a regard to personal convenience, or from a corrupt and wicked heart, take pleasure in breaking the Sabbath, by military musters and reviews, marches and battles, regardless of the laws and orders both human and divine, which should govern them, and of the rights of conscience and religious convictions, principles, and claims of those who serve under them, and of the Christian communities and governments whose unworthy servants they themselves are.

Under the various corrupt and debasing influences thus far noticed, how many, in their onward march to ruin, have wrung with anguish a father's or a mother's heart. First the Bible and prayer are neglected, then profanity is indulged, and the drunkard's cup of woe, with the gambling-table and the den of licentiousness, close the awful drama of moral corruption, debasement, and shame. Of how many, alas! who thus destroy themselves and go down to graves of infamy and vice, of which their friends know not, and scarce wish to know; of how many such is it true, that having sunk themselves to a level with the brutes, like brutes too they perish; for

"Doubly dying they go down,

To the vile dust from whence they sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung."

Another strong claim which those who go forth to war have upon our sympathies, our kind efforts, and our prayers, is found in the fact of their peculiar exposure to sickness and death, when far removed from their homes and those who love them there. The great and sudden changes of climate to which those here spoken of are exposed, the drenching rains and cold and chilling storms from which they suffer; their loss of rest, and great fatigue or utter exhaustion under forced labor, or on long marches, or in the near and threatening presence of the enemy, or on the battle-field, the food they eat, or the want of food and drink proper and sufficient for them, with the contagious and deadly diseases to which they are at times exposed; these causes often lead to early sickness and death, or to life-long weakness, infirmity, and suffering.

*One of the ablest and most eloquent of our statesmen and ora tors has well said, that: "It is easy to die in battle. The spirit is stirred to a courageous madness by the rushing squadrons, the roaring cannon, and the clashing steel. All the fierce instincts of our nature are aroused, and the soldier seeks for death as the bridegroom seeks his bride. Besides—

'Fame is there to tell who bleeds,

And Honor's eye on daring deeds.'

But to waste away by sickness; to be crushed by the blow of an

*The late Hon. S. S. Prentiss, of New-Orleans.

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unseen enemy with whom you can not grapple; to know that death is approaching slowly but surely; to feel that your name will occupy no place on the bright scroll of fame; thus, without any of the pride and rapture of the strife to meet bravely the inevitable tyrant, is the highest test of the soldier's courage, the strongest proof of the patriot's devotion."

Now the youth, lovely and beloved, his father's pride, the idol of a mother's, a brother's, and a sister's heart, from a sense of duty or the love of fame, goes forth to war. Far from home, disease comes on him; for in war it is commonly true that more die from sickness than in battle. Friends of his youth, his companions in arms may be with him, the man of God may pray with and comfort him, and hopes of heaven may cheer him ; yet, in the crowded hospital or lowly tent, or on the rolling ocean, how, in his last hours, does he long for his far-off, quiet home, and those who love him there; and how do father and mother, brother and sister bewail him, when they learn of his sickness and fear his death. Would God that we could stand beside him, is the language of their hearts, to relieve his moaning anguish, and to close his eyes in death. And when his parents learn that he sleeps in death where they may not visit his grave nor weep over him there, how is their anguish like that of David when he cried: "O my son Absalom, my son! my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Ábsalom, my son, my son!"

Another has reached the prime and vigor of manhood when, at the cry of liberty and union, at the call of duty and of God he goes forth to fight, and if needs be to die for that for which our fathers bled and died. Visited with sickness and drawing near to the grave, fearless he meets the king of terrors; but in his dying moments he thinks of his far-off home and wife and child; and oh! he thinks too, and deeply feels how it would comfort and relieve his heart could they but stand beside him to cheer his dying moments, and receive his farewell blessing, and could they follow him to where the grave should welcome him, there to shed the tears of pity and of love.

In view, however, of those who, as good soldiers of the Cross of Christ, have for their country's good died from sickness, from wounds, or on the battle-field, and of their friends thus sorely bereaved, well may we, as taught in our text, weep rather for the living than for the dead. In the words of an ancient Hebrew dirge we may say:

"Mourn for the mourner, not for the dead:

He is at rest, but we are in tears."

Or, to use the words of him already quoted: "Our tears fall fast and free; but they flow rather for the living than the dead; for the nation that has lost such worthy sons; for the desolate fire

sides bereaved of their cherished and loved ones; for the bowed father, the heart-broken mother, the sobbing sister, the frantic wife, and the wondering children. For them we weep, but not for the heroic dead. Honor, eternal honor to the brave who baptized their patriotism in their blood." And yet, as Christians, while we mourn for and honor the fallen, we can not but feel how sad beyond all sadness it is to die in the hospital, on the battle-field, at sea, or in some foreign port, far from home and from friends, and with no bright hope of a heavenly home, and the victor's crown of glory and of life on high, or of communion there with those sainted heroes of the olden time who, as the Apostle tells us: "Through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens."

I would not here dwell upon the horrors of captivity, the crowded prison-cell, the scanty and unwholesome food and drink, the scornful, fiendlike taunting and abuse of bitter and malignant foes, the suffering from cold, from sickness, from almost nakedness; uncared for and unpitied, with no kind messages from those whom most they love, and if they die, to be buried with the burial of a dog. Such sufferings, and the cruelties inflicted by the enemy on our captive soldiers, and on their own neighbors who differed from them in opinion, in shooting them down like wild beasts when they came to the window-bars of their prisons to breathe the air of heaven; in hanging, as Union men, the wise and the good, aged and honored ministers of the Gospel, guilty of no crime but loving their country; from horrors such as these, we turn away with sadly sorrowing or bitterly indignant woe and anguish, feeling in our hearts and saying:

"O judgment! thou hast fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason."

