CHAPTER XV.

HIS VIEWS OF WAR.

THERE is no fruit of human corruption more strongly marked with the impress of its unholy origin, than aggressive war. Few practices known in our world, can be for a moment compared with this, for its essential malignity of purpose, and its desolation of human happiness and virtue. It exhibits at once the strongest proof of human depravity, and the fearful connexion established between vice and suffering. For it is indeed "the day of the Lord, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger." It is a case in which retribution pursues transgression with unwonted rapidity. In many instances of human folly and sin, vengeance slumbers for a season. But here, as if to deter mankind from an iniquity thus monstrous and fatal, the punishment is so blended with the offence, that the delusive hope of impunity can never be cherished. If the worst effects of the storm are not encountered, yet to pass through entirely unscathed is next to an impossibility. If the physical evils are escaped, yet the moral will not be. If the body is not sacrificed, yet will

a more costly offering be made in the immolation of the spirit, in the loss of its virtue and its happiness.

"War," says a celebrated writer,*"may be considered in two views, as it affects the happiness, and as it affects the virtue of mankind; as a source of misery, and as a source of crimes.

"1. Though we must all die, as the woman of Tekoa said, and are as water spilt upon the ground which cannot be gathered up, yet it is impossible for a human mind to contemplate the rapid extinction of innumerable lives without concern. To perish in a moment, to be hurried instantaneously, without preparation and without warning, into the presence of the Supreme Judge, has something in it inexpressibly awful and affecting. War is the work, the element, or rather the sport and triumph of death, who glories, not only in the strength of his conquests, but in the richness of his spoil. In the other methods of attack, in the other forms which death assumes, the feeble and the aged, who at the best can live but a short time, are usually the victims; here it is the vigorous and the strong. It is remarked by an ancient historian, that 'in peace children bury their parents, in war parents bury their children :' nor is the difference small. Children lament their parents, sincerely indeed, but with that moderate and tranquil sorrow which it is natural for those to feel who are conscious of retaining many tender ties, many animating prospects. Parents mourn for their children with the bitterness of despair; the aged parent, the widowed mother, loses, when she is deprived of her children,

*Robert Hall.

every thing but the capacity of suffering; her heart withered and desolate, admits no other object, cherishes no other hope. It is Rachael weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted because they are nol.

"What a scene must a field of battle present, where thousands are left without assistance and without pity, with their wounds exposed to the piercing air, while the blood, freezing as it flows, binds them to the earth, amid the trampling of horses and the insults of an enraged foe! If they are spared by the humanity of the enemy, and carried from the field, it is but a prolongation of torment. Conveyed in uneasy vehicles, often to a remote distance, through roads almost impassable, they are lodged in ill-prepared receptacles for the wounded and the sick, where the variety of distress baffles all the efforts of humanity and skill, and renders it impossible to give to each the attention he demands. Far from their native home, no tender assiduities of friendship, no well-known voice, no wife, or mother, or sister, is near to soothe their sorrows, relieve their thirst, or close their eyes in death. Unhappy man! and must you be swept into the grave unnoticed and unnumbered, and no friendly tear be shed for your sufferings or mingled with your dust?"

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After other forcible reflections on the numerous evils war, besides those which touch the persons and lives of men, our author proceeds to make the following remarks on the influence of national warfare on the morals of mankind.

"The contests of nations are both the offspring and the parent of injustice. The word of God ascribes the existence of war to the disorderly passions of mankind. Whence come wars and fightings among you? saith

the apostle James; come they not from your lusts that war in your members? It is certain that two nations cannot engage in hostilities, but one party must be guilty of injustice; and if the magnitude of crimes is to be estimated by a regard to their consequences, it is difficult to conceive an action of equal guilt with the wanton violation of peace. Though something must generally be allowed for the complexness and intricacy of national claims, and the consequent liability to deception, yet where the guilt of an unjust war is clear and manifest, it sinks every other crime into insignificance. If the existence of war always implies injustice in one at least of the parties concerned, it is also the fruitful parent of crimes. It reverses with respect to its objects, all the rules of morality. It is nothing less than a temporary repeal of the principles of virtue. It is a system out of which almost all the virtues are excluded, and in which nearly all the vices are incorporated. Whatever renders human nature amiable or respectable, whatever engages love or confidence, is sacrificed at its shrine. In instructing us to consider a portion of our fellow-creatures as the proper objects of enmity, it removes, as far as they are concerned, the basis of all society, of all civilization and virtue; for the basis of these is the good-will due to every individual of the species, as being a part of ourselves. From this principle all the rules of social virtue emanate. Justice and humanity, in their utmost extent, are nothing more than the practical application of this great law, The sword, and that alone, cuts asunder the bond of consanguinity which unites man to man. As it immediately aims at the extinction of life, it is next to impossible, upon the principle that every thing may be lawfully

done to him whom we have a right to kill, to set limits to military license; for when men pass from the domination of reason to that of force, whatever restraints are attempted to be laid on the passions will be feeble and fluctuating. Though we must applaud, therefore, the attempts of the humane Grotius, to blend maxims of humanity with military operations, it is to be feared they will never coalesce, since the former imply the subsistence of those ties which the latter suppose to be dissolved. Hence the morality of peaceful times are directly opposite to the maxims of war. The fundamental rule of the first is to do good; of the latter to inflict injuries. The former commands us to succour the oppressed; the latter to overwhelm the defenceless. The former teaches men to love their enemies; the latter to make themselves terrible even to strangers.

"While the philanthropist is devising means to mitigate the evils and augment the happiness of the world, a fellow-worker together with God, in exploring and giving effect to the benevolent tendencies of nature, the warrior is revolving in the gloomy recesses of his capacious mind, plans of future devastation and ruin. Prisons crowded with captives, cities emptied of their inhabitants, fields desolate and waste, are among his proudest trophies. The fabric of his fame is cemented with tears and blood; and if his name is wafted to the ends of the earth, it is in the shrill cry of suffering humanity; in the curses and imprecations of those whom his sword has reduced to despair.

"Let me not be understood to involve in this guilt, every man who engages in war, or to assert that war it