with war, because war always aims to overcome evil with evil, to return injury for injury, to subdue our enemies by making them wretched, to inflict on our assailants the very evils they meditate against us, to save our own life, property and happiness by sacrificing theirs. Such is war in its best form; but, if this be not a contradiction of the gospel, we know not what is, and challenge you to conceive a principle more directly opposed to that which lies at the foundation of Christianity.

But the gospel condemns in detail the moral elements of war. "Lay aside all malice; and let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger be put away.Avenge not yourselves. Recompense to no man evil for evil. See that none render evil for evil to any man. Whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and division, are ye not carnal?-Now, the works of the flesh are these: hatred, variance, emulation, wrath, strife, sedition, envyings, murders, revilings, and such like." Need any one be told, that the things here denounced, are inseparable from war, and constitute its very essence? What' war without malice or hatred, without bitterness, wrath or anger, without division or strife, without variance, emulation or murder! Nations go to war without avenging themselves, and rendering evil for evil!

The gospel, however, still more fully condemns war by enjoining what is inconsistent with it. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself;" and the parable of the Good Samaritan makes every human being our neighbor. "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law Charity (love) suffereth long, and is kind; seeketh not her own; is not easily provoked; thinketh no evil; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.-Do good unto all

men. Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.-By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. Have peace one with another. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness. Put on

bowels of mercies, kindness, peaceableness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another, forgiving one another, even as Christ forgave you. The wisdom which is from above, is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated.-Blessed are the poor in spirit-the meek-the merciful -the peace-makers.-Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. Overcome evil with good. Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you."

Now, do not such passages convey a most unequivocal condemnation of war in all its forms? Love thy neighbor as thyself-by shooting and stabbing him! Love worketh no ill to his neighbor. The soldier's only business is to do his neighbor all the ill he can. Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you. Would you like to have them burn your dwelling over your heal, butcher your whole family, and then send a bullet or a bayonet through your own heart? Love your enemies, and do them good. War teaches us to hate them, and do them all the evil in our power. Forgive as Christ forgives. Do soldiers forgive in this way? Avenge not yourselves. War is a system of avowed and studied vengeance. If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink. Is war ever waged on this principle? Can it be, without ceasing to be war?

We know well the plea, that these precepts are addressed to individuals, not to governments; but

we challenge the slightest proof from the New Tes tament, that one government, in its intercourse with another, is exempt from these obligations, or authorized to exempt its subjects from them. We are also told, that many of these passages are obviously figurative. True; but they mean something. What then do they mean? Resist not evil,-turn the other cheek to the smiter,—overcome evil with good. Do such passages mean to allow bombardment, pillage, devastation, slaughter? If not, they do not allow war. Love your enemies, and do them good. Does this mean, ruin their commerce, sink their fleets, burn their villages, plunder their cities, blow out their brains? So of all the precepts we have quoted; no possible construction can make them allow war.

War is confessedly a bad business; and, if we must have it, and still wish its work of blood and vengeance performed according to the gospel, its deeds of hell executed in the spirit of heaven, then must we change its agents, and, instead of such villains and desperadoes as Napoleon wanted for warriors, instead of releasing felons, as England has been wont to do, from the prison and the gallows, on condition of their becoming soldiers, we must select from the church her best members, her deacons and elders, her pastors, rectors and bishops,— as the only men that can, if anybody can, rob, and burn, and ravage, and murder by wholesale, all without malice, from motives of pure benevolence, in a Christian way! as Paul, or Gabriel, or Christ himself would have done!! If unfit for such hands, then is the whole business of war unchristian.

Here is a fair test. If war is right for us, it must have been equally so for our Saviour; but can you conceive the Prince of Peace, or one of his apostles, leading forth an army to their work of plunder, blood and devastation? Can you point to a

modern field of battle, on which Christ or Paul would have been in his element amidst fire, and blood, and groans, and dying curses? Is there a Christian way of burning villages, and plundering cities, of perpetrating the wholesale butcheries of the battle field, and hurling thousands on thousands of guilty souls into the eternal world? Does the gospel tell us how to do such things aright-how apostles, how Christ himself, would have done them? If not, then is war utterly incompatible with that gospel which proclaims peace on earth as one of its first and most glorious peculiarities; whose promised reign on earth is to be a reign of universal peace; whose disciples are all required to overcome evil with good, to love even their enemies, and imitate the blessed example of Him who reviled not his revilers, nor returned one curse for the many curses heaped upon himself by his crucifiers, but prayed on his cross, "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do."

SECTION IV.

DIFFICULTIES FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT.

1. WE should of course expect to find some difficulties even in the New Testament; and the first is the plea, that John the Baptist did not require the soldiers who came to him for instruction, to quit the army. Now, we submit, that John, the forerunner of Christ, belonged not to the Christian, but to the Jewish dispensation; and hence his reply, whatever it might be, could not prove war to be consistent with Christianity, because it has no bearing on the point. Even if admitted, to what

does it amount? He did not bid the soldiers abandon their occupation; nor did Christ tell the woman of Samaria to cease from her adulteries, or any others to relinquish the business in which they had been engaged. The grossest idolatry formed a part of the Roman military service. Did John's answer justify that? If not, then it could lend no sanction to the custom of war. He did not in fact touch the question of the lawfulness of their profession.

2. But the New Testament nowhere condemns war by name.'-We deny the assertion; but, if true, what would it prove? The New Testament does not in this way condemn polygamy or concubinage, gambling or suicide, duelling, the slave-trade or piracy; but does the gospel allow such practices merely because it does not denounce them by name? It does condemn what constitutes them, every one of their moral elements; a mode of condemnation much less equivocal, and far more decisive.

3. Equally futile is the plea, that neither Christ nor his apostles ever expressly censured the profession of arms.-Nor did they thus censure other professions or employments; and this argument, if it proves anything, would justify almost every species of wickedness prevalent in their day. Be cause our Saviour did not condemn the religion of the Syro-Phenician woman that came to him, (Matt xv. 21-28,) does the gospel sanction idolatry? Be cause he did not reprove the woman of Samaria at Jacob's well, for the adultery and concubinage in which she had lived for years, (John iv. 7-30,) are we to regard his silence in the case as an approval of such things? Because he did not expressly condemn the former profession even of the penitent Magdalene, (Luke vii. 37-50,) does the gospel connive at harlotry?