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country, and encamped in every section to trample on the Sabbath, and indulge in drunkenness, dehanchery, and almost every species of vice and villainy; let our hils and vannies resound with the uproar of battle after battle, and every press teem, every mail be loaded, every hamist reached, day after day, with the news of victory or defeat, to keep the public mind stretched continually to its utmost tether of anxious, agonizing interest in the progress of the war; and how long before the death-knell of every revival among us would toll out its last beat, and the Spirit of God, that peaceful dove, fly far, far from such realms of noise and strife, to return no more for years!

11. But finally, and more than all, peace would put a stop to the ruin of immortal souls directly occasioned by war. It is high time for the truth on this point, if on no other, to be rung alond in the ear of every Christian community. Too long has the poor soldier been permitted, partly through our own connivance or neglect, to dream of wading through all the atrocities and horrors of war up to the throne of an immaculate, merciful God! Far be it from us to say, that none have ever gone even from the field of blood to the realms of glory; but if war is so notorious a hotbed of vice and irreligion; if it breathes a spirit, forms a character, and absolutely enjoins atrocities so utterly inconsistent with the gospel of Christ; if the field of battle is such a theatre for the worst passions that ever rage in the bosom of man; if fleets and camps are, the world over, such proverbial reservoirs of impiety, pollution, and crime; I dare not suppose, that such masses of moral putrefaction are borne up into the immediate presence of Him in whose sight the very heavens are not clean!

What a destroyer, then, of immortal souls! Scarce a war that does not slay its thousands, its scores of thousands; and how often have there fallen upon a single field of battle, ten thousand! twenty, thirty, fifty thousand! a hundred, two hundred, three hundred thousand!! No uncommon number this in ancient warfare; and, since the dawn of the present century, there perished in less than six months of the Russian campaign, half a million of the French alone; in the wars of Alexander and Cesar, some three millions each; in the wars of Napoleon, six millions; in the wars of Jenghis-Khan some thirty-two millions; in the wars of the Turks and Saracens, sixty millions each; and the lowest estimate I have ever seen, puts the sum total of its ravages from the first at fourteen thousand millions, eighteen times as many as all the present population of our globe!

Will the Church of Christ, then, never awake to a subject so immensely important? Believers in the gospel of peace, followers of the Prince of Peace, sons and daughters of the God of Peace, can you still fold your own hands in apathy or despair, and let such a fell destroyer of mankind for two worlds continue his work of death and perdition, unchecked, unresisted by any efforts or even prayers from you?

We know you would not, could not, if you only saw,—as due inquiry and reflection would certainly show you,-how efforts

made by Christians as they should be, would banish this terribie Scourge ere long from Christendom, and eventually from the face of the whole earth. There is no impossibility in the case. War is just as curable as any other evil, and requires for its extinction only the means of God's appointment. There is no more need of this custom than there is of duelling or the Slave-trade. It exists solely because men in their folly still choose it; its continuance depends entirely on their choice; and whenever you can, change that choice, and make the mass of mankind resolve that war shall cease, it must of necessity come to an end at once and forever. Such a change is clearly possible; already is it rapidly taking place under the influence of this cause; and nations will one day find it just as easy for them to settle their difficulties without war, as the members of a Church now do theirs without duels. A variety of substitutes might be adopted far more effectual than the sword for all purposes of protection and redress. But you tell us perhaps, Make men Christians, and then wars will cease.' What sort of Christians? Surely not such as have for fifteen centuries been butchering one another! Convert men to the whole gospel, to its pacific as well as its other truths, to a kind of Christianity that shall forbid them to fight in any case; then, and only then, will the spread of our religion insure the abolition of this custom. Christianity has for ages been pretty steadily gaining ground in Christendom; and yet in the last century have her standing warriors increased not less than six hundred per cent., from half a million to more than three millions! Can such a Christianity put an end to war?

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It is not enough, then, merely to support and to propagate any form of Christianity which neglects to apply the only part of the gospel that can ever abolish this custom. For such a result, we rely of course upon the gospel, but only on the gospel rightly applied. Such an application is indispensable. What is the gospel? Merely a collection of principles which can produce no result without an application, any more than medicine can cure a sick man who does not take it. How does the gospel convert the sinner? Only by its truths addressed to his soul. How will it ever abolish paganism? Solely by being sent and applied to paganism. How can it reclaim the blasphemer or the Sabbathbreaker? Only by a direct, specific application to their sins. In no other way can it cure any moral evil; and in like manner must we apply the gospel to war, before the spread of Christianity will insure a corresponding prevalence of peace.

But are you waiting for the millenium to come, and saying that, when it does come,-never before,-peace will follow as a matter of course? Very true; and so will repentance and faith follow as a matter of course; but how are you to reach the millenium? Would you first get into the millenium, and then convert the world? Is the millenium to make men Christians, or the making of all men Christians to be itself the millenium? How would you introduce a millenium of repentance? Simply by first filling the world with repentance-with men penitent for

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}{marimenting them, the abey it St. VOR NONET Car, voc write, or sneak or real fer this cause? The do s Hove You nees? Then use 13. Have you money Be sure to give a portion of it; mer forget for how many purpose, the eanse needs suci, aid. We must support agencies, send forth lecturers, and scatter period:esis, tracts and volumes through the land. Such operations, altogether indispensable, require a large amount of funds; and Christians should at legeth give to this cause as liberally as they do to other eanses that aim in like manner at the glory of God in the present and immortal welfare of mankind.

