ancient times. It a time hats tazzling inery were gone, that it an enger exported the trang, to onger brew a pernicions glars were 'erne rexión.

17. I singe with wegn.ng what tears to me to be te most I is ar while he present maenabuig a We now ndness to the dignity and claims of man are ant he wrth of a man

Te : not the the ictims are in Tim wants to hot whom he concner eared to the future on the feld of battle, or cames entire to grace s mon. Ch! did we to what men are, fid we ws in them the agirtial immortal children of God, what a moves mond we lift against war! How Indigently, now umowilly should we invoke Heaven and earth night our inmited. Injured brethren

But must the word temony front 2* Must force, fear, sain aboye mile the word? Is the kingdom of God, the reign of th duty and Love never to remail? Most the sacred name of brethren be only a name among men? Is the earh vir o steam with human blood shed by man's hands, and to scho with groans wrang from hears which ZolenIER 328 VIETCas? Can you and I my frende, do nothing to mores a different character on the future history of our mee? You say we are wead; and why went It is from inward defect, not from outward necessity. We are inefficient abroad, because faint within, faint in love, and trist, and holy resolution. Inward power always comes forth, and works without, Noah Worcester, enfeanted in body, was not weak. George Fox, poor and meducated, was not weak. They had light and life within, and therefore were strong abroad. Their spirits were arred by Christ's truth and mirt: and so moved, they spoke and were heard. We are dead, and therefore cannot act. Perhape we meak against war; but if we speak from tradition, if we echo what we near, if peace be a cant on our lips, our words are Our own souls moet bleed when our brethren are alaughtered. We must feel the infinite wrong done to man by the brute force which treads him in the dust. We must see in the anthors of war, monstera in human form, incarnations of the dread enemy of the human race. Under the inspiration of auch feelings, we shall speak, even the humblest of ns, with something of prophetic force. This is the power which is to strike awe into the counsellors and perpetrators of now licensed murder; which is to wither the laurelled brow of now worshipped heroes. Deep moral Convictions, unfeigned reverence and fervent love for man, and living faith in Christ, are mightier than armies; mighty through God to the pulling down of the strong holds of oppression and Go forth, then, friends of mankind, peaceful soldiers of Christ! and in your various relations, at home and abroad, in private life, and, if it may be, in more public spheres, give faithful utterance to the principles of universal justice and love, give utterance to your deep, solemn, irreconcilable hatred of the spirit of war.

unmeaning air.

AMERICAN PEACE SOCIETY, BOSTON, MASS.

CLAIMS OF PEACE ON CHRISTIANS.

THE cause of peace seeks, as its only object, the entire abolition of war. It has nothing to do with capital punishment, with the strict inviolability of human life, or with the question whether the gospel allows physical force in the government of states, schools and families. On such subjects we leave men to think as they please, and ask them merely to aid us in putting an end to that custom which lexicographers define to be "a contest by force between nations." It is not only a conflict unto death, but a conflict between governments; and neither a teacher punishing his pupil, nor a parent chastising his child, nor a father defending his family against a midnight assassin, nor a magistrate inflicting the penalties of law upon a criminal, can properly be termed war, because the parties are not nations or governments alone, but either individuals, or individuals and governments. Such questions may be important; but, associated solely for the abolition of war, we restrict ourselves to this single object.

But how is this object to be gained? Only by God's promised blessing on a right application of his own gospel to the case. Here we find his sovereign remedy for all the moral maladies of our race; and all we seek, or need, or can do, is such an application of its pacific principles as shall put war forever under the ban of every Christian community. If rightly applied from the first, the gospel would have caused wars to cease from every land blest with its heavenly light; and hence we urge upon all Christians the obligation of making such an application of its principles as shall insure the prevalence of peace co-extensive with Christianity itself. We ask the co-operation of all good men, and insist on the duty of specific, associated efforts for the pacification of our world just as fast as it shall be converted to God.