And what shall we here say of the horrors of the battle-field? for truly has the prophet said, that: "Every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood." Sad indeed is it to think of those who, in vast numbers, are maimed and mangled, and bleed and die; of those who, with limbs broken or shattered or carried away, or with bodies sorely wounded, are trodden under foot by advancing and retreating hosts, or left uncared for, thirsty, faint, and weak, from burning fever or from chilling night-winds, without a drop of water to cool their parched tongues or quench their raging thirst.

Or shall we go to the crowded hospital, where deep and festering wounds are probed and shattered limbs bound up or cut off, and amid groans and tears and shrieks, men die with none to comfort or to aid, to soothe their anguish, or speak to them of God, of duty, of hope and heaven, to wipe away the clammy sweat of death,

while none of those who love them bless their dying vision, or follow them to where they rest in death?

Or shall we turn to naval battles and ships of war, where are crushing balls, and bursting shells, and shattered masts and yards, and gory decks, and mangled bodies, and shrieks of anguish, and heaps of slain; or where burning or sinking ships, or those whose magazines have exploded, give to multitudes a watery grave, or scatter their torn and mangled bodies far and wide upon the deep to sink where the seaweed should enshroud them, and the ocean's bed be their sepulcher?

Look, too, at the secret theft and the open and violent robbery, oppression, and wrong, and the wide-spread ruin and devastation which ever abound in connection with war; the petty and the wholesale and gigantic swindling and frauds of those who thus, like greedy vultures, prey upon their country in her hour of need. Another great and sore evil connected with war is the fact, that under its reckless and impulsive violence of feeling and of action, virtue and piety are blighted, or grossly perverted and blinded as to perceiving and yielding to what is just and true on the one hand, and evil and base on the other. Listen, too, in war, to the shrieks, and behold the convulsions of outraged humanity, a prey to passion, to avarice, to lawless violence and unbridled lust, or ground to the earth by the iron heel of reckless and despotic violence and abuse. And how, too, are the hearts of nations at war fired with passion and filled with moral corruption and death as fetid and festering as that of the grave.

Nor has this desolating curse, like the waters of the deluge or the tempest of fire by which Sodom was destroyed, visited the earth but once; but, like the tides of the ocean, like the wide rolling freshets of mighty rivers, like the massive avalanches which in succession rush with desolating fury down upon the plains which bound the mountain's base, like the lava of Etna and Vesuvius, burying fertile fields and the dwellings of men far and wide around beneath its burning flood, and rising in successive layers high above its deeply buried ruins; so has war, for ages upon ages, swept over the earth, clothing it in sackcloth, and drenching it with blood, and burying beneath its far-reaching desolation, or swallowing up in its fearful vortex private worth and public virtue, personal fame and national honor, individual wealth and public resources. The sad music of its death-march has been the wail of anguish and the shriek of despair, the moaning of the heart-broken widow, and the cry of the homeless and desolate orphan. Its pathway has been strewed with the moldering corpses, and bleaching bones and crowded graves and desolate dwellings, and untilled fields of the dead. On its altar of death broken hearts have been offered, and tears of anguish have freely flowed. Desolate hearthstones have been its monuments, and its

record of woe has been written with the life-blood of its wretched victims. And thus true indeed is it, as the Roman historian has said, that by the ravages of war, "Men make a solitude, and call it peace."

Such, then, is war, cruel and relentless war, with hands of violence and eyes of flaming rage, with gory locks, and crimson banners, and martial music, and garments red with blood, like the Angel of Death moving with desolating fury abroad upon the earth. What myriads upon myriads have thus sadly perished. Wide flowing rivers have been filled with the bodies, and dyed with the blood of the slain, and the dust of the fallen has enriched the soil of a thousand battle-fields. The rejoicing of nations for victories won, is mingled with the wail of the widow, the cry of the orphan, and the heart-broken anguish of parents bereaved of their children.

It is indeed true, that in the war in which we are now engaged, much is done to enlighten, restrain, reform, and rightly guide our national defenders by means of suitable reading and moral and religious instruction. So also by needed comforts, and luxuries even, and by kind and careful nursing, the sick and the wounded have been greatly cheered and relieved, and thus have the rigors of deadly contention and strife been softened; but still it is true, and ever has been, that:

"Where'er the blood-stained monster trod,

Fell wide and deep the curse of God."

And how sad is it that Christians even are prone to forget that many of those opposed to them in war are Christians too, involved in strife by no wish or agency of their own, and having bitterly suffered from it, they earnestly long and fervently pray for the day when peace, union, and brotherly love shall return and prevail. And, while strongly condemning rebellion, and earnestly striving to subdue or otherwise to end it, yet should we ever guard against all personal and sectional bitterness and hatred, which God has forbidden, and which, too, would be in the way of or prevent in the future cordial and enduring peace, union, and Christian love and esteem. For those, too, who through gross misrepresentation and falsehood or other evil influences have been led bitterly to hate and revile us, we should, like our blessed Master pray: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Nor should we forget, that the peculiar and chosen representatives of Christ here on earth are the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; for he hath chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him, so that whatever we do to comfort or relieve even the least of these his disciples, he will reward as if done to himself.