din of arms. Justice is without passion; but war lets loose all the worst passions of our

nature.

The various modes, which have been proposed for the determination of disputes between nations, are Negotiation, Arbitration, Mediation, and a Congress of Nations; all of them practicable, and calculated to secure peaceful justice. Let it not be said, then, that war is a necessity; and may our country aim at the true glory of taking the lead in the recognition of these, as the only proper modes of determining justice between nations!

2. Another prejudice in favor of war is founded on the practice of nations, past and present. There is no crime or enormity in morals, which may not find the support of human example; but it is not to be urged in our day, that we are to look for a standard of duty in the conduct of vain, mistaken, fallible man. It is not in the power of man, by any subtle alchemy, to transmute wrong into right. Because war is according to the practice of the world, it does not follow that it is right. For ages the world worshipped false gods; but these gods were not the less false, because all

bowed before them. At this moment the larger portion of mankind are Heathen; but Heathenism is not true. It was once the

practice of nations to slaughter prisoners of war; but even the spirit of war recoils now from this bloody sacrifice. In Sparta, theft, instead of being execrated as a crime, was dignified into an art and an accomplishment, and as such admitted into the system of youthful education; and even this debasing practice, established by local feeling, is enlightened, like war, by an instance of unconquerable firmness, which is a barbaric counterfeit of virtue. The Spartan youth, who allowed the fox concealed under his robe to eat into his heart, is an example of mistaken fortitude, not unlike that which we are asked to admire in the soldier.

But it is often said, "let us not be wiser than our fathers." Rather let us try to excel our fathers in wisdom. Let us imitate what in them was good; but let us not bind ourselves, as in the chains of Fate, by their imperfect example. Examples are to be followed only when they accord with the suggestions of duty. We have lived to little purpose, if we are not wiser than the generations that have gone before us. It is the grand distinction of man that he is a progressive being; that his reason at the present day is not merely the reason of a single human being, but that of the whole human race, in all ages from which knowledge has descended, in all lands from which it has been borne away. We are the heirs to an inheritance of knowledge, which has been accumulating from generation to generation. The child is now taught at his mother's knee what was far beyond the ken of the most learned of other days. Antiquity is the real infancy of man; we are the true Ancients. The single lock on the battered forehead of Old Time, is thinner now than when our fathers attempted to grasp it; the hourglass has been turned often since. Let us cease, then, to look for a lamp to our feet, in the feeble tapers that glimmer in the sepulchres of the Past. Rather let us hail those ever-burning lights above, in whose beams is the brightness of noon-day!

3. I allude with diffidence, but in the spirit of frankness, to the influence which war has derived from the Christian Church. When Constantine on one of his marches, at the head of his army, beheld the luminous trophy of the cross in the sky right above the meridian sun, inscribed with these words, By this conquer, had his soul been penetrated by the true spirit of Him whose precious symbol it was, he would have found in it no inspiration to the spear and the sword. He would have received the lesson of selfsacrifice, as from the lips of the Savior, and would have learned that it was not by earthly weapons that any true victory was to be won. By this conquer; that is, by patience, suffering, forgiveness of evil, by all those virtues of which the cross is the affecting token, conquer; and the victory shall be greater than any in the annals of Roman conquest.

The Christian Church, after the first centuries of its existence, failed to discern the peculiar spiritual beauty of the faith which it professed. Like Constantine, it found new incentives to war in the religion of Peace; and such to a great extent has been its

character even to our own day. The Pope of Rome, the asserted head of the nominal church, assumed the command of armies, often mingling the thunders of battle with those of the Vatican. The dagger which projected from the sacred vestments of the Archbishop de Retz, as he appeared in the streets of Paris, was called by the people, "the Archbishop's Prayer-Book." We read of mitred prelates in armor of proof; the sword of knighthood was consecrated by the church; and priests were often the expert masters in military exercises. I have seen at the gates of the Papal Palace in Rome, a constant guard of Swiss soldiers; I have seen, too, in our own streets a show as incongruous and as inconsistent, a pastor of a Christian church parading as the chaplain of a military array! Ay! more, we have heard from an eminent Christian divine, a sermon in which we are encouraged to serve the God of Battles, and, as citizen soldiers, to fight for Peace!

And who is the God of Battles? It is Mars; man-slaying, bloodpolluted, city-smiting Mars! Him we cannot adore. It is not He who binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades, and looses the bands of Orion; who causes the sun to shine on the just and the unjust; who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb; who distils the oil of gladness upon every upright heart; the fountain of Mercy and Goodness, the God of Justice and Love. The God of Battles is not the God of Christians; to him can ascend none of the prayers of Christian thanksgiving; for him there can be no words of worship in Christian temples, no swelling anthem to peal the note of praise.

There is now floating in this harbor a ship of the line of our country. Many of you have, perhaps, pressed its deck, and observed with admiration the completeness which prevails in all its parts; its lithe masts, and complex net-work of ropes; its thick wooden walls, within which are more than the soldiers of Ulysses; its strong defences, and its numerous dread and rude-throated engines of war. There each Sabbath, amidst this armament of blood, while the wave comes gently plashing against the frowning sides, from a pulpit supported by a cannon, or by the side of a cannon, in repose now, but ready to awake its dormant thunder, charged with death, a Christian preacher addresses the officers and crew! May his instructions carry strength and suce or to their souls! But he cannot pronounce in such a place, those highest words of the Master he professes, "Blessed are the Peace-makers; Love your Enemies; Render not evil for evil." Like Macbeth's Amen, they must stick in his throat. This strange and unblessed conjunction of the clergy with war, has had no little influence in blinding the world to the truth now beginning to be recognized, that Christianity forbids war in all cases.

One of the beautiful pictures, adorning the dome of a Church in Rome, by that master of art, whose immortal colors breathe as with the voice of a Poet, the Divine Raffaelle, represents Mars, in the attitude of war, with a drawn sword uplifted, and ready to strike, while an unarmed Angel from behind, with gentle but irresistible force, arrests and holds the descending arm. Such is the

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