1. This duty is implied, first, in God's promise of universal He assures us in his word of an era when men shall peace. beat their swords into plough-shares, their spears into pruninghooks, and cease from learning war' any more.' Here is a promise quite as explicit as any concerning the restoration of the Jews, or the conversion of the heathen; and if bound to unite, as Christians do, in specific efforts for the fulfilment of these prophecies, why should we not do the same in reference to the prophecy of universal and permanent peace? The latter, equally with the former, is a part of God's word, and the same means are just as indispensable in one case as the other; nor do we see why, if specific, associated efforts ought to be made for the conversion of the Jews, or the spread of the gospel among the heathen, similar efforts should not be put forth to make them cease 1rom war.

The bare existence of such a prophecy imposes on

Christians the obligation of using the means necessary for its fulfilment.

2. This duty results, also, from the very genius of Christianity. It is emphatically a religion of peace. Peace is its motto, one of its grandest objects, a point to which its precepts, provisions and influences, all confessedly tend as their final result Peace marks its entire history and character. The birth-song of its Founder was peace; all his instructions breathed peace, his whole life was peace; and, while pouring out his blood on the cross, he prayed for his murderers. The Bible is a great statute-book of peace; our Father in Heaven is the God of Peace; our Redeemer there is the Prince of Peace; the Spirit he promised is a Spirit of Peace; his followers are all denominated the children of peace, and bound by the very terms of their profession, to become zealous co-workers with God in the cause of universal peace.

3. The same obligation is implied, next, in the duty of personal peace. So frequently is this duty enjoined throughout the Bible, that the Christian must feel himself especially required to promote peace amongst individuals, in families, in neighborhoods, in Churches, in communities, wherever he comes in contact with mankind. But does not this involve the duty of seeking the peace of the whole world! Surely the principle does apply, with a force vastly augmented, to the great brotherhood of nations; for, if peace is so incumbent upon individuals, or so desirable for their happiness, is it not far more so for a kingdom, for a world? If important for one man, is it not for a million, for a thousand millions! If individuals ought to "seek peace, and ensue it," are not nations, embodying millions, under far greater obligations to do so! If required ourselves to "live peaceably with all men, and follow after the things which make for peace," are we not bound by considerations still more imperative, to use every means in our power for diffusing the virtues and blessings of peace over the whole earth?

4. The same obligation we might infer, also, from almost every duty enjoined in the gospel. Take, as a specimen, the duty of evangelizing the world. The substance of all the precepts on this point, is forcibly condensed into our Saviour's last command, bidding us preach his gospel, his whole gospel, to every creature. And what is that gospel? A patron, an ally, an instigator of war!—war burning with malice and revenge, reeking with pollution, and steeped in blood and tears! The bare supposition outrages common sense; for the gospel is directly, most glaringly repugnant to every shred of a custom so foul and vindictive.

We are not now discussing a disputed point. We do not here allude to the vexed question, whether a war strictly defensive, is ever justifiable on Christian principles; a point about which there is diversity of opinion among good men, among the sincere friends of peace, and we leave them to settle it each one for him

self in the light of the Bible. We are assailing the custom itself; and, whatever we may think about wars strictly defensive, no man in his senses can fail to see the absolute inconsistency of such a practice with a religion of universal peace and good-will. Look at its details, and tell us, what part of this foul and horrid custom does the gospel sanction? Ascertain its objects, and analyze its motives; mark the spirit it cherishes, and the passions it kindles into a blaze; trace its progress in guilt, and its results in mischief and woe; go to its fleets and camps reeking with pollution, to its battle-fields raging with hellish malice and wrath, to its hospitals resounding with groans, and curses, and blasphemies; and in all these, which alone constitute war, what can you find compatible with a religion of peace, purity and love?

