lygamy and concubinage.

Does their example

make such things lawful for us?-We are reminded, however, that God could never have enjoined or permitted anything that is necessarily wrong. Few things are so; but, if not necessarily wrong, who now regards filicide, and polygamy, and concubinage, and arbitrary divorce, and many other practices allowed to the Israelites, as lawful under the gospel? But the wars of the Israelites were properly penal executions; merely the infliction of such penalties as God himself prescribed against transgressors of his law. Should a bevy of constables attempt to imprison or execute a gang of sentenced criminals, and meet from them a desperate and bloody resistance, would the conflict deserve to be called war? Yet such were the wars of the Israelites. The idolaters of Canaan had committed high treason against Heaven; God denounced upon them the penalty of utter extermination; the Israelites were commissioned to inflict this penalty; and all they did, resembles an execution far more than it does war. God assumed the whole responsibility of the deed; the Israelites were mere executioners of his will. But those wars were distinguished from all others by two peculiarities;-they occurred under a theocracy, a government of which God himself was the head; and they were expressly enjoined or permitted by him. Since the close of revelation, men cannot be placed in the same circumstances, and therefore can never apply to themselves this example of the Israelites. But if applied, the example would prove too much. The chief wars of the Israelites were wars of aggression, conquest and utter extermination; and such an example, if it proves anything, would justify the most horrid, wholesale butcheries ever committed in the strife

of nations. Would any man now deem such wars right? If not, he should never quote those of the Israelites; for there the aggressors were justified, and those who acted in self-defence were condemned.

SECTION III.

WAR AND THE NEW TESTAMENT.

So far the Old Testament; but the gospel, repealing the ancient law or license of retaliation, and putting in its place the principle of universal good-will, is still more repugnant to the custom of war. Its spirit, its principles, its legitimate results. are all antagonistic to those of Christianity. Peace was the song chanted over her cradle by angels fresh from the God of love. Her Founder was the Prince of Peace; her gospel is the statute-book of peace; the principles of peace are scattered throughout the New Testament; and most fully were they enforced by the example of Christ, his apostles, and all his early disciples.

Glance at the general contrariety of war to the gospel. "It contradicts," says Dr. Malcom, "the very genius and intention of Christianity. Christianity, if it prevailed, would make the earth a paradise; war, wherever it prevails, makes it a slaughterhouse, a den of thieves, a brothel, a hell. Christianity is the remedy for all human woes; war produces every woe known to man. All the features, all the concomitants, all the results of war, are the opposite of the features, the concomitants, the results of Christianity. The two systems conflict in every part irreconcilably and eternally."

"The whole structure of an army is in violation

of New Testament precepts. What absolute despotism! Condescending to men of low estate' would spoil discipline. 'Esteeming others better than ourselves' would degrade the officers. Instead of humility, must be gay trappings. Instead of

Christ's law of love, must be man's rule of honor. Instead of examining all things, the soldier must be like a trained blood-hound, ready to be let loose against any foe. Instead of returning good for evil, the army is organized expressly to return injuries with interest. The qualities required in the Christian, spoil a soldier for the field. He must then cast away meekness, and fight. He must cast away honesty, and forage. He must cast away forgiveness, and revenge his country. He must return blow for blow, wound for wound. Thus, when we take the common soldier individually, we find him compelled to violate every precept of his religion."

The celebrated Erasmus, more than three centu ries ago, put the contrariety of war to the gospel, in a startling light. "Let us," says he, "imagine we hear a soldier among these fighting Christians saying the Lord's Prayer just before battle. OUR FATHER! says he. Ó, hardened wretch! can you call God Father, when you are just going to cut your brother's throat?-Hallowed be thy name. How can the name of God be more impiously un hallowed than by mutual bloody murder among his sons?-Thy kingdom come. Do you pray for the coming of his kingdom, while you are endeavoring to establish an earthly despotism by spilling the blood of God's sons and subjects?—Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. His will in heaven is for PEACE; but you are now meditating WAR-Give us this day our daily bread. How dare you say this to your Father in heaven at the moment you are

going to burn your brother's corn-fields, and would rather lose the benefit of them yourself than suffer him to enjoy them unmolested?-Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. With what face can you pray thus, when, so far from forgiving your brother, you are going with all the haste you can, to murder him in cold blood for an alleged trespass which, after all, is but imaginary?—Lead us not into temptation.

And do you presume to deprecate temptation or dangeryou who are not only rushing into it yourself, but doing all you can to force your brother into it ?Deliver us from evil. You pray to be delivered from evil, that is, from the evil being, Satan, to whose impulses you are now submitting yourself, and by whose spirit you are guided in contriving the greatest possible evil to your brother ?"

Let us state a few points that will probably be conceded by all. 1. The deeds of war in themselves considered, are confessedly forbidden in the New Testament, and can be justified only on the supposition, that government has a right in war to reverse or suspend the enactments of Heaven.

2. The spirit of war is acknowledged by all to be contrary to that of the gospel. But can we have war without its spirit? What is the spirit of any custom or act but the moral character of that custom or act? Blasphemy without the spirit of blasphemy! Perpetrate the deeds of war without the spirit of war, and destroy property, life and happiness by wholesale, from motives of pure benevolence! Kill men just for their own benefit! Send them to perdition for their good!! Tremendous logic; yet the only sort of logic that ever attempts to reconcile war with the gospel; a logic that would require us to suppose, that thousands of cut-throats by profession, generally unprincipled

and reckless, fierce, irascible and vindictive, the tigers of society, will shoot, and stab, and trample one another down in the full exercise of Christian patience, forgiveness and love!!

3. The qualities required of warriors, are the reverse of those which characterize the Christian. Even Paley, the ablest champion of war, avers that "no two things can be more different than the Heroic and the Christian characters," and then proceeds to exhibit the two in striking contrast as utterly irreconcilable. Must not war itself be equally incompatible with Christianity?

4. The gospel enjoins no virtue which the soldier may not discard without losing his military rank or reputation; nor does it forbid a solitary vice which he may not practise without violating the principles of war.

5. While the gospel prescribes rules for every lawful relation and employment in life, it lays down not a single principle applicable to the soldier's peculiar business, and evidently designed for his use. If war is right, why this studious avoidance, this utter neglect of its agents?

6. The Old Testament predicts that the gospel will one day banish war from the earth forever. But, if consistent with Christianity, how will the gospel ever abolish it? The gospel destroy what it sanctions and supports!

7. Christians, in the warmest glow of their love to God and man, shrink with instinctive horror from the deeds of cruelty and blood essential to war; nor can they, in such a state of mind, perpetrate them without doing violence to their best feelings.

8. Converts from paganism, in the simplicity of their first faith, have uniformly understood the gos pel as forbidding this custom. Such was remark