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CHAPTER II.

CAUSES OF A WANT OF ACTIVE EXERTION

AGAINST WAR.

SECONDLY-That class of professing Christians who assert that they are sensible to the evils of war, support their unwillingness to use any active exertion, chiefly from their expectation that the Millennium, whose most prominent feature is universal peace, will be brought about by a miracle.

Thus Christians once thought that the heathen would be converted without any instrumentality of theirs; they slumbered while millions of unfortunate fellow creatures were descending to the grave, without ever having heard of a Saviour.

The church at length awoke from its lethargy : it felt that the Almighty works his glorious changes by man, that it is the essence of human duty to perform the will of God, and that Christians must be his active instruments in every good work. The happiest results have followed their exertions, whether we regard missionary enterprise, or the moral crusades against slavery and intemperance. Yet exactly the same excuse might have been urged in these cases, as that which is brought against activity in the promotion of pacific doctrines. "The abolition of war will

not be the effect of any sudden or resistless visitation from heaven on the character of men,-not of any mystical influence working with all the omnipotence of a charm on the passive hearts of those who are the subjects of it,-not of any blind or overruling fatality which will come upon the earth at some distant period of its history, and about which we of the present day have nothing to do but to look silently on without concern and without co-operation. It will be brought about by the activity of men. It will be done by the philanthropy of thinking Christians. The subject will be brought to the test of Christian principle; the public will be enlightened by the mild dissemination of gospel sentiments through the land."

Such are the inducements which urge us towards that period, when the will of our Father "shall be done on earth as it is in heaven." Whoever adopts the principles of the Gospel to their full extent, already in himself enjoys the promised blessings; to him the Millennium has come, for peace and happiness form a heaven within his own breast. Let us not then be deceived, for the Almighty will not receive so pitiful an excuse, as the expectation of a miracle, for the criminal neglect of his creatures.

The fact is, that this class of Christians become weary in well doing; they have felt sympathy for

the cause of peace, but have not acted, or acted insufficiently in its favour. "The end of all feeling is, or ought to be, action ;" and unless we convert our impressions into practice, they become each moment weaker, until they are entirely effaced.

There are many other obstacles and objections which we shall notice, as they unfold themselves, in the course of this work. Sufficient has been premised to command the attention of Christians.

CHAPTER III.

SECTION 1.-Physical Evils of War.

ALL civilized nations seem to allow that war is an evil. It is true, that sometimes by its means a despotism has been destroyed, a tyrant has been taken from the earth, but these are merely incidental benefits, while the necessary fruits are crime and misery. There is probably no unmixed evil in the universe, and such benefits as these may attend an assassination, yet we do not praise an assassin. When Doctor Johnson was told of Lord Kaimes's opinion, that war was occasionally beneficial, as so much valour and virtue were exhibited in it, he replied-"A fire might as well be

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thought a good thing: there is the bravery and address of the firemen in extinguishing it; there is much humanity exerted in saving the lives and properties of the poor sufferers. Yet, after all this, who can say that a fire is a good thing?"

We shall not attempt to describe the physical evils of war. They would fill a thousand volumes, and the details would create only loathing and disgust. Let those who are anxious to see this monstrous feature of war, read any account of a battle in a journal or history. Such scenes neither require, nor admit of, a heightened colouring; the mere simple narration of itself is too horrible. It will be impossible for one who has perused Labaume's narrative of the campaign in Russia during the year 1812,* ever to hear of war without a shudder. A brief extract will show the character of that expedition.

When Moscow had been fired by the Russians, and the French army marched into the burning capital, a sight dreadful to any but soldiers, met their view. "On one side," says the narrator,

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we saw a son carrying a sick father; on the other, women, who poured the torrent of their tears on the infants whom they clasped in their arms; old men, overwhelmed more by grief than by the weight of years, were seldom able to follow

* This narrative is translated by Evan Rees, and forms the fifth tract of the Peace Society.

their families; many of them weeping for the ruin of their country, laid down to die, near the houses where they were born.* The hospitals, containing more than twelve thousand wounded, began to burn. The heart, frozen with horror, recoils at the fatal disaster which ensued. Almost all these wretched victims perished!" The city was then given up to pillage, and "to all the excesses of lust were added the highest depravity and debauchery. No respect was paid to the nobility of blood, the innocence of youth, or to the tears of beauty. This cruel licentiousness was the consequence of a savage war, in which sixteen united nations, differing in language and manners, thought themselves at liberty to commit every crime, in the persuasion that their disorders would be attributed to one nation alone."+

We cannot refrain from adding a brief account of the more modern attack upon St. Jean d'Acre, by the British, on the third of November, 1840. After a cannonading of about two hours, "a sen

* Compare with this the destruction of Alba, so eloquently described by Livy, lib. i.

"The French troops, as they poured into the devoted city, had spread themselves in every direction in search of plunder, and in their progress they committed outrages so horrid on the persons of all whom they discovered, that fathers, desperate to save their children from pollution, would set fire to their places of refuge, and find a surer asylum in the flames. The streets, the houses, the cellars, flowed with blood, and were filled with violation and carnage."-Porter's Narrative, p. 170.