There is no view you can take of such a custom, that will not prove its direct contrariety both to the New Testament and the Old. We do not shrink from an appeal even to the Old Testament; for, if you separate its precepts from its somewhat mysterious history, you will find the former almost as much opposed as the gospel itself, to the practice of war. It enjoins piety, and love, and truth, and meekness, and a variety of other duties and graces utterly inconsistent with this trade of blood. But glance at the great moral code of Sinai. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. War, pagan in its origin, pagan still in its spirit, and always requiring soldiers to obey their superiors, right or wrong, rather than God himself, does virtually dethrone Jehovah from the hearts of an army, and put in his place a general or a prince, the idol of patriotism, or the phantom of military glory. War was the origin of nearly all the demigods ever worshipped; most of them were warriors deified; had Napoleon lived two thousand years earlier, he would have been the very Mars of the world; and we seriously doubt whether the sticklers for war pay half as much respect to the Almighty, as they do to this modern monster, this ravager of a continent, and murderer of millions. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Every one knows war to be a nursery of irreligion, a school of profaneness and blasphemy. Thou shalt not commit adultery. War is a hotbed of the foulest, most brutal licentiousThou shalt not steal. War is a system of legalized national robbery and piracy. Thou shalt not kill. War seeks to kill as its grand aim, and is in fact the most terrible engine ever devised for the wholesale destruction of mankind. Look through the Decalogue, through the whole of the Old Testament; and you will find war absolutely compelling soldiers to violate not a few of its plainest, most important precepts.

ness.

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, if possible, to the custom of war. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Can the soldier do this, and still continue his trade of human butchery? Love as yourself the very man on whom you are trying to inflict

the greatest possible amount of evil for two worlds! Paul tells us, that “love is the fulfilling of the law, because it worketh no ill to his neighbor;" but the soldier's whole business is to do him all the ill he can. Do good unto all men. War goes upon the avowed principle of doing them evil, as the only means of accomplishing its objects. Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them. The soldier do to others what he wishes done to himself! Would you like to have your dwelling burnt over your head, your family butchered before your eyes, and your own body blown or hewn to pieces? Yet this alone is war; and to talk of a war that did not aim to . perpetrate such atrocities, and inflict such miseries by wholesale, would be as plain a contradiction in terms, as to speak of living death! What! a war that sought to kill no one, to destroy no property, to do nobody any harm! You might as well call hell itself heaven! Love your enemies. War would fain have us hate them, and never did, never can exist without the deepest, bitterest malice. Seek peace. Live in peace. Follow peace with all men. See that none render evil for evil to any man, friend or foe. Lay aside all malice, the great fountain of strife alike between individuals and nations. Mortify your members which are upon the earth, all those unholy passions from which alone, as James assures us, war can ever proceed. Avenge not yourselves; but, whoso smiteth you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. Resist not evil; but overcome evil with good. We cannot stop to explain these passages; but there is no possible construction that would not make them condemn war as incompatible with Christianity.

Here, then, is confessedly the genuine spirit, an integral part of that gospel which our Saviour's last command bids us preach to every creature; and we insist on its being our duty, in concert with the rest of his disciples, to teach the whole human race this part, as well as every other part, of our holy religion. This part! and are we permitted at pleasure to embrace or to spread a mutilated gospel-a gospel without peace, any more than a gospel without repentance or faith? Are we at liberty to pluck out, or to leave out, its principles of peace? No more than we are repentance or faith; for our Saviour's last command, and all his previous instructions, rivet upon us the obligation of preaching peace, just like repentance or faith, as an integral part of the gospel, and thus rendering its pacific principles, like all its other truths, effective of their object in the spread of peace coextensive with Christianity itself.

Here is all we ask-such an application of the gospel as shall secure the actual abolition of war in every Christian country. We dream not of extending peace a single span beyond the influences of the gospel; but we do plead earnestly for the restoration of those principles which our Saviour himself taught, his apostles everywhere preached, and his disciples, down to the war-degeneracy of the Church, continued to exemplify, like al