PREFA CЕ. THIS little work is designed to furnish the most important facts, arguments and explanations, on the main topics embraced in the cause of peace. I hope it will suffice for the satisfaction of most minds; and those who wish for something fuller or more thorough, can resort to the larger publications on Peace by the American Peace Society, such as its Prize Essays on a Congress of Nations, a splendid octavo of more than 700 pages, and its Book of Peace, containing in smaller compass still more matter from some of the ablest pens that ever wrote, and altogether the best thesaurus or encyclopedia of information on Peace that can be found in the English or any other language. I flatter myself that nearly every position taken in these pages, will secure the concurrence of all fair minds. I have sought with special care to present those aspects of the subject which I think best fitted to awaken a practical interest in the cause I plead, and to unite all good men in efforts for the abolition of war. For extracts from others, due credit is given, but none of course for anything taken from my own writings.. The cause of peace aims solely to do away the custom of international war; and I trust there will be found in this book nothing that does not bear on this object, nor anything that interferes with the legitimate authority of government. As a friend of peace, I am of course a supporter of civil government, with all the powers requisite for the condign punishment of wrong-doers, the enforcement of law, and the preservation of social order. I deem government, in spite of its worst abuses, an ordinance of God for the good of mankind; nor can I, as a peace man, hold any doctrines incompatible in my view with its just and necessary powers over its own subjects. I condemn only THE GREAT DUEL OF NATIONS. G. C. B. CHAPTER I.-WASTE OF PROPERTY BY WAR, III. PERSONAL SUFFERINGS FROM WAR, SECTION 1.-General Contrariety of War to Revealed Religion, 11.-War and the Old Testament, . III.-War and the New Testament, . IV. Difficulties from the New Testament, VI.-MALIGN MORAL INFLUENCES OF WAR, SECTION 1.-Upon Individual and Social Character, CHAPTER I.-THE SUPPORTS OF WAR, SECTION 1.-Pleas in Favor of War, . INTRODUCTION. PEACE is no new theme. Ancient prophets foretold it as one of the peculiar glories of Messiah's reign; and the angels, sent to announce his advent, sang over his manger-cradle, Glory to God in the highest and on earth PEACE, good will to men! Peace was thus the birth-song of Christianity; and its principles, fully embodied by our Saviour in his sermon on the mount, and thickly scattered through the New Testament, were so strictly put in practice by the early Christians, that not a few of them went to the stake rather than bear arms. The church, however, relapsed into a deep, protracted degeneracy on this subject, as on many others; and for more than a thousand years after her fatal union with the state under Constantine in the fourth century, did she lend her sanction to the custom of war with scarce a thought of its glaring contrariety to her religion of peace. Still she was not entirely without witnesses on this point; for the Waldenses bore their testimony in the very midnight of the dark ages, and Erasmus, the day-star of the Reformation and of Modern Literature, wrote in behalf of peace with an eloquence worthy of the first scholar of the world. We know too well how little his voice was heeded by the warring Christians of |