"AMERICAN PEACE SOCIETY, BOSTON, MASS.

No. XXXV.

THE ONLY REMEDY FOR WAR.

BY W. E. CHanning, D. d.

Ir the most terrible view of war be, that it is the triumph and jubilee of selfish and malignant passions, then its true cure is to be sought in the diffusion of the principles of Universal Justice and Love, in that spirit of Jesus Christ which expels the demons of selfishness and malignity from the heart. Even supposing that war could be abolished by processes which leave the human character unchanged, that it could be terminated by the progress of a civilization which, whilst softening manners, would not diminish the selfishness, mercenariness, hard-heartedness, fraud, ambition of men, its worst evils would still remain, and society would reap in some other forms the fruits of its guilt. God has ordained, that the wickedness within us shall always find its expression and punishment in outward evil. War is the fiend within coming out. Human history is nothing more than the inward nature manifested in its native acts and issues. Let the soul continue unchanged; and, should war cease, the inward plague would still find its way to the surface. The infernal fire at the centre of our being, though it should not break forth in the wasting volcano, would not slumber, but by other eruptions, more insensible, yet not less deadly, would lay waste human happiness. I do not beHeve that any remedy but the Christian spirit can avail against war. The wild beast, that has gorged on millions of victims in every age, is not to be tamed by a polished or selfish civilization. Christianity is the only true remedy for war; not Christianity in name, not such Christianity as we see, not such as has grown up under arbitrary governments in church and state, not such as characterizes any Christian sect at the present day; but Christianity as it lived in the soul, and came forth in the life of its founder; a religion that reveals man as the object of God's infinite love, and which commends him to the unbounded love of his brethren; a religion, the essence of which is self-denial, selfsacrifice, in the cause of human nature; a religion, which proscribes, as among the worst sins, the passion of man for rule and dominion over his fellow-creatures; which knows nothing of rich or poor, high or low, bond or free, and casts down all the walls of partition which sever men from one another's sympathy and respect. Christian love alone can supplant war; and this love is not a mere emotion, a tenderness awakened by human suffering, but an intelligent, moral, spiritual love, a perception and deep feeling of the sacredness of human nature, a recognition of the inalienable rights, the solemn claims of every human being. It protests fearlessly against all wrong, no matter how obscure the victim. It desires to lift up each and all, no matter how fallen. It is a sym

P. T. NO. XXXV.

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pathy with the minimal principle dwelling under every human form. This a he ore which scanner var: int. as yet. mus has been little diffused. The Love which Christ breathes, vich jooks hugh man's wody to he mmortal mirt, vhich sees something fivine in the rational and moral powers of the lowest auman being, and which challenges for the lowest, he empathy, respect, and fostering aid of his race; his has been care, and yet i s only by the gradual tiffusion of his, that the page of war can je stayed. This regard for anmamty, canid it even prevai through a nanow sphere, could † and wgether but a small body of men, would send forth a testimony against war, which would break the slumber of the Christian world, and take awe into nany & contemner of ma race

I am aware, that others are hoping for the abolition of war by other causes; and otier causes, I am aware, must be brought into action. I only say, that, antess joined with the era of Chrisfanity, they give no assurance of continued repose. This though I would briefly illustrate. The present unusual cessation of armis in the Christian world (1829)) is to some a promise of a happier era in human affairs. It is indeed a cheering fact, and may weil surprise ns, when we consider now many cansea of war have been in action, how many threatening clouds have overcast the political sy during the panse of war. But if we examine the canses of tus tranquillity, we shall learn not to confide in it too strongly.

1. The first cause was the exhaustion in which Europe vas left by the bloody conflicts of the French Revointion. The nations, worn out with struggles, wasted by successive investors, and staggering under an unprecedented load of debt, yearned for repose. The strong man had bied too freely to light more. For years poverty has kept the peace in Europe. One of the fruits of civilization is the increasing expensiveness of war, so that when the voice of humanity cannot be heard, the hollow sound of an empty treasury is a warning which cannot be slighted. This cause of peace is evidently temporary. Nations, resting from exhaustion, may be expected to renew their pernicious activity, when their strength is renewed.

2. Another cause of the continuance of peace is undoubtedly the extension of new and profitable relations through the civilized world. Since the pacification of Europe, in 1816, a new impulse has been given to industry. The discoveries of science have been applied with wonderful success to the useful arts. Nations have begun in earnest to develope their resources. Labor is discovered to be the grand conqueror, enriching and building up nations more surely than the proudest battles. As a necessary result of this new impulse, commerce has been wonderfully enlarged. Nations send the products of their soil and machinery, where once they sent armies; and such a web of common inter ests has been woven, that hostilities can spring up in no corner of the civilized world, without deranging in a measure the order and industry of every other state.

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